"Driver assistance" and "autonomous driving" will change mobility in the coming years. These are systems that control the movement of the vehicle – without any intervention by the driver. Such vehicles are thus able to manoeuvre independently from point A to point B.
To do this, the vehicle must of course know its static surroundings and detect its dynamic environment. GPS takes care of the former: the vehicle knows where it is. Ultrasonic, radar or LIDAR systems additionally ensure that the vehicle knows what is happening in its immediate vicinity.
LIDAR stands for LIght Detection And Ranging, or Light Imaging, Detection And Ranging, and refers to a method of distance measurement which, unlike RADAR, uses light rather than radio waves. The actual distance to an obstacle is determined either by measuring the time of flight of the emitted light until the reflected light arrives, or, in so-called "triangulation", by detecting the angle between the emitted and reflected light using a photo chip.
The following topics are investigated with this equipment set:
- LIDAR operating principle
- Applications of LIDAR sensors
- Determining distance
- Data visualisation
- Digital data transmission via CAN bus
