Man says CES lidar’s laser was so powerful it wrecked his $1,998 camera

A man attending this week’s CES show in Las Vegas says that a lidar sensor from startup AEye has permanently damaged the sensor on his $1,998 Sony camera. Earlier this week, roboticist and entrepreneur Jit Ray Chowdhury snapped photos of a car at CES with AEye’s lidar units on top. He discovered that every subsequent picture he took was marred by two bright purple spots, with horizontal and vertical lines emanating from them.

“I noticed that all my pictures were having that spot,” he told Ars by phone on Thursday evening. “I covered up the camera with the lens cap and the spots are there—it’s burned into the sensor.”

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  One of Chowdhury’s photos of the AEye vehicle. [credit: Jit Ray Chowdhury ‏ ]

In an email to Ars Technica, AEye CEO Luis Dussan confirmed that AEye’s lidars can cause damage to camera sensors—though he stressed that they pose no danger to human eyes.