Patent Application
20230176217
The present disclosure relates to a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system and more particularly to, a receiver of a LiDAR system that separates laser beams and ambient light returned from the environment using a micro shutter array so as to separately detect the two signals.
In a scanning LiDAR system, biaxial architecture has some advantages such as simpler optics, less limitation on a scanner, and a larger aperture which is not limited to the scanner size. One advantage of the biaxial architecture is that the field of view (FOV) of the receiving optics can be quite large to cover all scanned points in the far field. However, if the receiving optics of a LiDAR system is made to be large, in real-world applications, a lot of ambient light, such as light from the direct or indirect sunlight reflected off far-field objects, may be also collected by the receiving optics simultaneously. The larger the receiving optics FOV, the more received ambient light, which means the more noise for backend processing and thus the lower detection accuracy. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the receiving optics FOV that affects the detection range and the signal-to-noise ratio that affects the detection accuracy in existing biaxial scanning LiDAR systems, thereby limiting the performance of the existing biaxial scanning LiDAR systems.
In addition, in the existing biaxial scanning LiDAR systems, the ambient light is generally considered as noise if the ambient light is detected along with the retuned laser beams during optical signal detection. However, the ambient light reflected off far-field objects may itself contain information of the far field, which is useful for object detection. By considering the ambient light as mere noise, the existing biaxial scanning LiDAR systems waste useful information contained in the ambient light, which again limits the performance of the existing biaxial scanning LiDAR systems.
Embodiments of the disclosure address the above problems by including a micro shutter array in a receiver of a LiDAR system, which separates the ambient light from returned laser beams so that the laser beams and ambient light returned from the environment are separately detected.
Embodiments of the disclosure provide an exemplary optical sensing system. The optical sensing system includes a laser emitter configured to sequentially emit a series of laser beams. The optical sensing system further includes a steering device configured to direct the series of laser beams in different directions towards an environment surrounding the optical sensing system. The optical sensing system additionally includes a receiver configured to receive the series of laser beams at a plurality of time points and an ambient light returning from the environment. The receiver includes a micro shutter array configured to sequentially open a portion of the micro shutter array at a specified location at each time point, to allow the corresponding laser beam to pass through the micro shutter array at that time point and to reflect the ambient light by a remaining portion of the micro shutter array at that time point. The receiver further includes an image sensor configured to receive the ambient light reflected by the remaining portion of the micro shutter array.
Embodiments of the disclosure also provide an exemplary optical sensing method using a micro shutter array. The method includes sequentially emitting, by a laser emitter of an optical sensing system, a series of laser beams. The method further includes directing, by a steering device of the optical sensing system, the series of laser beams in different directions towards the environment surrounding the optical sensing system. The method additionally includes receiving the series of laser beams at a plurality of time points and an ambient light returned from the environment by a micro shutter array disposed along a light path of the series of laser beams returned from the environment, where the micro shutter array sequentially opens a portion of the micro shutter array at a specified location at each time point, to allow the corresponding laser beam to pass through the micro shutter array at that time point and to reflect the ambient light by a remaining portion of the micro shutter array at that time point. The method additionally includes receiving, by a photodetector of the optical sensing system, the series of laser beams passed through sequentially opened portions of the micro shutter array. The method additionally includes receiving, by an image sensor of the optical sensing system, the ambient light reflected by the micro shutter array.
Embodiments of the disclosure further provide an exemplary receiver of an optical sensing system. The exemplary receiver includes a receiving lens configured to collimate and focus a series of laser beams received at a plurality of time points and an ambient light returned from an environment on a micro shutter array. The exemplary receiver further includes a micro shutter array disposed along a light path of the laser beams returned from the environment and configured to sequentially open a portion of the micro shutter array at a specified location at each time point, to allow the corresponding laser beam to pass through the micro shutter array at that time point and to reflect the ambient light by a remaining portion of the micro shutter array at that time point. The exemplary receiver additionally includes a receiving lens configured to receive the returned series of laser beams sequentially passed through the micro shutter array. The exemplary receiver additionally includes an image sensor configured to receive the ambient light reflected by the remaining portion of the micro shutter array.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the present disclosure, as claimed.
