Bursts of Light Spotted on Waymo’s LIDAR

Ocassional, irregular bursts of light can be spotted in the night on the Waymo’s top LIDAR (as can be seen on the video below). Question is: what is that and what purpose does it serve?

One thing we know is that the LiDAR/Camera rack on top (a.k.a. Waymp Driver) can display messages as we have seen in still images from the Waymo PR department. But those bursts of light seemed random. And they are not camera artefacts (iPhone 12) but I saw them as well directly looking at the LiDAR.

This article was also published in German.