Scale-adaptive three-dimensional imaging using Risley-prism-based coherent lidar

Abstract

We present a scale-adaptive three-dimensional (3D) imaging architecture for coherent light detection and ranging (lidar) that incorporates Risley-prism-based beam scanning. An inverse design paradigm from beam steering to prism rotation is developed for demand-oriented beam scan pattern generation and prism motion law formulation, which allows the lidar to perform 3D imaging with adaptive scale and configurable resolution. By combining flexible beam manipulation with simultaneous distance and velocity measurement, the proposed architecture can achieve both large-scale scene reconstruction for situational awareness and small-scale object identification against long range. The experiment results demonstrate that our architecture enables the lidar to recover a 3D scene in a ±30° field of view and also focus on distant objects at over 500 m with spatial resolution up to 1.1 cm.