Reference will now be made in detail to the exemplary embodiments, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawings to refer to the same or like parts.
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a micro shutter array and an image sensor in a receiver of a biaxial scanning LiDAR system. According to one example, the micro shutter array may be disposed between a receiving lens and a condenser lens of the receiver. The micro shutter array may include a plurality of micro shutter elements arranged in a one-dimensional, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional array, where each micro shutter element may be controlled to switch between an open and closed state. Accordingly, when an optical signal returned from the environment of the LiDAR system is received by the receiver in a biaxial scanning LiDAR system, the micro shutter array may be controlled to allow only a spatially selected portion to be opened, to allow the returned optical signal to pass through the spatially selected portion of the micro shutter array and detected by a photodetector of the receiver.
In some embodiments, the spatially selected portion is selected based on the location where the returned optical signal is incident on the micro shutter array after collimation by the receiving lens, where the incident location of the returned optical signal is also determined by the angular direction at which a scanner of the LiDAR system is pointing during a scanning process. Accordingly, when the scanner of the LiDAR system scans the environment by continuously changing the angular direction, the location where the returned optical signal is incident on the micro shutter array may also continuously change, and the changing pattern may correspond to a pattern that the scanner of the LiDAR system follows during the scanning process. To allow the returned optical signals to pass through the micro shutter array, the micro shutter array may be controlled to sequentially open different portions of the micro shutter array, where each portion is spatially selected based on the location where the returned optical signal is incident on the micro shutter array.
In some embodiments, the micro shutter array may be coated with a reflective material that has a high reflectivity. Accordingly, the micro shutter array reflects signals incident on it unless a certain portion is open. By controlling the micro shutter array to sequentially open only a spatially selected portion at each time point during a scanning process, the majority portion of the micro shutter array remains closed during the scanning process. Therefore, the majority of the ambient light, including the direct or indirect sunlight reflected off far-field objects, may be reflected back without passing through the micro shutter array for detection by the photodetector of the LiDAR system. This then allows the signal-to-ratio to remain high for the photodetector of the LiDAR system, even when the receiving optics FOV is large. That is, the detection range of the disclosed biaxial scanning LiDAR system can be increased without the sacrifice of detection accuracy of the photodetector of the LiDAR system.
In addition, as previously described, the ambient light reflected off far-field objects may contain information regarding these objects, which may be useful for object detection. Accordingly, in some embodiments, the receiver of the disclosed LiDAR system may further include an image sensor (e.g., a camera sensor) that is configured to detect the majority of the ambient light reflected by the micro shutter array in the receiver. To allow the reflected ambient light to deviate from a light path of returning laser beams to be detected by the image sensor disposed off the light path, the receiver of the disclosed LiDAR system may further include a quarter-wave plate that changes the polarization state of the ambient light passing through the plate and a beam splitter that re-directs the ambient light reflected by the micro shutter array based on the polarization state of the ambient light. The re-directed ambient light may be detected by the image sensor, which may capture the texture information of the environment including the texture information of the far-field objects in the environments. In some embodiments, the texture information of the far-field objects captured by the image sensor may be combined or fused with the depth information of the far-field objects captured by the photodetector of the LiDAR system. The integration of these attributes with an efficient fusion approach may greatly benefit the reliable and consistent perception of the environment surrounding the disclosed LiDAR system.
Other advantages of the disclosed LiDAR system include its easy integration of the receiver into the existing biaxial scanning LiDAR systems, without changing many of the other components, especially the transmitting part included in these LiDAR systems. The features and advantages described herein are not all-inclusive and many additional features and advantages will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the drawings and the following descriptions.
The disclosed LiDAR system containing a micro shutter array and image sensor can be used in many applications. For example, the disclosed LiDAR system can be used in advanced navigation technologies, such as to aid autonomous driving or to generate high-definition maps, in which the optical sensing system can be equipped on a vehicle.
