Comparison of the VLP-16 LiDAR system with an absolute interferometer

Many new technologies for ADAS are emerging in recent years. In this scenario, LiDARs are becoming one of the pillars for environmental sensing needed in ADAS.Driven by the automotive industry, nowadays many new manufacturers are continuously putting new LiDAR systems on the market, thus increasing LiDARs availability and concomitantly reducing prices. As a result, LiDARs are today finding many new applications in fields such as agriculture and industrial automation.In this paper, we describe and discuss a measurement procedure for the analysis of the performances of LiDARs and, we report the results obtained from the characterization of one the most widespread LiDAR systems -namely VLP 16 by Velodyne. In particular, we compare the estimates provided by the LiDAR with the estimates provided by an absolute interferometer. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first published data obtained comparing a LiDAR and an absolute interferometer.The proposed tests investigated both warm-up and stability and, errors in the measured coordinates.The obtained results indicate a warm-up times of about 42 min and errors of few millimeters over a measuring interval of about (2, 21) m.