Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology company Insight LiDAR (www.insightlidar.com) today announced that its product, Insight 1600, is the first LiDAR with the combined high resolution and velocity detection to enable pedestrian gesture recognition. The new capability — demonstrated here — can be used by AV perception teams to quickly and accurately predict the actions of pedestrians.
Vice President of Business Development Greg Smolka explains, “When humans drive, we’re constantly scanning the environment around us. We’re watching for cars moving into our lane and looking at nearby pedestrians to see what they might do. For example, if a pedestrian looks both ways at an intersection, drivers understand that that person intends to cross the street.”
According to Insight LiDAR Vice President Chris Wood, detecting these subtle pedestrian movements that convey intent is an important safety capability that has eluded AV developers until now.
“When we initially designed Insight 1600, we expected its ultra-high resolution and instantaneous low velocity detection with every pixel to be critical in making vehicle decisions, especially regarding other vehicle movement,” Wood said. “However, we’ve been surprised by all the ways perception teams are using this critical information. From separating close objects and more accurately identifying distant ones to now predicting pedestrian movement, we’re seeing how important this data is to safe AV operation.” Wood reports that Insight LiDAR’s FMCW sensors are believed to have the lowest minimum detectable velocity on the market.
