Self Driving Car LIDAR Damages $2000 Camera at CES

[ThePointblank]

This is from Ars Technica:

 

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/01/man-says-ces-lidars-laser-was-so-powerful-it-wrecked-his-1998-camera/

 

Quote

A man attending this week's CES show in Las Vegas says that a lidar sensor from startup AEye has permanently damaged the sensor on his $1,998 Sony camera. Earlier this week, Jit Ray Chowdhury, an autonomous vehicle engineer at the startup Ridecell, snapped photos of a car at CES with AEye's lidar units on top. He discovered that every subsequent picture he took was marred by two bright purple spots, with horizontal and vertical lines emanating from them.

"I noticed that all my pictures were having that spot," he told Ars by phone on Thursday evening. "I covered up the camera with the lens cap and the spots are there—it's burned into the sensor."

As noted in the article, CMOS sensors are significantly much more sensitive than the naked eye especially to lasers, which makes them much more vulnerable to damage.

 

What is especially notable is that the company's specific LIDAR setup uses a much more powerful laser in the LIDAR in their implementation; the specific wavelength and power of the laser used by AEye probably did play a significant role as to why the camera's sensor got damaged in the first place.

 

Therefore, there is speculation that the specific implementation of LIDAR by AEye could also cause problems for other on the road systems that use CMOS sensors, such as self-driving vehicle cameras, and traffic cameras. At least two of AEye's competitors have come out and said that their implementations do not cause damage to camera sensors.

 

I'm guessing that AEye will probably need to implement fixes or abandon their specific approach to LIDAR very soon; I doubt any regulator would allow LIDAR technology that could damage camera sensors in other self-driving cars and traffic cameras be out on the street.

[sof006]

Ouch... Hope they compensate the guy.

[mxk]

Nice....

[LukeSavenije]

F

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

if it's laser-based LiDAR, well, maybe there should have been a cautionary sign for laser exposure to warn others of camera sensor damage (or those who are photosensitive)

 

I mean it's a thing with music concerts

Could be easily avoided by both sides agree. 

 

CMOS censors are very common, especially in cheap reversing cameras. 

[porina]

Potential damage to camera sensors from lasers has been known in the photography hobby for a while, like the link above. With cameras everywhere, maybe there needs to be further regulation on the output of lasers, which generally has been more about protecting human vision up to now. 

[ThePointblank]

2 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Could be easily avoided by both sides agree. 

 

CMOS censors are very common, especially in cheap reversing cameras. 

The problem is the implications on the open road in public.

 

For one, are photographers and ordinary people on the street going to have to cover their cameras every time a self-driving car with a LIDAR rolls by? Who's going to be liable here?

 

Second, how about other cars with camera sensors in them for self-driving or for the current crop of vehicles that have stuff like forward collision warning, and adaptive cruise control? What happens if there is damage to those cameras as well from the LIDAR?

[porina]

1 minute ago, ThePointblank said:

For one, are photographers and ordinary people on the street going to have to cover their cameras every time a self-driving car with a LIDAR rolls by? Who's going to be liable here?

Depending on your country, there can be monitoring cameras everywhere too.

 

The approach taken would probably need to be like that of EMC requirements that pretty much all electronic products have to meet. There are generally two parts to it, requiring the emitter to be limited below some level, and the receiving device resistant to some level. Those levels are meant to be separated enough that in the real world things don't cause a problem to other things.

[Nicnac]

a polarizer can save your ass sometimes.

[Master Disaster]

At least you'd never get a speeding ticket from a speed camera.

[Pixel5]

10 minutes ago, Nicnac said:

a polarizer can save your ass sometimes.

only if the laser light happens to be polarized with a 90° offset to your polarizer.

 

im not really surprised this damages the sensor, you take a laser which is already strong and use the optics of the camera to focus it even more onto a tiny spot.

obviously this is going to burn it.

[GoldenLag]

on the Plus side. His pictures now allways has his Watermark on it

[RejZoR]

16 minutes ago, ThePointblank said:

The problem is the implications on the open road in public.

 

For one, are photographers and ordinary people on the street going to have to cover their cameras every time a self-driving car with a LIDAR rolls by? Who's going to be liable here?

 

Second, how about other cars with camera sensors in them for self-driving or for the current crop of vehicles that have stuff like forward collision warning, and adaptive cruise control? What happens if there is damage to those cameras as well from the LIDAR?

Most cars use radars (doppler effect) and not lasers for cruise control and collision prevention.

