Many already know that Vantablack, developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom, is the darkest substances known, absorbing up to 99.96% of visible light. We covered the BMW X6 that was covered in Vantablack a couple weeks ago, but now, this material has been put to the test against LiDAR at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
LiDAR is basically a surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflected light with a sensor. Ouster brought one of its LiDAR sensors into the X6 Vantablack showroom to see if it could detect the vehicle, and surprisingly enough, the vehicle was detected at a close distance. Here’s why it was detected:
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Covering the X6 in Vantablack VBx2 reduces both (laser and Ambient light) of these parameters dramatically. At one-percent total hemispherical reflectance, it’s 10-times less reflective than a typical ‘low-reflectivity’ scenario for specifying maximum ranges for LiDAR. The Ouster OS1-64 LiDAR sensor is specced at a maximum range of 40 meters for a 10 percent reflective target, so there’s a maximum range of around 22 meters for a target that’s one-percent reflective, like VBx2-coated X6,” said Mark Frichtl, Ouster co-founder and CTO.
