But the performance comes with a caveat: AEye’s setup doesn’t scan a whole scene in high levels of detail all the time. It is limited to either scanning the whole area in lower resolution or scanning smaller areas in higher resolution.
Still, the fact that it can be reprogrammed at will makes that a useful feature. “You can trade resolution, scene revisit rate, and range at any point in time,” Dussan says. “The same sensor can adapt.” On the freeway its view could be focused primarily on the lane ahead, like a human eye, gathering fewer data points in the periphery of the image. On city streets, it could cover the entire field of view equally, but randomly shift where the points are acquired to minimize the chances of missing an obstacle.
