Enhancing the functionalities of three-dimensional imaging LiDAR: A review

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology has garnered broad interest and experienced rapid growth as an essential approach to three-dimensional (3D) perception for unmanned systems, which exhibit significant potential in many flourishing fields. Motivated by the emerging need for more complex and diverse applications, LiDAR has been increasingly developed with enhanced functionalities. In this paper, we present a systematic review of the advances in 3D imaging LiDAR and its performance enhancement methods. The basic LiDAR architecture is demonstrated with fundamental principles in distance measurement and beam scanning. The research directions and progress in enhancing the 3D imaging performance of LiDAR are further discussed in terms of detection range, field of view and resolution, imaging speed, accuracy and stability, as well as information fusion. The representative 3D imaging LiDAR schemes are compared through quantitative evaluation and qualitative discussion about their strengths and limitations. Finally, we summarize the development trends of 3D imaging LiDAR towards system design integration, imaging mode expansion and multi-sensor fusion. It is intended to offer valuable insights for the exploration and application of 3D imaging LiDAR in future.