As illustrated in
Consistent with some embodiments, LiDAR system 102 and sensor 110 may be configured to capture data as vehicle 100 moves along a trajectory. For example, a scanning system of LiDAR system 102 may be configured to scan the surrounding environment. LiDAR system 102 measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with laser beams and measuring the reflected/scattered pulses with a photodetector of the receiver of the LiDAR system. The laser beams used for LiDAR system 102 may be ultraviolet, visible, or near-infrared, and may be pulsed or continuous wave laser beams. In some embodiments of the present disclosure, LiDAR system 102 may capture point cloud data including depth information of the objects in the surrounding environment, which may be used for constructing a high-definition map or 3-D buildings and city modeling. In some embodiments of the present disclosure, LiDAR system 102 may also include an image sensor that captures the texture information of the environment, which may be further fused with the depth information captured by the photodetector of the LiDAR system to get a better perception of the environment surrounding the disclosed LiDAR system. As vehicle 100 moves along the trajectory, LiDAR system 102 may continuously capture data including the depth information and the texture information of the surrounding objects (such as moving vehicles, buildings, road signs, pedestrians, etc.) for map, building, or city modeling construction.
Laser emitter 208 may be configured to emit laser beams 207 (also referred to as “native laser beams”) to scanner 210. For instance, laser emitter 208 may generate laser beams in the ultraviolet, visible, or near-infrared wavelength range, and provide the generated laser beams to scanner 210. In some embodiments of the disclosure, depending on underlying laser technology used for generating laser beams, laser emitter 208 may include one or more of a double heterostructure (DH) laser emitter, a quantum well laser emitter, a quantum cascade laser emitter, an interband cascade (ICL) laser emitter, a separate confinement heterostructure (SCH) laser emitter, a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser emitter, a distributed feedback (DFB) laser emitter, a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) emitter, a vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) emitter, an extern-cavity diode laser emitter, etc., or any combination thereof. Depending on the number of laser emitting units in a package, laser emitter 208 may include a single emitter containing a single light-emitting unit, a multi-emitter unit containing multiple single emitters packaged in a single chip, an emitter array or laser diode bar containing multiple (e.g., 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc.) single emitters in a single substrate, an emitter stack containing multiple laser diode bars or emitter arrays vertically and/or horizontally built up in a single package, etc., or any combination thereof. Depending on the operating time, laser emitter 208 may include one or more of a pulsed laser diode (PLD), a CW laser diode, a Quasi-CW laser diode, etc., or any combination thereof. Depending on the semiconductor materials of diodes in laser emitter 208, the wavelength of emitted laser beams 207 may be at different values, such as 760 nm, 785 nm, 708 nm, 848 nm, 870 nm, 905 nm, 940 nm, 980 nm, 1064 nm, 1083 nm, 1310 nm, 1370 nm, 1480 nm, 1512 nm, 1550 nm, 1625 nm, 1654 nm, 1877 nm, 1940 nm, 2000 nm, etc. It is understood that any suitable laser source may be used as laser emitter 208 for emitting laser beams 207 at a proper wavelength.
Scanner 210 may include various optical elements such as prisms, mirrors, gratings, optical phased array (e.g., liquid crystal-controlled grating), or any combination thereof. When a laser beam is emitted by laser emitter 208, scanner 210 may direct the emitter laser beam towards the environment, e.g., object(s) 212, surrounding LiDAR system 102. In some embodiments, object(s) 212 may be made of a wide range of materials including, for example, non-metallic objects, rocks, rain, chemical compounds, aerosols, clouds, and even single molecules. In some embodiments, at each time point during a scanning process, scanner 210 may direct laser beams 209 to object(s) 212 in a direction within a range of scanning angles by rotating a deflector, such as a micromachined mirror assembly.
