The Ouster company presented the new Rev8 generation of LiDAR sensors, which for the first time enables color LiDAR, i.e. direct recognition of colors within the 3D sensor system itself.
Until now, LiDAR systems used by autonomous cars, robots and drones have mostly seen the world as a set of monochrome 3D shapes with no real colors. Color display required an additional camera system and complicated software data fusion.
The new Rev8 system tries to eliminate exactly that problem by providing each element of the 3D map with color information immediately without additional processing and combining data from multiple sources.
Kolor LiDAR is changing autonomous systems
Ouster says their new L4 chip uses Fujifilm’s color processing technology directly at the hardware level. The system can detect as many as 20 trillion photons per second and operates with picosecond precision.
The strongest model from the Rev8 series is the Ouster OS1 Max with 256 channels and a range of up to 200 meters with very weak surface reflection, or even up to 500 meters in ideal conditions.
The sensor simultaneously covers 360 degrees horizontally and 45 degrees vertically, while the company claims that the new generation practically doubles the resolution and range of the previous Rev7 system.
What is particularly interesting is that the new LiDAR can distinguish colors and details in almost complete darkness, but also under extremely strong sunlight. It is precisely this that allows the systems to, for example, recognize the color of the stop lights of the car in front or analyze objects in detail in real time without the help of additional cameras.
Ouster believes that color LiDAR will significantly facilitate the training of AI models for autonomous systems because there will no longer be a need for complicated data fusion from different sensors. Among the first companies to use the new technology are Google, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, Skydio and PlusAI.