Originally developed for helicopter landings in brownout conditions, the OPAL™ LiDAR scanners are designed to perform in extreme physical environments, in real-time, and penetrate through obscurants such as dust, rain, fog, and smoke.
Mounted on a vehicle, OPAL™ LiDAR provides 3D vision of the surrounding environment to aid in manned and unmanned operations for Advanced Driver-Assist Systems (ADAS). Even in near zero-visibility, obstacles on the ground and the surrounding terrain are accurately detected to enable advanced navigation on robotic and automotive platforms.
Experts throughout the automotive industry agree; high resolution 3D LiDAR scanners are an essential component to any robust autonomous driving solution. OPAL™ can provide better situational awareness to manned and unmanned systems that need to operate in adverse conditions. OPAL™ LiDAR can detect small obstacles along the vehicle’s path and render a more thorough representation of the terrain. OPAL™ LiDAR is an essential tool for path planning and/or collision avoidance systems. OPAL’s long range (>500 m provides greater situational awareness to large industrial automotive vehicles that require much longer stopping distances than commercial ADAS systems.
OPAL™ LiDAR can also be used as a long-range mapping solution on autonomous vehicles. Creating detailed maps of the environment in which a vehicle is navigating, can be of great advantage to the operator and future operation in the same location.
LiDAR is often used as the core technology to sensor fusion, allowing other sensing technologies to overlay their data on a detailed geo-referenced 3D point cloud.