Receiver 204 may be configured to detect returned laser beams 211 reflected by object(s) 212. Upon contact, laser light can be reflected/scattered by object(s) 212 via backscattering, such as Raman scattering, and fluorescence. Returned laser beams 211 may be in a same or different direction from laser beams 209. In some embodiments, receiver 204 may collect laser beams returned from object(s) 212 and output signals reflecting the intensity of the returned laser beams. In some embodiments, receiver 204 may be configured to also detect the ambient light reflected off objects in the environment, and thus may capture texture information of the objects in the environment, as further described in detail in
As described above and as illustrated in
Photodetector 220 may be configured to detect the focused laser spot 217. In some embodiments, photodetector 220 may include a single sensor element that continuously detects the focused laser spots passed through micro shutter array 216 and focused by condenser lens 218. In some embodiments, photodetector 220 may be a photosensor array that includes multiple sensor elements. Different focused laser spots 217 may be detected by different sensor elements included in the photosensor array. In some embodiments, a focused laser spot detected by photodetector 220 may be converted into an electrical signal 219 (e.g., a current or a voltage signal). Electrical signal 219 may be an analog signal which is generated when photons are absorbed in a photodiode included in photodetector 220. In some embodiments, photodetector 220 may be a PIN detector, an avalanche photodiode (APD) detector, a single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detector, a silicon photo multiplier (SiPM) detector, or the like.
Readout circuit 222 may be configured to integrate, amplify, filter, and/or multiplex signal detected by photodetector 220 and transfer the integrated, amplified, filtered, and/or multiplexed signal 221 onto an output port (e.g., controller 206) for readout. In some embodiments, readout circuit 222 may act as an interface between photodetector 220 and a signal processing unit (e.g., controller 206). Depending on the configurations, readout circuit 222 may include one or more of a transimpedance amplifier (TIA), an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a time-to-digital converter (TDC), or the like.
Controller 206 may be configured to control transmitter 202 and/or receiver 204 to perform detection/sensing operations. For instance, controller 206 may control laser emitter 208 to emit laser beams 207, or control photodetector 220 to detect optical signal returning from the environment. In some embodiments, controller 206 may also control data acquisition and perform data analysis. For instance, controller 206 may collect digitalized signal information from readout circuit 222, determine the depth information of object(s) 212 from LiDAR system 102 according to the travel time of laser beams, and construct a high-definition map or 3-D buildings and city modeling surrounding LiDAR system 102 based on the depth information of object(s) 212. In some embodiments, controller 206 may combine the digitalized signals from a series of laser beams passed through different portions of micro shutter array 216 in constructing a high-definition map or 3-D buildings and city modeling surrounding LiDAR system 102. In some embodiments, controller 206 may further fuse depth information included in the photodetector data with the texture information included in the image sensor data, as further described below in
As illustrated, LiDAR system 102 may further include a receiving lens 214, a condenser lens 218, and a micro shutter array 216 disposed between receiving lens 214 and condenser lens 218. In some embodiments, LiDAR system 102 may further include a MEMS driver 302b coupled to micro shutter array 216, where MEMS driver 302b may drive the micro shutter elements included in micro shutter array 216 to individually open or close according to a predefined pattern, to allow returned laser beams to sequentially pass through the micro shutter array, and to reflect back the ambient light simultaneously collected by the receiving lens 214.
Receiving lens 214 may collimate the optical signals received from the environment. In some embodiments, to improve the detection range of LiDAR system 102, e.g., to detect a building that is 100 m or higher surrounding the LiDAR system, the FOV of receiving lens 214 may be configured to be large. With the increased FOV, when receiving the optical signals from the environment, besides the laser beams reflected from objects (e.g., far-field object(s) 212), receiving lens 214 may also receive a large amount of ambient light from the environment. For instance, direct or indirect sunlight reflected off far-field objects may be also received by receiving lens 214. The larger the FOV of the receiving lens, the more ambient light received from the environment is detected by photodetector 220 of LiDAR system 102. As a result, the detected signal contains more noise, and the detection accuracy is lowered.
