A Quantitative Analysis of Point Clouds from Automotive Lidars Exposed to Artificial Rain and Fog

Abstract

Light Detection And Ranging sensors (lidar) are key to autonomous driving, but their data is severely impacted by weather events (rain, fog, snow). To increase the safety and availability of self-driving vehicles, the analysis of the phenomena consequences at stake is necessary. This paper presents experiments performed in a climatic chamber with lidars of different technologies (spinning, Risley prisms, micro-motion and MEMS) that are compared in various artificial rain and fog conditions. A specific target with calibrated reflectance is used to make a first quantitative analysis. We observe different results depending on the sensors, valuable multi-echo information, and unexpected behaviors in the analysis with artificial rain are seen where higher rain rates do not necessarily mean higher degradations on lidar data.