Depth Perception

Depth-sensing capabilities are coming to the forefront of some camera designs, but
LIDAR takes it a step further, by capturing images by depth and depth alone.

We sense depth information somewhat indirectly, through interpreting the differences in the images produced by our two horizontally offset eyes. It's not an exact science and, as evidenced by the minor craze for auto-stereoscopic images a few years ago, you can fool the system quite easily.

Absolute accurateness doesn't matter much if you're staring at a painting, but it could be a life-or-death matter if that depth information is influencing the angle of your steering wheel.

LIDAR, which is essentially a laser-based depth sensing system, produces images based solely on depth. Since it works by measuring the time it takes for light to travel to and from a distant object, readings can be pretty exact and unambiguous.

Said tech is obviously being used in the development of driverless cars, courtesy the Google's and Tesla's of the world, not to mention the imagery produced is stellar without a doubt. :)