Micro shutter array 216 may block the majority of the ambient light from being detected by photodetector 220, and thus increases the detection accuracy of LiDAR system 102 even when the FOV of the receiving lens is large. As illustrated, micro shutter array 216 may be disposed along the light path of the returned optical signals after receiving lens 214. The optical signals, including the returned laser beams and the ambient light, may be collimated and directed by receiving lens 214 towards micro shutter array 216. Micro shutter array 216 may serve as a filter to allow the returned laser beams to pass through while blocking most of the ambient light. To achieve such a filtering effect, micro shutter array 216 may include a plurality of micro shutter elements arranged in a two-dimensional array, where each micro shutter element may include a coated reflective surface facing receiving lens 214. A micro shutter element can be in one of an open state for allowing light and laser beams to pass through or in a closed state for blocking or reflecting back the ambient light or other optical signals. In the closed state, the micro shutter element is covered by the reflective coating such that the laser beam incident on the element will be reflected. In the open state, the reflective coating on the micro shutter element will be temporarily removed, and thus the incident laser beam can pass through. At any moment during a scanning process, the majority of the micro shutter elements may remain closed and thus the majority of the ambient light may be reflected back towards receiving lens 214. Only a spatially selected portion of micro shutter elements may be in an open state for allowing the returned laser beams to pass through the micro shutter array. A very limited portion of the ambient light, if any, may also pass through the spatially selected portion of the micro shutter elements in the open state. The spatial location of the selectively opened portion may correspond to the incident position of the returned laser beam, which may be further determined by the angular direction at which a scanner of the LiDAR system is pointing during a scanning process, as further described in detail in
As described earlier, the ambient light reflected by micro shutter array 216 may also contain information of the far field, which may be also used for objection detection or environmental sensing of the objects in the far field. Accordingly, the disclosed LiDAR system 102 may further include a set of optical elements and a corresponding image sensor configured to detect the objects in the far field by sensing the ambient light reflected by micro shutter array 216, as shown in
It is to be noted that components illustrated in
For instance, in part (a) of
As previously described, when returned laser beam 602a, 602b, or 602c is incident on micro shutter array 216, the received ambient light may be also incident on micro shutter array 216. Different from returned laser beams that consistently change incident locations on micro shutter array 216, the received ambient light remains incident on the entire area of micro shutter array 216 during a scanning process. Therefore, the received ambient light covers a much larger area than returned laser beams when being incident on micro shutter array 216. Accordingly, at any time point during a scanning process, since only a portion of micro shutter array 216 corresponding to the incident location of a returned laser beam is controlled to open, only a tiny portion of the received ambient light passes through micro shutter array 216, and the majority of the received ambient light will be reflected back, as shown in
For object detection 708 using image data 608, image classification and/or object localization may be performed, and a large variety of techniques may be employed. For instance, different non-neural or neural network approaches may be employed in image processing to detect objects from image data 608. The non-neural network approaches may include, but are not limited to, Viola-jones object detection framework based on Haar features, scale-invariant feature transform, ad histogram, of oriented gradients features. The neural network-based approaches may include, but are not limited to, Region Proposals (Regions with Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNN), Fast R-CNN, Faster R-CNN, cascade R-CNN), Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD), You Only Look Once (YOLO), Single-Shot Refinement Neural Network for Object Detection (RefineDet), Retina-Net, deformable convolutional networks.
In some embodiments, the ambient light reflected from the micro shutter array at each time point may exclude a portion of the ambient light that has passed through micro shutter array 216. Accordingly, image data 608 obtained from the ambient light reflected by micro shutter array 216 at one time point may include a missing portion. To compensate for the missing portion, image data 608 obtained from the ambient light reflected by micro shutter array 216 at a different time point during a scanning process, e.g., a time point right before or after that time point, may be used, and the corresponding missing portion may be obtained based on the image overlay and intensity detection of the overlaid image since a missing portion may show a lower intensity than the remaining part of the overlaid image. Alternatively or additionally, the missing portion of the image data 608 may be compensated based on the optical signal detected by photodetector 220. For instance, the portion of the ambient light that has passed through micro shutter array 216 may be detected by photodetector 220, which may be further separated from a returned laser beam simultaneously detected by photodetector 220 due to the different wavelength. The separated optical signal may be then combined or fused with image data 608 obtained by image sensor 322, to get an integrated image data that corresponds to the whole FOV of receiving lens 214 (that is, without a missing portion) in LiDAR system 102. The integrated image data may be then subject to image processing including texture features extraction and object detection, or fusion with point cloud data as further described below.
