Dynamically steered laser range finder

Abstract

LIDAR measurements can be sparse in comparison to camera measurements. Hence, dynamically steering a LIDAR to regions of a field of view with more information (e.g. the detailed boundaries of objects) is beneficial. In one embodiment, a LIDAR system performs a non-uniform laser scan of a field of view based on sensor data. Data from an on-going or previous scan can be used to define dense scan regions within the field of view. The shape of dense scan regions can be iteratively improved (e.g. narrowed) based on localization of time-of-flight boundaries. Dense scan regions can be expressed in term of a set of laser steering parameters operable to dynamically steer a LIDAR. Within embodiments complex-shaped dense scan patterns can be selected or adapted based on an object classification (e.g. person or vehicle) or LIDAR location (e.g. an urban environment).