LiDAR News: Velodyne, AEye, Cepton, Tetravue, Valeo

BusinessWire: In a surprise move, Velodyne announced a volume increase and cost reduction of its most popular LiDAR product, the VLP-16. Demand for the VLP-16 was off the charts in 2017, and in just a matter of days the demand has increased even more. “With this cost reduction, we’ll be able to get more Pucks into the hands of more customers, support the growing number of autonomous vehicle development fleets around the world, and start creating a better tomorrow,” said David Hall, Velodyne CEO and Founder.

BusinessWire: AEye announces its AE100 iDAR:

“The AE100 is a game-changer for the autonomous vehicle and ADAS markets, as it makes iDAR technology commercially available for the first time,” said Luis Dussan, founder and CEO of AEye. “iDAR-based robotic perception allows sensors to mimic the visual cortex – bringing real-time intelligence to data collection. As a result, the system not only captures everything in a scene - it actually brings higher resolution to key objects and exceeds industry required speeds and distances. By solving for the limitations of first generation LiDAR-only solutions, AEye is enabling the safe, timely rollout of failsafe commercial autonomous vehicles.”

Leveraging a more powerful, yet safer, 1550-nm laser, AEye’s adoptive-scanning iDAR AE100 system is said to be able to interrogate 100% of the scene, while typical fixed pattern LiDAR systems are only capable of interrogating 6% of any scene, due to huge vertical gaps inherent in raster or spinning systems. With its embedded intelligence, the AE100 offers key advantages:

• Coverage: The AE100 can use dynamic patterns for mapping the environment, as it is not tied to one fixed mode. In evaluating any given scene, AE100’s software definable scanning delivers more than 10x the 3D resolution over legacy systems.
• Speed: It’s 3x faster, and does not miss any objects between scans while identifying and solving any temporal anomalies. This reduces scan gaps, resulting in more than 25 feet of faster response distance at average highway speeds – more than two car lengths.
• Range: The AE100 extends effective range at comparable resolution by 7-10x over currently deployed LiDAR systems.

Customizable general performance specifications include up to 200Hz frame rates, less than 60μs object or blob revisit rates, software-definable resolution of .09 degrees H/V, and a maximum range of 300-400 meters. It will have a limited release in mid- 2018, and a larger commercial release later in Q3.

BusinessWire: Cepton announces a partnership with May Mobility, the developer of autonomous driving technology to replace an existing transportation solution with self-driving fleet vehicles on public roads. “Cepton is driving the high performance LiDAR evolution to break the $1,000 price point; we are very excited about our collaboration and what it will mean for the future of the industry,” said Edwin Olson, May Mobility CEO and Co-Founder. Cepton LiDARs feature a patented frictionless micro-motion technology that eliminates large spinning parts and does not rely on custom components. The result is faster, more scalable production at a lower price.

GlobeNewsWire: TetraVue partners with NVIDIA, CVedia and AGC/Wideye for next generation ADAS and self-driving applications. TetraVue’s solid-state 4D LIDAR cameras capture multi-megapixel images at up to 30 fps with accurate depth for each individual pixel, said to be over 100x more spatial and motion data than competing low resolution scanning LIDARs.

Tetravue presents its "never before seen high definition" image example with per-pixel depth data:

PRNewswire: NAVYA (France) introduces the AUTONOM CAB said to be the first time in North America (What about Waymo service in Phoenix?) AUTONOM CAB uses a sophisticated multi-sensor technology with no fewer than 10 Lidar sensors, 6 cameras, 4 radars, 2 GNSS antennae and 1 inertial measurement unit. These sensors provide at least a triple redundancy across all functions, guaranteeing exceptional reliability.

PRNewswire: It turns out that Navya actually relies on Valeo Autonom Cab platform. This all-electric, driverless vehicle is fitted with seven Valeo SCALA laser scanners (which appear to be re-branded Ibeo products). The SCALA is said to be the first and only mass-produced LiDAR scanner on the market designed specifically for cars, and is a key component of the autonomous vehicle.

BusinessWire: The remaining three LiDARs on Navya autonomous car are Velodyne low-end VLP-16.