For object detection using point cloud data 610, photodetector 220 and controller 206 may produce point clouds that map the environment in 3D, as previously described. This “cloud,” consisting of distance points, may provide numerous and valuable environmental information including the depth information of the detected objects.
As previously described, while image data 608 and point cloud data 610 both provide information for object detection, LiDAR point cloud data is generally rich in depth information but lacking color and texture information, while image sensor data provides more detailed texture, color and lighting information in the form of images or videos but lacking depth information. Accordingly, it is beneficial to combine or fuse image data 608 obtained by image sensor 332 with point cloud data 610 obtained by photodetector 220, so as to combine the unique qualities of respective modalities included in the receiver of the disclosed LiDAR system, to achieve simultaneous objection detection and localization. In some embodiments, different fusion techniques may be applied to achieve such objection detection and localization, which may include certain early fusion, late fusion, or combined fusion by using different neural networks. In some embodiments, the fusion may be implemented in an early stage, e.g., raw data may be fused. For example, LiDAR point cloud data 610 (which includes depth information or 3D information) may be projected onto the 2D image data, to check whether or not the point clouds belong to the 2D bounding boxes. For another example, point clouds may be augmented with corresponding RGB values obtained from image data for processing by a neural network. On the other hand, in some other embodiments, the fusion may be at a later stage, e.g., the results from independent or separate detections are fused. For example, in late fusion, 2D bounding boxes from the image data 608 may be projected into 3D bounding boxes, which are then fused with the bounding boxes obtained from the point cloud data. For another example, in neural network processing, higher dimensional features from individual sensor encoder networks may be combined into a joint feature vector, which may be then used by an object detector network to predict object detection parameters. In combined fusion, both early fusion and late fusion may be employed in object detection. It is to be noted that the foregoing fusions are merely some examples for fusing image data 608 with point cloud data 610. In real applications, many different fusion techniques may be applied to fuse image data with the point cloud data. In some embodiments, sensor data fusion 706 may be performed locally in controller 206 of the LiDAR system. In some embodiments, sensor data fusion 706 may be performed remotely in a centralized server, to minimize the computation cost required for a local LiDAR system. The data fusion and subsequent object detection may allow a more reliable and consistent perception of the environment surrounding the disclosed LiDAR system, which is a crucial process in many applications that requires a LiDAR system, such as in autonomous driving, industrial automation, and robotics. One such exemplary application is described below in
In step S802, an optical source (e.g., laser emitter 208) inside a transmitter of an optical sensing system (e.g., transmitter 202 of LiDAR system 102) may emit a series of laser beams for optical sensing of the environment. Here, the laser beams emitted by the optical source may have a predetermined beam size and divergence. In some embodiments, the emitted laser beams may have a high intensity and a large divergence, to allow detection of the objects in a wide range.
In step S804, a steering device of the optical sensing system (e.g., scanner 210 in transmitter 202 of LiDAR system 102) may steer the emitted laser beams toward the environment surrounding the optical sensing system. The steering device may steer the emitted laser beams according to a predefined pattern, so that different parts of the environment may be scanned over a short period of time. For instance, the emitted laser beams may be directed toward far-field objects in the environment according to a two-dimensional scanning pattern. The objects in the environment may then reflect at least a portion of the laser beams toward the optical sensing system. In some embodiments, the optical sensing system may be a biaxial LiDAR system and thus the returned laser beams may be directly directed towards a receiving lens (e.g., receiving lens 214) of the optical sensing system without being reflected by the steering device. The receiving lens may collimate the received laser beams. In some embodiments, to increase the detection range, the receiving lens FOV may be large. Therefore, a certain amount of ambient light may be also received by the receiving lens. The received ambient light may be also collimated by the receiving lens.
