Characterization and simulation of the effect of road dirt on the performance of a laser scanner

Automotive environment sensors such as LIDARs (light detection and ranging) are the backbone of automated driving. It has to be made sure that the performance of these sensors is sufficient, even under adverse environment influences like accumulated dirt on a sensor cover. This paper describes the collection and analysis of real world road dirt samples, accumulated on the plastic cover of a LIDAR sensor. The effect of the dirt on the sensor performance is experimentally quantified by measuring the transmission and reflection properties of the dirty sensor plastic cover. Moreover, an analysis of the sensor's uncertainty in raw data position measurements is presented. Different alternatives to include these effects in a virtual simulation of the sensor are discussed. While the sample size of the dirty plastic covers is too small to representatively describe the effect of dirt on LIDAR performance, this study shows that an abstract effect on sensor performance such as dirt can be described, quantified and eventually be represented in a virtual simulation.