FlightSense - 3D dToF all-in-one LiDAR module - Non-Perpendicular angle of incidence

[Tony-W]

Angle of incidence webinar question follow up…

Original question - What angle of incidence performance information is available for these devices? 

More detail - For multizone FlightSense sensors, looking into the corner of two walls for example or at a concave/convex  surface, each zone is not perpendicular to the sensor.  At high angles of incidence I assume the distance result from that zone will the average across the area of the zone.  Is that correct?  I'm assuming that at very high angles the histogram function might start to come into play, perhaps not, but if so what angle would the histogram function start to think there were multiple targets?  Or does the histogram functionality recognize that the distribution is kind of linear so the surface it's viewing must be at some angle?  If it does recognize that it's at an angle does it use this information for the average distance to the surface and or to calculate the estimated centroid of the surface?  Is there any technical information available about this, it's not covered in the FOV application note AN5894?

[John E KVAM]

If you really want to know what is going on 'under the covers', download the VL53L8CH evaluation kit software. It will run on the same L8 Eval kit hardware. 

then point the sensor into your corner and turn on logging. 

You will get the histogram data dumped into a rather large spreadsheet. 

Do check the manual and settings - by default 2 bins are merged into one to compress the data. You don't want that. 

it will show that as your angle gets steeper, the histogram 'lump' elongates. At some point the status will tell you there is something odd about the data. YOu will get a 'merged target' warning. 

If two targets were 60cm apart in depth, you would see two targets. closer than that, you get one target, and a 'merged' warning. 

- john

[Tony-W]

Thank you John that is what I was looking for.