 

If one car did this to camera, imagine roads full of them. Also, you start to question what this would do to humans if many such cars are rolling around and we'll be constantly exposed to lasers beaming our eyes. This stuff needs testing and regulation.

[Nicnac]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

Most cars use radars (doppler effect) and not lasers for cruise control and collision prevention.

 

If one car did this to camera, imagine roads full of them. Also, you start to question what this would do to humans if many such cars are rolling around and we'll be constantly exposed to lasers beaming our eyes. This stuff needs testing and regulation.

lidars are used quite a lot but I think the main point is that they scan at a low level so there is not really gonna be another car's camera in the way. Maybe the guy wanted to get a close up shot of the car and didn;t notice he was holding his lens right into the lidar?

[D13H4RD]

That's....oddly powerful for a LIDAR unit used in an autonomous vehicle. 

[WereCatf]

3 hours ago, sof006 said:

Ouch... Hope they compensate the guy.

They did.

[straight_stewie]

3 hours ago, ThePointblank said:

forward collision warning, and adaptive cruise control?

Most of the current generation of cars don't employ cameras for those things, even though they usually also have them available for things like the "backup camera". They usually use RADAR for forward collision warnings, adaptive cruise control, and emergency braking.

[BuckGup]

4 hours ago, porina said:

Potential damage to camera sensors from lasers has been known in the photography hobby for a while, like the link above. With cameras everywhere, maybe there needs to be further regulation on the output of lasers, which generally has been more about protecting human vision up to now. 

Nah just get a ND filter for laser light

[paddy-stone]

5 hours ago, ThePointblank said:

cameras be out on the street

Don't know what you were going for, but that end of sentence doesn't make sense?

[Juanitology]

5 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

if it's laser-based LiDAR, well, maybe there should have been a cautionary sign for laser exposure to warn others of camera sensor damage (or those who are photosensitive)

 

I mean it's a thing with music concerts

 

also: don't shine lasers into your friends' cameras.

Aren't all LiDARs based on lasers???

[Blasteque]

7 hours ago, porina said:

Potential damage to camera sensors from lasers has been known in the photography hobby for a while, like the link above. With cameras everywhere, maybe there needs to be further regulation on the output of lasers, which generally has been more about protecting human vision up to now. 

How much protection does a UV filter (on the camera) provide for something like this?  If this guy is unique in his experience (certainly there were other photographs at CES?), then did he bring it on himself by not protecting his gear? 

 

(Truly Curious, my knowledge of digital photography is limited, but "purple spots" sounds like UV damage and I doubt the LIDAR is visible spectrum, so I'm assuming it's UV.)

[porina]

33 minutes ago, Blasteque said:

How much protection does a UV filter (on the camera) provide for something like this?  If this guy is unique in his experience (certainly there were other photographs at CES?), then did he bring it on himself by not protecting his gear? 

 

(Truly Curious, my knowledge of digital photography is limited, but "purple spots" sounds like UV damage and I doubt the LIDAR is visible spectrum, so I'm assuming it's UV.)

UV filters do what their name suggests, to block UV. The laser was in the IR region so a UV block filter probably would have done little to stop it. Skimming the article, it mentions a wavelength ball park 1500nm, which is longer than the others mentioned at <1000nm. In photography terms, unfiltered sensors only usefully detect light up to 1000nm or so, and photographic cameras usually have a filter gradually blocking from 600nm+ to prevent IR from affecting visible light images. I don't know how far those filters block though, as it isn't normally a concern. That's not to say longer wavelengths can't interact with it given sufficient power.

 

People can use unmodified cameras to photograph in the near IR region, roughly 700-1000nm although sensitivity is low unless the existing IR block filter is removed. Oh, if you use a suitable visible light blocking, IR passing filter, you can see in near IR directly with your eyes. Needs strong IR illumination, like direct sunlight though.

[ThePointblank]

5 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

Most of the current generation of cars don't employ cameras for those things, even though they usually also have them available for things like the "backup camera". They usually use RADAR for forward collision warnings, adaptive cruise control, and emergency braking.

My Subaru uses a pair of cameras in the front for this, and I know Tesla has a similar implementation for Autopilot.

[straight_stewie]

1 minute ago, ThePointblank said:

My Subaru uses a pair of cameras in the front for this, and I know Tesla has a similar implementation for Autopilot. 

That's why I said "most".

[Canada EH]

10 hours ago, ThePointblank said:

$1,998

That is a cheap accident.

 

• People are just getting lazier and lazier!
• Whats next, a robot to feed you so you dont have to get up or raise a hand.