Volvo Lidar  damages camera sensors - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 08:58:26 am
content: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64781017/ex90-lidar-iphone-16-pro-max-sensor/So is Volvo liable for the damage ? There is a warning in the manual, but the camera owner isn't going to have seen thatWould be such a shame if my "lidar" happened to destroy a few ANPR & speed cameras....

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 09:39:34 am
content: For me the concerning thing is, if the phone sensor can be damaged by this light exposure, then what about the eye? Especially under magnification - lets say you are using a DSLR or telescope and a LIDAR car drives past, is the safe exposure limit still met?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 09:55:43 am
content: Eh, I'd take this with a grain of salt. iPhone isn't exactly renown for its quality of cameras. Several models suffered from big purple blobs in high-brightness scenes, yet Apple seemed to not really care too much about that.I caveat the following comment with the fact that I don't know too much about the technology that is being installed in vehicles, but typically their detection range is a few hundred metres. Modern police handheld LIDAR will be able to detect targets over 2 kilometres away and still manage that with a Class 1 laser.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 10:12:03 am
content: Class 1 can have high peak power, so plausible it can damage pixels which have hugely less thermal mass than soggy eyeball parts

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 10:32:43 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on May 21, 2025, 10:12:03 amAlso, eye safe relies on the transmission of the human eye.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IEC60825_MPE_J_nm.pngHave a couple orders of magnitude at the 1550nm these cars use!

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 10:39:36 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on May 21, 2025, 09:39:34 amIf it's class 1 then it should be eye safe, even with optics. If it's class 2, then it can cause eye damage, if viewed under magnification.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 11:21:38 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on May 21, 2025, 10:12:03 amFrom quick search, it looks like automotive LIDARs use something like a 1-10W LASER and they rely on the laser continuously moving to pass certifications. For me this opens a bunch of questions.Let's say the software sees an object close, and it concentrates more scan lines to the object to determine if it is a ball, a bird or a human? What's preventing this change to arrive OTA after a genius software developer made some changes that, wouldn't pass the safety test anymore? Is the test even representative of the real world usage?Is the standard even safe in the first place? There are so many examples where humans were subjected to some radiation or force or chemical, that was previously believed to be safe, only that repeated exposure led to health problems. Are the standards based on repeated, maybe continuous exposure to LASERs coming from practically all the cars?What happens when the LIDAR kills the camera of another car? The image of it is not even being inspected, so it can be a dormant failure? When the self driving feature kills someone because it has so many dead pixels it cannot see anything anymore.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 03:33:10 pm
content: OK, this has a name. "Optically Aided Viewing"CCD and CMOS pixels dying is a well known thing in the laser show industry and laser pointer hobby. We're supposed to keep 2 meters horizontal and three meters vertical away from the audience in the US, unless you have one the rare systems that is certified and varienced for audience scanning.So, there have been instances of guys putting their girlfriend on their shoulders and her putting the phone into beam, or long camera sticks. A few cases of clubs with balconies and terminated beams being in reach with the stupidity of hanging off the balcony.. It's possible to legally terminate a beam between building stories under certain conditions, and in clubs and theatres beams can be terminated on structures and be within the rules for accessible power etc. My show rider reads no Laser Pointers permitted in the venue and No Mylar Balloons for a reason. Coors beer cans tossed into the beam cause worries too.There are Youtube videos of cameras with dying pixels when illegal camera scanning occurs.At levels that would be not much more then Class IIA or CLASS IIIA for a human eye, the camera gets a few pixels fried.What was/is worse was entertainment operators, both video and laser, putting extremely expensive video projectors with large, low F# lenses into the beam path up in the safety zone in trusses. Some very expensive video projectors (40,000$+) have had DMD pixels fried or DMD outright killed. Entertainment Insurance policies often no longer cover camera/laser/Projector interactions.In the old days with Argon and Krypton Ion Lasers, you had to be reasonably skilled in technology to do a laser show. You would have checked for things like this.Now that we have DPSS lasers and full color diodes, operator quality is often down the toilet and $hit happens. Which is why you need a variance in the US to conduct laser shows in public. Some US states now require Laser Safety Training Certs for show operators.It does not take much to fry an imaging device pixel with a decent lens in front of it. A few tens of milliwatts can become a >100 kW / Cm^2 spot across about two pixel diameters with a good lens.Thermal cameras around CO2 lasers are even worse, as the adsorption per pixel is far higher. I have a bolometer camera with some laser damage from 25 feet away off the diffuse scatter from a 50W CO2.Vidicons are even more sensitive to damage then cmos/ccd. I had a grad student kill my favorite IR vidicon camera around 2005 with a ~5 mW red HENE laser. So he carved his name into my vidicon when he realized his mistake. Next day when I came to work, he was in a suit and tie and apologized, I think the Prof cued him in that I would be LIVID. I turned the incident into a lesson, rather than yelling.After a few very expensive high end video cameras and video projectors were badly damaged, word has gotten out in the Entertainment Industry about "DON'T DO THAT."What is certified and tested as Eyesafe under a given set of conditions may not be camera safe or eye safe with Optically Aided Viewing (OAV).I run my eye safety calculations with a 50 mm dimeter lens instead of a 7.2 mm pupil for a reason. Eyeglasses were once considered a 50 mm collection aperture for regulatory purposes.There are now some LED systems approaching the level where Optically Aided Viewing is a big problem.Europe and the US already removed LEDs from Laser Safety and have placed them into their own Safety category.I still have friends in Entertainment. The older, experienced ones are often terrified by what they see, but reported entertainment industry eye injury rates are so low, as to be statistically unknown. I disagree with that finding, but the industry association has seriously collected the statistics to enable changes in the rules.There have been serious incidents in Europe with high power pulsed lab lasers being repurposed for shows by idiots.Good operators at well planned shows have kill switches in the software, key switches in the hardware, and a separate E-Stop by law. On high power systems there is a requirement for gravity or spring returned fail safe shutters. Spotters / Security / beam masking shields, cameras in the projector itself, are employed often, for stopping stupidity. As are diverging lenses in the scan field for close in scanning.Trival fact: The system key cannot be removed in the on position.Steve

