Energy Impact and Aerodynamic Analysis of LiDARs in Autonomous Electric Cars

Autonomous driving has been a subject of study for car manufacturers in recent years, with major improvements being made at a fast pace. One of the main concerns of self-driven cars interacting with humans in the streets is safety. How safely a car can navigate has been proven to greatly improve using sensor fusion, which allows it to approach different angles and assist the system to better understand the environment. The trend in this specific industry is shifting towards electric vehicles. Due to the nature of batteries, the current technological advancements and practicality, it is important to optimize the systems and analyze power consumption, as to not decrease the car’s range significantly. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the energy impact on the system when adding LiDAR sensors to an electric car. The energy demand will be determined by the electrical requirements of the sensors, together with the aerodynamics changes in the different configurations, and will be measured in Watts. After designing, building, and testing three different configurations, and comparing them to the control sample, a proposed model will be presented. The proposed model will take into consideration not only the power demand on the system, but the practicality, obtained by the analysis of the Field of View (FOV) it can offer.