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Man Says CES Lidar's Laser Was So Powerful It Wrecked His Camera (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A man attending this week's CES show in Las Vegas says that a lidar sensor from startup AEye has permanently damaged the sensor on his $1,998 Sony camera. Earlier this week, roboticist and entrepreneur Jit Ray Chowdhury snapped photos of a car at CES with AEye's lidar units on top. He discovered that every subsequent picture he took was marred by two bright purple spots, with horizontal and vertical lines emanating from them. "I noticed that all my pictures were having that spot," he told Ars by phone on Thursday evening. "I covered up the camera with the lens cap and the spots are there -- it's burned into the sensor." In an email to Ars Technica, AEye CEO Luis Dussan confirmed that AEye's lidars can cause damage to camera sensors -- though he stressed that they pose no danger to human eyes. "Cameras are up to 1000x more sensitive to lasers than eyeballs," Dussan wrote. "Occasionally, this can cause thermal damage to a camera's focal plane array." Chowdhury says that AEye has offered to buy him a new camera. The potential issue is that self-driving cars also rely on conventional cameras. "So if those lidars are not camera-safe, it won't just create a headache for people snapping pictures with handheld camera," reports Ars. "Lidar sensors could also damage the cameras on other self-driving cars."
"It's worth noting that companies like Alphabet's Waymo and GM's Cruise have been testing dozens of vehicles with lidar on public streets for more than a year," adds Ars. "People have taken many pictures of these cars, and as far as we know none of them have suffered camera damage. So most lidars being tested in public today do not seem to pose a significant risk to cameras."
"It's worth noting that companies like Alphabet's Waymo and GM's Cruise have been testing dozens of vehicles with lidar on public streets for more than a year," adds Ars. "People have taken many pictures of these cars, and as far as we know none of them have suffered camera damage. So most lidars being tested in public today do not seem to pose a significant risk to cameras."
Eyes don't withstand being pointed at the sun for very long. Neither do most cameras.
Stop downplaying the dangers of laser technology. Any coherent radiation hitting they eye should be considered very dangerous. Even the cheap laser pointers have a yellow caution sticker on them!
Here is a story about lasers blinding concert goers in Russia.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Maximum permitted exposure (MPE) in 1500-1800 nm band is the same for the eye and the skin. For continuous-wave light it is 0.1 W/cm2, for pulsed light it is 1 J/cm2. Reference: ANSI Z136.1, see Tables 5a and 7.
In other words, if the 1550 nm laser beam is not burning your skin, it is safe for your eye.
This is remarkably untrue at other wavelengths, where light is dramatically more dangerous to the eye than it is to the skin.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
The camera in question is a Sony A7rII, which is a mirrorless camera. Such cameras constantly expose the sensor to light in the scene [while not taking photos], which is necessary to provide the video-like image stream used for the electronic viewfinder and LCD display.