by chrlsrchrdsn - 12/10/2010 - 11:36pm



Either ToF or Triangulation are LIDAR. The concept is to shoot a specific beam of light from a laser (though technically you don't have use a laser, you could use something like a pinhole focused LED, but the range would be very short) then use the return from that specific beam to generate the results. Time of Flight is most commonly used until now because high speed CMOS sensors were not available in the 1990s. However precise clocks and a sensor that could tell it got hit fast enough was. After a bit, instead of using a clock you could actually read the charge level of the recharging laser pulse capacitor at the time the sensor said it was hit and give a distance reading since moving electrons and light aren't too far off in speed.


BUT now CMOS sensor of sufficient speed and with global shutter make triangulation possible. (Global shutter is a way to "gate" the picture by recording all pixels simultaneously. No having to read in the lines to get the results that could be changing as you read.) Triangulation is less sensitive to beam scatter than ToF, and triangulation can actually be more accurate for sub-mm measurement.


Okay, the simple answer, triangulation is a recognized medthod for LIght Detection And Ranging.

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