Lidars for vehicles: from the requirements to the technical evaluation

Abstract— ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) is a collective term of vehicle mounted sensors and devices aiming to improve traffic safety and realize high-level autonomous driving. Lidar systems are considered an indispensable part of ADAS to complement the other sensors like cameras and Radar. They realize these complements by providing a real-time high-resolution 3D representation of the environment of the vehicle, in which the positional information of each object area is included so that obstacles and potential hazards can be detected in advance by the ADAS. For this purpose, a Lidar must have the reliability of continuous work and provide the information accurately. In this paper, the requirements of Lidar systems in ADAS are firstly figured out by comparing them with other sensors applied in vehicles. Afterward, different types of Lidar systems regarding traffic safety and driver assistance are presented according to the stated Lidar function and driving condition on the road. Apart from the requirements, different working principles of Lidar products on the market are reviewed according to their scanning methods. Furthermore the results of this review are summed up in a technical evaluation to show the applicability of specific Lidar designs with respect to the requirements of vehicle applications