Yes, lidars have interference, but much less than radar and sonar. From my other comment [0]:
> Compared to other sensors, lidars are not that prone to interference because:
> * it only takes 1 microsecond to make a ranging measurement up to 150 m, so your detector is on for a short time
> * lasers only illuminate a small spot, and the detector is also looking at a similarly small spot, so it is unlikely for two lidars to point in the same spot
> Now, even if it does interfere, you may see a stream of random points pointed towards the interference source. This may happen if, say, you point a lidar directly at the sun, or if you have multiple lidars mounted on the same vehicle. Such random points are easily rejected as outliers and do not affect the vast majority of the scene. Most self driving cars (I hope) should have outlier rejection schemes that deal with outliers caused by this and other sources, such as snow, smoke, and so on.
Now, as for bringing traffic to a halt by bringing your portable lidar jammer... https://www.xkcd.com/1958/
> Compared to other sensors, lidars are not that prone to interference because:
> * it only takes 1 microsecond to make a ranging measurement up to 150 m, so your detector is on for a short time
> * lasers only illuminate a small spot, and the detector is also looking at a similarly small spot, so it is unlikely for two lidars to point in the same spot
> Now, even if it does interfere, you may see a stream of random points pointed towards the interference source. This may happen if, say, you point a lidar directly at the sun, or if you have multiple lidars mounted on the same vehicle. Such random points are easily rejected as outliers and do not affect the vast majority of the scene. Most self driving cars (I hope) should have outlier rejection schemes that deal with outliers caused by this and other sources, such as snow, smoke, and so on.
Now, as for bringing traffic to a halt by bringing your portable lidar jammer... https://www.xkcd.com/1958/
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18444775