ELLAS: Enhancing LiDAR perception with Location Aware Scanning profile adaptation

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is used in robots and in automotives to obtain perception of the surrounding environment. Traditional spinning LiDARs scan the environment uniformly along all angular directions by operating at a constant rotational speed, with fixed sensing parameters throughout a rotation. Such a sensing approach, however, is sub-optimal when information about static obstacles in the environment is available at the LiDAR. In this work, we introduce ELLAS, a first-of-its-kind spinning LiDAR system that dynamically adapts its range and resolution over the field-of-view. This adaptation is achieved by optimizing the ranging parameters at the LiDAR and the instantaneous rotational speed of the spinning platform to the location of static objects in scene topology maps. With the optimized settings, ELLAS results in a longer range along directions where static obstacles are farther away and achieves a higher angular resolution around those directions.