Laser rangefinders are a type of LIDAR (light detection and ranging) device used
to measure the distance to a target object. There are several different methods of
doing this, but we chose the time-of-flight method. This uses a pulsed laser and
measured the amount of time it takes for the pulse to travel to the target object and
reflect back to the system detector. To be accurate, this requires high speed
detectors, fast circuitry, precise optics, and a large SNR (signal-to-noise-ratio).
