Optical LiDAR Communication: Repurposing Existing LiDAR Sensors for Infrastructure-To-Vehicle Communication
Kazuma Ikeda, Yuki Hayakawa, Ryo Suzuki, Shota Nagai, Ozora Sako, Rokuto Nagata, Ryo Yoshida, Kentaro Yoshioka
AI summary
Problem
Autonomous robots require reliable Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication for safety, but existing wireless solutions demand expensive dedicated hardware or fail in outdoor environments due to ambient light interference.
Approach
The authors introduce Optical LiDAR Communication (OLC), which encodes data into 2D codes and injects them as targeted laser pulses directly into a robot's existing LiDAR sensor to establish a secure communication channel.
Key results
- Achieves >76% communication success rate at distances up to 30 meters
- Demonstrates proof-of-concept V2I systems for traffic signals and blind-spot detection
- Validates Multi-Distance OLC method achieving 11.3 kbps data rate with enhanced noise robustness
- Implements T-OTP authentication protocol to secure the optical channel against malicious injections
Why it matters
Enables safe, low-cost infrastructure-to-robot communication for autonomous delivery and logistics systems without costly hardware upgrades.
Abstract
As autonomous mobile robots increasingly operate in real-world environments, safety has emerged as a critical chal- lenge, particularly regarding obstacle and pedestrian detection in building blind spots and reliable traffic signal recognition. While traditional Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) systems adopt high-capacity communication through 5G networks or via Op- tical Wireless Communication (OWC), these approaches require dedicated communication hardware that proves impractical for small, low-cost robots. Additionally, the communication band- width required for robot-oriented V2I, such as blind spot object detection and traffic signal states, is relatively limited; the high- capacity communication of 5G is often unnecessary. To address these challenges, we propose a novel optical communication system named Optical LiDAR Communication (OLC), which repurposes existing LiDAR sensors as communi- cation devices. By integrating LiDAR Injection with 2D Code technology, OLC achieves cost-effectiveness through V2I com- munication without requiring additional hardware on robots. Real-world experiments confirmed that the proposed method achieves a communication success rate of over 76% at distances up to 30 meters. Furthermore, as a proof-of-concept, we develop two key V2I systems utilizing OLC: traffic signal information transmission and blind-spot obstacle detection, and real-time communication performance was demonstrated. These results indicate that the proposed method has potential as a V2I platform for next-generation robotics infrastructure.