Laser beams don't play nice with camera image sensors, and Volvo recommends avoiding close-up photography or using a protective filter if you must snap a pic.
To heat 1 cm³ of water by 1°C, you need approximately 4.184 joules of energy, as 1 calorie is defined as the energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C, and 1 cm³ of water has a mass of about 1 gram.
So to heat your eye of 1cm3 in 1 second you need 4.2 watts of infrared to enter your eye. That sounds too much power for lidar, but couldn’t find quickly how much power is emitted by lidar though…
Never realized Laser Safety was such a wild read. It just keeps getting better as you go:
A pop or click noise emanating from the eyeball may be the only indication that retinal damage has occurred, i.e. the retina was heated to over 100 °C (212 °F) resulting in localized explosive boiling
An additional factor with these systems is that light around the 1550 nm wavelength band (common for optical amplifiers) is regarded as relatively low risk, since the eye fluids absorb the light before it is focused on the retina. This tends to reduce the overall risk factor of such systems.
And remember
So to heat your eye of 1cm3 in 1 second you need 4.2 watts of infrared to enter your eye. That sounds too much power for lidar, but couldn’t find quickly how much power is emitted by lidar though…
Never realized Laser Safety was such a wild read. It just keeps getting better as you go: