In a lidar gun, electronics ramp up battery power to high voltage that drives a laser diode. The diode emits infrared laser pulses every five milliseconds. Filters receive pulses reflecting off a target object and focus them onto an avalanche diode, which converts them to electronic signals. High-speed timing circuitry tracks the time it takes for a pulse to reflect and return from the target, and algorithms use the data to determine the object's distance. The algorithms calculate distance again for subsequent pulses and then compute velocity by dividing the change in distance by the change in time.

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