Systems and methods for efficient multi-return light detectors

US10690773B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• VELODYNE LIDAR, INC. · US

Inventors

• Kiran Gunnam · Milpitas, US
• Kanke Gao · Fremont, US
• Nitinkumar Sagarbhai Barot · San Jose, US
• Anand Gopalan · Foster City, US
• David S. Hall · Los Altos Hills, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Dec 7, 2017
• Grant date: Jun 23, 2020
• Expiry date: Dec 7, 2037

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G01J2003/2863
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

Described herein are systems and methods that may efficiently detect multi-return light signals. A light detection and ranging system, such as a LIDAR system, may fire a laser beam that may hit multiple objects with a different distance in one line, causing multi-return light signals to be received by the system. Multi-return detectors may be able to analyze the peak magnitude of a plurality of peaks in the return signals and determine a multitude of peaks, such as the first peak, the last peak and the maximum peak. One embodiment to detect the multi-return light signals may be a multi-return recursive matched filter detector. This detector comprises a matched filter, peak detector, centroid calculation and a zeroing out function. Other embodiments may be based on a maximum finder that algorithmically selects the highest magnitude peaks from samples of the return signal and buffers for regions of interests peaks.