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 04:29:21 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on May 21, 2025, 11:21:38 amVery short pulse widths thoughe.g.https://www.mouser.co.uk/pdfDocs/SPLS1L90A_3A01_EN.pdf120Wpeak, 1-100nS pulse length

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 07:10:04 pm
content: Average Power is roughly PRF X Peak Power * REP RATE = So for Mike's listed diode, and worse case conditions, If you maxed out the laser diode, 120 watts peak @ 100 nS and say 1 Khz = 120 mW. Have no idea what the irradiance is as I have no way to know what the lens train is. I have no idea what Volvo uses for a repetition rate, either. I doubt they need to run at such a high average power. Not all Lidar is time of flight either, FMCW and other modes are used.You'd be stunned at what some of the laser based video game sensors emit in your living room. However optics train, pulse width, duty cycle , and other means of spreading the energy bring that down to a Class I Accessible Emission Level.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 08:21:51 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on May 21, 2025, 04:29:21 pmTrue, and it shouldn't scan the same point twice.Yet we see for poisons or current, that there is a large variety of dosages that can kill a person. Same is applicable to ionizing radiation, that we have a large number of tests available (unfortunately). Some cells die much faster than others.I don't think there is enough information on the long term effects available to surely say that something like this is safe. We have 7 million cells, they don't regenerate.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2025, 09:18:12 pm
content: Its 1550nm, so maybe the 900nm systems do not have this problem.Quote

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2025, 02:53:45 pm
content: So 1550nm is "eye safe" but camera destroying, ironic.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2025, 04:34:56 pm
content: Cornea not transparent to 1550... Its a bunch of polymer molecules and water.Camera Lens is, about 50% for most types of thin glass.Steve

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2025, 05:31:10 pm
content: 1550nm should be fairly easy to filter.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2025, 08:42:29 pm
content: Interesting link to Vis / Near IR optical properties tables of Silicon:https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/materials/optical-properties-of-siliconTable for Mid to Far IR:https://www.tydexoptics.com/materials1/for_transmission_optics/silicon/Steve

author: DaneLaw
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 11:09:06 am
content: As also highlighted above, the higher-wavelength 1550 nm SWIR is considered safer for the eyes, as it is absorbed by the cornea and does not reach the retina, unlike shorter NIR wavelengths such as 905 nm, which can penetrate deeper into the eye and potentially damage the retina.Energy-wise, 905 nm photons carry more energy than 1550 nm photons, roughly close to double, but since 1550 nm does not reach the retina' laser-systems (in general) that are using this SWIR wavelength can emit significantly higher optical power, even like 50 times more, while still remaining within class1 eye-safe laser limits.Also, why I was quite unsure about getting one of these "Xiaomi Robot Vacums" back in 2016, which are using near infrared 905 nm LDS/TOF system, as that floor-level, they are scattering their beam at- tends to be our cat "Victor's" main turf (Maine Coon) and his eyes is way more sensitive than human eyes, - close to an order of magnitude more sensitive.Tried back then to check how contained that IR laser scattering is with an IR-sensitive camera (vid below) as he would obviously be fascinated by that floor-vacumrobot, chase it around & study it, and was unsure if those 905 nm laser-beams could hurt his eyes, even though we are dealing with a class 1 laser product.The LDS / LiDAR scanner Xiaomi used back then was around 0.8 to 1.5 optical wattage, but pulsed - so in practice, way lessBut even at a distance, the beam-profile was still quite sharp but it needs to be for the TOF system to work reliable.A video testing how receptive standard car-mounted cameras, like those commonly found in modern vehicles, not least in Tesla cars and many others.- are to Volvo’s 1550 nm LIDAR system.All these Time-Of-Flight-based systems (TOF) will get more and more common.Context starts at +15 min.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 01:46:13 pm
content: Quote from: LaserSteve on May 22, 2025, 04:34:56 pmThere's a local peak in transmittance near 1550nm for the cornea, it's slightly transparent.A camera filter would either need to be a dichroic mirror or work the same as the eye, with a gel filter which absorbs the energy across a volume. The gel filter could work as a retrofit.