What is LiDAR? (& Why is It on Apple Devices All of a Sudden)

if you've seen some of Apple's new commercials around the iPad pro you've undoubtedly seen them touting their new lidar sensor on it and maybe wondered just for a second what is lidar well in this decoder episode my explainer series here in the channel let's talk about this neat little measurement tool so firstly lidar isn't new and it's been around for a while it's mainly used by scientists usually in the form of lidar drones to examine the surface of the earth and it's used in conjunction with other sensors on various autonomous cars to help them get a better sense of objects around them now line R stands for light detection and ranging and is similar to radar just using light instead of radio waves radar stands for radio detection and ranging by the way sohow line R works is that it fires out rapid pulses of infrared laser light in quick succession lasers being just super focused wavelengths of light by the way now that light then bounces off objects in front of it and returns to the lidar sensor the time it takes for the light to make that round-trip is then calculated and used to create a 3d model of the object that can be used for measuring distance to the object height and shape of the object etc now radar on the other hand does the same thing but with radio waves as I mentioned so it sends out radio waves that then bounce off of objects and then the time it takes for them to return is measured to discern the distance and position of the objects etc now one of the major differences between lidar and radar is that lidar is a lot more accurate and can create more defined 3d models whereas radar on the other hand sort of sees objects in more of block-like shapes because of that fact lidar can be used to more easily determine things like say the way a person is facing a hand from a face the number of branches or leaves on tree etc where radar would just have a much harder time doing so on the flip side though radar has a much further range than lidar and as much cheaper to use it also isn't as affected by rain fog snow etc like lidar can be since those things can interfere with light generally speaking either of these systems is used in conjunction with GPS ultrasonic sensors cameras when we're talking about an autonomous car and light our drones and to sort of round out the system and now why are we starting to see any consumer electronics all of a sudden well time of flight or tof systems have been making their way onto phones to help with AR as well as things like portrait mode focusing etc for a while now and technically time of flight is the method used to measure the time of flight of the light to and from of the object in this case to determine the distance etc and lidar is the sensor that's being used to do that so if you're familiar with Samsung Oppo Motorola all of the other Android manufacturers that you know have had three time of flight sensors on their devices for a while now you're probably wondering what is the difference then between Apple's lidar one and dares now it's safe to say that androids time-of-flight camera system and Apple's time-of-flight lidar sensor are both technically using infrared light and bouncing off of things in front of them to determine distance and shape of objects etc the difference between the two though is that Apple is using multiple points for reference whereas the Android time flight system is essentially just using a blanket of infrared light for all of its measurements and it took me a little bit but I think I can actually show you what I'm talking about now the infrared light being used by both of these systems is technically invisible to the naked eye I can't see it you can't see it and that means my camera can't really see it but I happen to have here a nest cam which has a night vision mode which does see infrared light so here is the iPad 20/20 with its AR mode turned on and you can clearly see all of the different infrared points and here is the galaxy s 20 ultra with its AR mode turned on and you can see this what almost looks like a flashlight of infrared light regardless of the method the software has to take all of the reflections and determine which of them are indirect and off angle ones and remove those from the calculations and then crunch the numbers and the reflections it cares about this whole process is simply harder to do with a single flash versus the multiple points the downside to line are in this application however is the same as with most new technologies it's more expensive of course and the fact that the only real use cases right now for it are 3d effects like portrait mode and the like and then they are applications which of course haven't quite taken off in the general public's eye at least not your average consumers not sitting around using AR all day so there's just not a lot of real reasons to use it at the moment but as these new technologies become more prevalent in all of our devices whether we need them there or not maybe we'll start to see new use cases that we'll be able to benefit from it personally I've seen some people put together some really interesting autofocus systems for cameras like the one I'm using here using lidar and time-of-flight and I would love to see more accurate autofocus come out of that there you go quick little explanation of what lidar is and mites all of a sudden on Apple devices I will say though that using the iPad pro and Apple's own measure app it is more accurate than it feels like it is on say like an iPhone so there is something to that but again how often do I use any of those ar applications not really ever so there you go either way though there you go now you know what it is let me know in the comments below what you guys think of lidar of it being included on devices whether you want it or not and how else you feel about this video in the comments below I always appreciate hearing from guys and also let me know other decoder episodes you'd like to see other topics you'd like to see me do code on here also if you like this video please thumbs up and share it shkreli appreciate it check out the rest of channel feel like you see there please subscribe and ding the bell next door subscribe so you get notified when I do new videos also there's a link below to my email newsletter it goes out once a week it has all the videos I do here on YouTube plus tips and tricks and other fun things that I do on the website they don't necessarily make it here the video as always though regardless thanks for watching you

Channel: TheUnlockr

Views: 680,515

Rating: 4.9187536 out of 5

Keywords: lidar, what is lidar, lidar sensor, lidar ipad, lidar ipad pro, what is lidar scanner, what is lidar ipad, ipad lidar, ipad lidar scanner, ipad pro lidar, lidar camera, lidar mapping, lidar scanner ipad, lidar vs radar, lidar vs tof, tof, time of flight, lidar vs time of flight, apple lidar, apple lidar sensor, apple lidar scanner, apple lidar explained, lidar explained, lidar sensor explained, how lidar works, iphone lidar, iphone 12 lidar, iphone 12, ipad pro 2020

Id: FOxxqVzDaaA

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020