Interesting article in EE Timers Europe. http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/news/light-centimetre-level-slam-drones/
Working deeply with CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) in 2012, French startup Terabee has taken IR-based time-of-flight (ToF) to centimetre-level, boasting update frequencies up to 1kHz for fast moving robots and drones.
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Yes, I'm waiting for a phone with burst illumination laser radar. It's come down in price from $25Mil to only £100k. At that rate should be ready for mobile phones in 5 years? :-) We will all be ready for it when avail :-) On a serious note, looking forward to good depth mapping (640 x 480) in normal daylight up to 50 meters (well whilst dreaming, why not 300 meters :-)). Not hear yet but there are people trying :-)
I am pretty sure each sensor device is a single point (range finder) type, and primarily meant to be used for object avoidance. I also think their goal is to make it affordable enough that you can use multiple devices instead of complicating the setup with the mechanics needed to make a single device line scanning solution. Multiple devices also means you get much higher refresh rates, which can be essential for moving fast in a limited space.
Exciting stuff. One thing that's not exactly clear, are the sensors returning single point distances or multiple point, i.e. the start of a depth map? I see that it is their intention to do so in the future, just wondering about today.
Here is a link to Chris's original Terabee Blog post and discussion which gives a few more specific details, many of which have been removed from the Terabee site.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/inexpensive-time-of-flight-sens...
Impressive performance with LEDs!
Will probably use a few now, waiting for phased array lasers.