Introducing the LW20 LiDAR - don't crash!

  • Half the size of a matchbox - small enough for any drone
  • Weighs less than 20g - doesn’t compromise your payload and flight time
  • IP67 enclosure - doesn’t die when it gets wet
  • Aluminum housing - no interference with your GPS
  • As an AGL altimeter - range >80m on most natural surfaces at 84 readings per second
  • As part of a scanning system - range >50m at 678 readings per second
  • First and last signals are measured - keeps you above the trees or measuring down to the ground

Range test to some trees in the bright African sunshine with the wind blowing - simulating flying high on a sunny day

You can see the first and last signals being measured.


Here’s an LW20 hooked up to a USB converter cable using the 3.3V serial interface:


The LW20 will be available directly from our Web store here: lightware.co.za or from our super distributers around the world.



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Cool, is out the market now?

@Cala - The official launch is the end of January 2017 and pre-orders will soon be available on our web store. :hourglass_flowing_sand:

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Thank’s Laser-developer

Can’t wait to see one flying above your fields :slight_smile:

Do you have a web site?
Specifications?
Price?
Dealers or direct?

Great! Range? Interface? Will it work over water?

Here their page. http://www.lightware.co.za/shop/en/4-drone-altimeters
Nice quality products and support :slight_smile:

I’m really looking forward to this. The smaller we can get the sensors, the smaller we can make the drones while still maintaining the same features… and small is safer and you can carry more of them!

@mboland - Keep an eye on our web store for further information. I’ll keep updating the specs here and the price is similar to our other products.

@fnoop - the range depends on the speed and environmental conditions. On a white wall or green tree it can reach 100m in bright sunlight. At high speed on a scanner the range will be reduced. More information on the interfaces to follow. Water tests still need to be done.

Wonderful! I can’t find any pricing? It would be great to fit smaller fixed wings with lidar to improve auto landing.

New web store, better information and the LW20 will all be revealed in Jan 2017 :slight_smile:

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sooon…how much more…take my money…will u sell SF20 too?

Sooon!

We will be offering both the closed LW20 and the open frame SF20. Below is the LW20 attached to a servo to make a low cost scanning LiDAR. The servo driver is built into the LW20 so no additional electronics are needed. Any digital servo can be used - the specs are fed into the LW20 so that it knows what resolution and scanning angles to expect for a given PWM pulse width. Servo gear backlash, scanning lag and other limitations of low cost servos are corrected internally to give the best angular accuracy. Data can be streamed live and alarms zones can be set:

Here’s a sample scan done outdoors at low speed showing the first and last signals detected. The area mapped includes buildings, trees, long grass, posts and cars. It is mainly the long grass and trees that cause the big separation between the first and last signals since the LW20 was aiming at a shallow angle to the ground. The angular resolution is set to 0.3 deg and the range resolution is set to 1cm:

Here’s a short video of an SF20 scanning.

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Love the servo driver.

Can’t wait to get my hands on this

Can servo driver inside point laser in direction of flight?
there is cheap and there is expensive…what is the secret of Dynamixel actuators?

http://learn.trossenrobotics.com/projects/156-lidar-light-mapping-with-dynamixel-servos.html

@Emin_Bu - Yes, the servo can be controlled to point the laser in the direction of flight but you have to tell the LW20 which way to aim using data from the flight controller. This is similar to steerable headlights that you get on many cars these days.

There are cheap servos and expensive servos, with Dynamixel falling squarely into the second category. While the specifications of the Dynamixel servos look very good, the real question is, how well will the servo will perform as a component in a LiDAR? Both the cheap and expensive servos have limitations and I will be presenting a lot more information about this in the future.

The LW20 with an inexpensive servo will make a high performance, light weight sensor for obstacle detection and collision avoidance. How far we can push the technology in the future remains to be seen ;).

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Have you got any details on the ports and power. For example what supply voltage and i2C pullup voltage. What UART signal voltage. What supply current?

@skyscraper - at this moment:

Serial port - 3.3V and 5V tolerant
I2C - 3.3V
Power supply - 5V @ 100mA nominal (excluding servo)