Smart Cities – Is LiDAR Making Them Smarter?
Networked devices are all around us. Some of them enable autonomy of things or AoT™. Increasingly, these devices are also providing a path for creating smarter and safer cities – where people, vehicles (horse carriages, cars, bicycles, scooters, pets, robots) and infrastructure interact in highly dynamic situations to achieve multiple objectives – smooth traffic flow, infrastructure management, pedestrian safety, security, emergency management and crime prevention. Cameras and video analytics are the typical tools of choice. Road sensors of various types are also used to sense traffic flow and enable dynamic traffic signal management. Increasingly, LiDAR is being tested as a beneficial addition – primarily to improve the fidelity of the information, but also to add a new sensing modality that provides 3D information and superior situational awareness.