Evaluation of the quality of LiDAR data in the varying ambient light

Abstract

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is a widely used sensor for Intelligent transportation systems (ITS). It precisely determines the depth of the objects present around a vehicle. In this paper, the effect of light on the quality of acquired LiDAR data has been presented. The data was captured at different times in a day with varied light conditions. In the early morning and evening, there is partial light. At the night there is no light whereas in the mid-day there is perfect light condition. The data was acquired in the above four timings. On the acquired point cloud data, segmentation of an object, a person in the experiment, was performed. The number of object points and the point density have been observed to examine if light affects the quality of LiDAR data. The results, of the experiments, performed, suggest that the variation of light has little or no effect on the quality of LiDAR data.