In step S806, a micro shutter array (e.g., micro shutter array 216) disposed after the receiving lens may receive the series of laser beams collimated by the receiving lens, where the micro shutter array may sequentially open a portion of the micro shutter array at a specified location at one time, to allow the corresponding laser beam to pass through the micro shutter array at that time and to reflect the ambient light by a remaining portion of the micro shutter array at that time. As previously described, the micro shutter array may include a plurality of micro shutter elements, where each of the plurality of micro shutter elements may be in one of an open or closed state, and may include a reflective surface that reflects the ambient light if the micro shutter element is in the closed state. To allow the series of laser beams to pass through the micro shutter array, different portions of the micro shutter array may be sequentially opened, where each opened portion may allow a corresponding returned laser beam to pass through. The exact position at which a portion of the micro shutter array to be opened corresponds to an incident location of a returned laser beam on the micro shutter array. Since the returned series of laser beams follow a two-dimensional scanning pattern when the signals are incident on the micro shutter array, the multiple portions included in the micro shutter array may be also controlled to open sequentially following a two-dimensional scanning pattern, to allow each returned laser beam to pass through the corresponding opened portion of the micro shutter array.
As described above, when receiving the returned laser beams, the receiving lens may also receive the ambient light (unless specified, a laser beam throughout the specification may mean a laser light or a laser beam other than the ambient light). The received ambient light may be also collimated towards the micro shutter array. However, different from the returned laser beams that are incident only on a very small portion of the micro shutter array, the received ambient light may be incident on a much larger area, up to the whole surface of the micro shutter array. Since only a small portion of the micro shutter array is controlled to open at any time point, only a very small portion of the ambient light, if any, may pass through the opened portion of the micro shutter array with the returned laser beam, and the majority of the collimated ambient light is blocked by the remaining majority portion of the micro shutter array that contains the closed micro shutter elements. For instance, the majority of the ambient light is reflected back by the closed micro shutter elements in the micro shutter array.
In step S808, a photodetector (e.g., photodetector 220) of the optical sensing system may receive the series of laser beams sequentially passed through the micro shutter array. The series of laser beams may be sequentially received by the photodetector. When each laser beam is detected by the photodetector, the location information of the corresponding micro shutter element(s) allowing the pass-through of that laser beam is also received and recorded, e.g., by a controller of the optical sensing system. Therefore, after each micro shutter element responsible for the pass-through of the returned laser beams is opened, the laser beams for the receiving lens whole FOV are then detected by the photodetector, which can be then combined to generate point clouds for the whole receiving lens FOV during an optical sensing process. The generated point clouds may have a high accuracy due to the filtering effect of the micro shutter array that blocks the ambient light received by the large FOV receiving lens. The disclosed LiDAR system with a micro shutter array may thus achieve laser beam detection with both a large angular range and a high accuracy during an optical sensing process.
In step S810, an image sensor (e.g., a camera sensor such as image sensor 332) of the optical sensing system may receive the majority of the ambient light reflected by the micro shutter array. In some embodiments, the optical sensing system may further include certain optical components that collaboratively redirect the majority of the ambient light reflected by the micro shutter array. Examples of such optical components may include a polarizer 328, a beam splitter 326, a quarter-wave plate 324, and an imaging lens 330. Other different optical components are also possible. Once redirected into the image sensor, the majority of the ambient light may be detected by the image sensor, which may capture the texture information of the objects in the environment.
Although not shown in
Although the disclosure is made using a LiDAR system as an example, the disclosed embodiments may be adapted and implemented to other types of optical sensing systems that use receivers to receive laser beams not limited to laser beams. For example, the embodiments may be readily adapted for optical imaging systems or radar detection systems that use electromagnetic waves to scan objects.
Another aspect of the disclosure is directed to a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform the methods, as discussed above. The computer-readable medium may include volatile or non-volatile, magnetic, semiconductor-based, tape-based, optical, removable, non-removable, or other types of computer-readable medium or computer-readable storage devices. For example, the computer-readable medium may be the storage device or the memory module having the computer instructions stored thereon, as disclosed. In some embodiments, the computer-readable medium may be a disc or a flash drive having the computer instructions stored thereon.
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made to the disclosed system and related methods. Other embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the disclosed system and related methods.
It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with a true scope being indicated by the following claims and their equivalents.
