Speaking of lidar, what do you think of?
Is it the "eye of autonomous driving"? Is it an unmanned aerial vehicle system for geographic surveying and mapping? Or is it a real three-dimensional, digital twin?
Although the popularity of lidar has continued to increase in recent years, the general public's understanding of it is almost limited to the scope of autonomous driving or surveying and mapping. In fact, the application range of lidar is much more than that, such as for fire rescue.
It's a demon more terrifying than flames
When a fire occurs, thick smoke is often more terrifying than flames. The spread of smoke is more than five times faster than the spread of fire. In the fire field, the direction of the flow of smoke is also the path of flame spread, and the thick smoke with extremely high temperature can make combustibles "ignite" within two minutes.
The dense smoke from the California fire in 2020 covered almost half of the eastern Pacific
Even if the fire is blocked by non-combustible materials and refractory materials, the hazards of dense smoke cannot be underestimated. According to relevant statistics, most of the victims in the fire were choked to death by heavy smoke. In some large-scale fires, many of the victims who were "burned to death" were actually severely suffocated and then encountered the flames. The devastation.
For example, according to news reports, in a fire in Changsha in 2019, although the location of the fire was on the 5th floor, unfortunately, the two residents living on the 22nd floor were killed by suffocation caused by dense smoke. In a world invisible to the news, deaths due to heavy smoke in the fire have been happening all the time.
It needs to be emphasized that heavy smoke is also a major obstacle in rescue work. In the fire scene, the environmental hazards are complicated. Under the dense smoke, human eyes cannot see the specific conditions of the surrounding environment. It is difficult for firefighters to find some obstacles, explosives and other dangerous goods in time when going deep into the fire scene, which not only reduces The probability and efficiency of the search and rescue of the trapped may also put firefighters in a dangerous situation.
In order to fight the heavy smoke, the "demon" that has claimed countless lives, people are always exploring how to enable search and rescue personnel to obtain long-distance and clear "vision" in a smog environment where naked eyesight is almost invalid.
High frequency laser pierce the fog
Thanks to the precise perception ability and the strong anti-environmental interference properties of high-frequency lasers, the use of lidar for fire rescue is gradually becoming a reality. This is a way of thinking that has strong feasibility and outstanding expected effects among many attempts. .
Not long ago, the old domestic lidar manufacturer Surestar conducted related tests on the performance of lidar scanning and detection when the human eye could not distinguish obstacles in heavy smoke.
Surestar selected R-Fans-16M, a self-developed high-performance mechanical lidar, to test the lidar scanning effect for three scenes of smokeless, white smoke and black smoke.
The actual measurement site is a closed room with an area of about 4m². There are two iron buckets, a ladder, large obstacles, and small obstacles such as bricks to observe the perception effect of R-Fans-16M on obstacles of different sizes.
R-Fans-16M point cloud (smoke-free environment)
In the smoke-free test scene, R-Fans-16M can clearly distinguish and image obstacles such as indoor barrels and ladders in the form of point clouds.
Glasses-free view (white smoke environment)
R-Fans-16M point cloud (white smoke environment)
In the white smoke test scene, the smoke concentration has reached the level that people cannot distinguish obstacles. R-Fans-16M can still distinguish large and medium-sized obstacles such as iron barrels and ladders, and small obstacles such as bricks. , It also realizes the precise capture of position points.
In the real fire environment with heavy smoke, R-Fans-16M can undoubtedly effectively improve the search and rescue personnel's grasp of the scene situation and help them avoid obstacles hidden in the smoke.
Glasses-free view (smoky environment)
R-Fans-16M point cloud (black smoky environment)
In the black smoke test scene, even if the change in the color of the smoke further reduces the visibility of the test scene, the point cloud generated by R-Fans-16M can still distinguish large obstacles and ensure the location of small obstacles.
Comprehensive ability to cover fire fighting
In addition to the “torch eye” that can pierce thick smoke, R-Fans-16M also has many strengths that enable it to better adapt to the scene of fire fighting and smoothly give full play to the advantages of lidar products in perception.
Relying on Surestar's rich experience and technical accumulation of more than ten years of deep research and development of lidar, the full range of R-Fans products, including R-Fans-16M, have achieved a weight of less than 800g and a volume that is almost the same as the two mobile hard disks.
The compact body makes R-Fans-16M, even with additional modules such as a vehicle/equipment or a camera, a flashlight, etc., it can also meet the requirements of a single person for easy carrying and use.
The working power consumption of the whole series of R-Fans products is less than 8w, and only a small power supply module can support long-term continuous work. At the same time, R-Fans-16M has an industrial protection level of IP67, no matter whether it is diffuse dust or fire-fighting water, it will not affect its normal operation. Strong environmental anti-interference ability and very low power consumption make R-Fans-16M more suitable for the needs of real fire environment.
In addition, R-Fans series products also provide SDK software development interface, users can dock with the software systems of different vehicle platforms according to their specific needs.
As a Surestar self-developed lidar product, R-Fans-16M has a long range of 200m and a data accuracy of less than 2cm. Through the 360° scanning of mechanical components, it is possible to quickly obtain large-area surrounding environment information within the ranging radius, and to take into account both the pitch angle and the angular resolution, so that the three-dimensional detection imaging results are not only accurate but also comprehensive.
Lidar has become a "popular fried chicken" in the field of autonomous driving and surveying, and many people believe that the use of lidar is limited to navigation and obstacle avoidance and surveying and mapping.
But in fact, lidar has a wide range of uses. As the industry chain matures, lidar is constantly expanding its industrial integration margin based on its superb perception ability, and is widely used in more and more scenarios and fields.（www.isurestar.net）