8/8/2023 0 Comments Do cateye lights work in rain![]() ![]() A lidar sensor has an ultra-fast exposure measured in millionths of a second, so rain is effectively frozen in place during a measurement and has a low likelihood of being detected as a streak across multiple pixels. Both human eyes and cameras have long exposure times measured in thousandths of a second, which makes falling water drops appear as large streaks in an image and rain appear denser than it actually is. Shorter exposure time (faster shutter speed)Įxposure time is another important differentiator between lidar sensors and cameras that affects performance in rain. To combat this distortion, automakers have developed cleaning solutions to prevent water and dirt buildup on camera lens. As a result, a single bead of water can obscure large areas in the field of view that may contain critical information. The camera on the other hand has an aperture much smaller than the size of the rain drops. This can be seen most clearly in the second half of the video. There is virtually no falling rain picked up by the sensor, despite the steady rainfall. ![]() The large aperture also allows the sensor to see around the falling rain drops in the air. The result is that the range of the sensor is reduced slightly by the water, but the water does not distort the image at all. As we discussed in a prior post, the large aperture allows light to pass around obscurants on the sensor window. One of the things that gives the OS1 the unique ability to see through obscurants (in this case water droplets) on the window is the large optical aperture of the sensor, enabled by our digital lidar technology. When we got the first rain in San Francisco last month, we recorded a side-by-side camera and lidar sensor drive to demonstrate the minimal impact that rain has on the lidar data, and that the wet conditions are one of many scenarios where having both sensors makes a perception system safer and more robust.įor our demonstration, we placed a GoPro recording 4K video and an OS1 lidar sensor on the top of our car and drove out into moderate, steady rain. ![]() They beg the question: has anyone commenting on lidar performance in the rain, actually seen lidar data from a drive in the rain? Our Google searches tell us the answer is almost definitely not, so we figured the best way to make our point would be with a real drive. That said, in situations where one of the two sensors may experience degraded performance, such as in the rain, the other sensor can play a role in picking up the slack for a perception system. Cameras bring high resolution to the table, where lidar sensors bring depth information. Working closely with autonomous vehicles, we know that both lidar sensors and cameras play important roles in an autonomous stack. ![]()
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