Lidar on ArduPlane?

ArduPlane Plane 4.0
1

I’m thinking of fitting lidar to my Pixhawk plane for more accurate low level flying and potentially auto-landing. A few questions:

  • Does it work OK over water?
  • What happens with trees? For example fields - woodlands - fields etc. Would it measure the top of the trees and rise accordingly?
  • Can it be set at an angle to enable it to look ahead a bit. My plane is quite quick so would need time to react to a rise in the ground or woodland after fields.

Anything else I need to consider?

2

Your about to embark on to one of the most challenging setups of ArduPilot. I typically drink two beers before I start to work on it :slight_smile: kidding…

1 does it work over water? No idea… i think it can. I have seen some videos people testing it over water. https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-rangefinder-landingpage.html

  1. Yea it can avoid trees but the accuracy of object avoidance is directly proportional to the type of Lidar you are using and its range. If laser light doesnt bounce back, you are in trouble.

  2. Can it be set at an angle…no…at Speed x u want light to bounce back and u want to catch it.

https://diydrones.com/m/group/discussion?id=705844%3ATopic%3A2430841

3

Water and trees canopy are generally a good use case for radar. Unfortunately these units are quite expensive and complex to integrate.

You could start with lidar over a less challenging environment just to get some experience

4

Sorry to bump an old thread…
I was looking into lidar and rather than starting a new post I just thought I’d comment here.

I thought lidar is only used for landings in arduplane?
So pointless for what the op wanted it for?