A high-definition LIDAR system based on two-mirror deflection scanners

This paper addresses the problem of adopting a state-of-art laser marking system with a two-mirror deflection scanner to make a high-definition light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system. To this end, a galvanometer scanner is modeled with parameterization and then the well-known raster scanning strategy is analyzed considering the physical scanning movement and the minimum spanning tree. As a result of this analysis, the relationship between the field of view (FOV) of the captured image and the scanning speed is clearly described. Furthermore, sufficient conditions are derived for an acquired image to fully cover the FOV and also for captured objects to be well aligned for a target frame rate. Finally, a prototype LIDAR system is developed to verify the proposed concepts and to prove that it successfully generates images at various resolutions depending on the target frame rates. Experimental results show that the scanner achieves the frame rates of 17.6, 9.0, and 4.6 frames per second fps for image sizes of 240 × 16, 240 × 32, and 240 × 64 resolutions, respectively.