Patent attributes
In one embodiment a LIDAR can comprise two similar photodetector arrays and a malfunction indicator circuit operable to generate a malfunction signal when a measure of difference between range data from similar directions reported by each of the photodetectors exceeds a threshold value. A challenge associated with LIDARs is malfunction detection and failsafe operation in the event of a malfunction. Embodiments provide for two photodetectors in a shared remote ranging subassembly to address the challenges of malfunction detection. The two photodetector arrays can each receive light reflections from overlapping angular ranges in one or more FOVs (e.g. transferred using CFOBs) and thereby function to provide redundancy and confirmation of reflection distances. Within embodiments a reflection splitter can serve to uniformly distribute laser reflections from a common field of view among two photodetectors, thereby providing each with a half-resolution image for range comparison.
