Exciting Technology developed an optical beam steering device for NASA Langley Research Center’s multifunctional flash LiDAR for lunar landing missions that would benefit from a low C-SWaP, highly-capable beam steering technology. The beam steering technology can also be applied to their Navigation Doppler LiDAR (NDL) system in the future. These LiDAR sensors provide high-resolution surface elevation maps and precise relative proximity, velocity, and orientation data during vehicle descent,1 requiring fast, wide beam steering with maintained optical quality and performance. Existing optical beam steering technology for large apertures and wide angles is restricted to classic gimbals, which are expensive and bulky with slow slew rates, or Risley prisms, which are heavy with low optical quality. Non-mechanical solutions currently are either not mature or too expensive to fabricate for larger transmissive apertures.2 Exciting Technology has built a mechanical beam steering device to demonstrate its beam steering technology that can be integrated into an existing LiDAR system to magnify and steer a 50mm beam to ±6° angle. The demonstration unit uses commercially available motors and stages to highlight the optical capability, and has a path to optimize the C-SWaP and to ruggedize for space application without bulky hardware. The developed beam steerer will correct for vehicle attitude changes during Hazard Detection and Avoidance (HDA) phase to point the LiDAR at the designated landing site. The beam steerer can be configured for nadir pointing during LiDAR altimetry and Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) phases.
Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) is pivotal across industries like autonomous vehicles, mapping, and defense, requiring precise 3D spatial data attainable only through active sensing. Traditional detectors, such as linear mode or Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes (APDs), have limitations. Linear mode APDs (LM-APD) provide low-light sensing but with limited gain values, particularly costly in HgCdTe. Geiger mode APDs (GMAPD) offer greater sensitivity but operate as switches with a reset time, impacting efficiency. The discrete amplification photon detector (DAPD) aims to overcome these limitations by integrating negative feedback to quench avalanching gain, providing single-photon detection with faster reset times and high gain. We present characterization results of the DAPD, including sensitivity, background noise, and reset time, crucial for LiDAR viability. This advancement not only enhances LiDAR performance but also broadens its applications.
We present methods enabling rapid non-uniformity and range walk error correction of 3D flash LiDAR imagers that exhibit electronic crosstalk caused by simultaneously triggering too many detectors. This additional electronic crosstalk is referred to as simultaneous ranging crosstalk noise (SRCN). Using a method in which the 3D flash LiDAR imager views a checkerboard target downrange, the SRCN is largely mitigated. Additionally, processing techniques for computing the non-uniformity correction (NUC) and range walk error correction are described; these include an in-situ thermally compensated dark-frame non-uniformity correction, image processing and filtering techniques for the creation of a photo-response non-uniformity correction, and characterization and correction of the range walk error using data collected across the full focal plane array without the need for sampling or windowing. These methods result in the ability to correct noisy test validation data to a range precision of 8.04 cm and a range accuracy of 1.73 cm and to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the intensity return by 15 to 49 dB. Visualization of a 3D scene corrected by this process is additionally presented.
This paper presents the expansion of dark-frame non-uniformity correction (DFNUC) techniques to include compensation for thermal drift in a 128×128 PIN diode 3D flash LiDAR camera. Flash LiDAR cameras are operated in various climates, which makes thermal compensation necessary in the dark NUC algorithm. The thermal excitation of electrons has a significant effect on the dark current in an InGaAs PIN photodetector and on the CMOS readout circuitry, thus impacting the output image. This is a well-known phenomenon in imaging sensors and various algorithms have been established to address thermal drift. This paper adapts a linear model for dark signal calibration used in infrared cameras for the calibration of a PIN diode flash LiDAR camera in both intensity and range return. The experimental process involves collecting dark frames in increments of the internal camera temperature from 22°C to 36°C using thermoelectric (TE) cooling modules. A linear trendline is developed for each individual pixel based on the average frame return, which suppresses the random temporal noise and isolates the dark signal return. The trendline helps form a model for the dark frame offset as a function of temperature, which is used for the dark-frame NUC process. The dark-frame NUC with thermal drift compensation is then evaluated by correcting dark frames at various operating temperatures. Finally, illuminated scenes captured by the camera with a 5.91ns, 842.4μJ pulsed laser at 5Hz are corrected at multiple operation temperatures to show the effectiveness of the dark non-uniformity correction algorithm.
We present experimental methods and results for photo-response non-uniformity correction (PRNUC) in range for a 3D flash LiDAR camera from non-optimal static-scene calibration data. Range walk is also corrected. This method breaks up the camera’s focal plane array (FPA) into 16 × 16 windowed regions of interest that are incrementally captured and stitched together in post-processing across the entire FPA. The illumination was not uniform, thus requiring additional methods described by our paper to create an acceptable correction. We present the results from a full non-uniformity correction and range walk error correction processed for a set of independently collected validation frames; these validation frames used identical experimental conditions and the same target as was collected for the corrections. We will show that this experimental approach improves range accuracy and range precision of the corrected validation frames despite the sub-optimal conditions of the data used to compute the corrections; the single shot range precision is corrected to 33 cm, as compared to a modeled precision of 15.65 cm, while the accuracy is corrected to 252 cm. This method has implications for simplification of characterization of non-uniformity and range walk error, and its subsequent correction, in 3D flash LiDAR cameras.
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