What is Lidar?

Lidar, explained

A lidar sensor fires rapid pulses of laser light and measures how long each takes to bounce back. Because light travels at a known speed, the sensor can calculate the distance to each point, producing a dense point cloud that represents objects and terrain in three dimensions.

Lidar is widely used in autonomous vehicles and robots to detect obstacles, in surveying and archaeology to map landscapes even beneath forest cover, in forestry, and in flood modeling. Some smartphones and tablets include small lidar sensors to improve augmented reality and camera focus in low light. Compared with cameras, lidar provides precise depth information, but it can be affected by heavy rain or fog and has traditionally been expensive.