Robust 360° environment observation using laserscanners
M Dittmer, Maren Brumm, Willhoeft, Kay Ch. Fuerstenberg · 2002
Introduction Laserscanners are the 2d-counterparts to the long-used fixed-beam laser range finders. They contain a measurement unit which uses a laser light pulse for optical time-of-flight distance measurement. The emitted laser beam is deflected by a rotating prism in the scanner head to measure a 2d range profile around the sensor. This technology is already successfully used in industrial applications (automatic navigation of unmanned vehicles, control of restricted areas around machines, etc.). For automotive applications, this technology is very interesting because of the high resolution and accuracy. IBEO Laserscanners have been successfully used in several automotive research projects in the past [1, 2]. Based on the experience of this projects, useful enhancements for the Laserscanner usage in automotive projects were developed: On a vehicle, the horizontal scan area of a Laserscanner is usually limited to a 270 section because the vehicle itself will block the rest of th