Simultaneous acquisition of color and distance information by LiDAR with RGB visible laser diodes

We propose colors light detection and ranging (LiDAR) using visible laser diodes (LD) of red, green, and blue (RGB) colors to identify colors as well as obtain position information of surrounding objects. To verify the principle, we performed round-trip time-of-flight (TOF) measurements by irradiating a target of different colors with pulsed light from a LD of RGB colors. It is clarified that accurate distance measurements of up to 12 m can be realized in any RGB LD, and the received signal in each LD has different intensity characteristics depending on the target color. From a judgment table created from reception intensity characteristics for three types of LD and seven types of color target, the color of each target is successfully identified.