The buzz at Sensors Expo 2019 pitted LiDAR-tech optimism against the reality of an impending shakeout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more than a decade, the LiDAR market has been led by Velodyne and its spinning towers of 64 or 128 laser beams. But the relatively high cost, delicate architecture, and beefy form factor have made it a competitive target. The growing ranks of competitors fall roughly into two camps. There are the fledgling LiDAR-makers with novel approaches to distance measurement, laser wavelength, and beam steering. And there are those with radar and vision systems promising LiDAR-level sensing capabilities at a lower cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The jockeying for position was on full display at the 2019 Sensors Expo and Conference, held in San Jose, Calif. \u201cThe greatest amount of discussion is about LiDAR right now because there are a lot of startups in that space,\u201d observed Jim Hines, an independent consultant working on semiconductor and sensor technologies for connected and autonomous vehicles. Hines, who is based in nearby Palo Alto, told SAE\u2019s Autonomous Vehicle Engineering that the field of self-driving sensors is showing \u201ccontinual progress,\u201d but that \u201cnothing was really revelatory\u201d at Sensors Expo 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amir Hosseini, a founding engineer at Santa Clara-based Ours Technology Inc., might disagree. He admitted, however, that the industry is a \u201cLiDAR-congested environment.\u201d Hosseini\u2019s company promises a LiDAR module using a small set of 1550-nanometer wavelength beams and measuring distance with frequency modulation. (Velodyne uses 905 nanometers and time-of-flight measurements.) The company promises what it calls 5D technology to directly measure the velocity of every pixel. Hosseini pegged the price of the Ours Technology Inc. device at \u201ca couple of hundred dollars.\u201d The company has a development demo but is not yet discussing production details. He said the form factor would be \u201csmaller than a phone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
300 lines of resolution at 10 fps<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nearby on the expo floor, Jason Ferns, director of marketing and applications at Innovusion, said, \u201cTo get 128 scan lines, you need 128 laser emitters and 128 detectors. So, it\u2019s hard to manufacture \u2013 and the cost will never scale down.\u201d Innovusion is based in Los Altos with a 20,000 square-foot assembly and test facility in Sunnyvale. Its technology uses a beam that moves both horizontally and vertically. \u201cWith two beams, we can get 300 lines of resolution across the field of view while maintaining 10 frames per second. Compare that to 64 lines or 128 lines,\u201d asserted Steve Ehrsam, the company\u2019s VP of global marketing and sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vertical movement is important, he said, because vehicles move in a horizontal direction. The vertical scan, which minimizes horizontal motion blur, is made possible by Innovusion\u2019s dual rotating polygon beam pattern. Ehrsam said the price at scale for Innovusion\u2019s lidar would be less than $1,000 \u2013 if built in a quantity of 100,000 units per year, which the company hope to achieve in three to four years. Innovusion has shipped early versions for testing to an undisclosed set of carmakers and robotaxi companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
War chest size matters <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the expo hall\u2019s \u201cAutomotive Technology Theater,\u201d the Autotech Council held a pitch session in the style of the TV show Shark Tank. Four automotive-sensing startup companies vied for attention from council members, a consortium of 100 companies based in Silicon Valley looking to invest in promising auto technologies. One of the presenters was Aditya Srinivasan, North American general manager for Innoviz, an Israel-based LiDAR company that has raised about $250 million in its three-year existence. Its second product, the InnovizOne, will be used in the BMW iNext self-driving SUV, expected in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Srinivasan promoted the advantages of Innoviz\u2019s solid-state LiDAR with MEMS-based beam steering. He also explained that the company successfully tackled the challenge of ensuring eye safety from a 905-nanometer wavelength LiDAR, reaping the benefits of low 20-watt power consumption compared to the energy-thirsty 1550 wavelength. Srinivasan also played up how the InnovizOne was built from the ground up to be automotive grade. An Autotech Council review panelist, Dan Smith, the chief executive of Capstone Financial Group, a San Jose-based investment bank focusing on auto technologies, asked, \u201cOther than your choice of wavelength, what\u2019s your main differentiator?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe war chest,\u201d replied Srinivasan, referring to its fundraising successes. \u201cThis is an industry in which you need a long runway.\u201d He added that the partnership relationships with BMW and Tier-1 supplier Aptiv, are critical. \u201cThey forced us to change from being a dinky little startup to an automotive supplier, and that\u2019s not an easy transition,\u201d said Srinivasan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other startup presenters not yet on the path to scale included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 David Slemp, president and chief engineer at Aeres Em, presented a holographic radar-imaging solution. Slemp said its resolution would be \u201csecond to none.\u201d He added, \u201cThe breakthroughs are done. It\u2019s now just engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Matt Harrison, head of artificial intelligence at Metawave, emphasized his company\u2019s beam-steering capabilities (top), allowing objects to be detected and classified beyond 300 meters. Harris said that Metawave, which counts Hyundai as an investor, has \u201csurpassed traditional radar signal processing by using a neural network approach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 Semyon Nisenzon, chief executive of Cluster Imaging, has raised about $650,000 for a system using six to eight cameras for computing depth. \u201cWe can generate real-time accurate depth at an order of magnitude lower cost and better efficiency than LiDAR,\u201d said Nisenzon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Toward sensor fusion<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smith of Capstone Financial believes that much of current industry investment is \u201cpurely FOMO,\u201d a popular term for \u201cthe fear of missing out.\u201d Smith stated that there are as many as 250 LiDAR companies in business, although not all are focused on auto applications. \u201cWe doubt that fewer than 10 will survive for auto use,\u201d wrote Smith in an email. Despite the disproportionate attention given to LiDAR at Sensors Expo 2019, Smith believes that it will continue to exist as one of several sensors in the stack. \u201cThat\u2019s why there\u2019s so much money going now to sensor fusion,\u201d he said. Smith argued that real-world deployment of AVs would remain limited for perhaps 10 to 15 more years, a rollout starting with delivery robots and vehicles, then long-haul trucks, and finally robotaxis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jim Hines, the industry analyst, agrees about the rising importance of software and fast processing to handle multi-sensor platforms. \u201cA lot of the innovation is in application of AI neural nets to process the data that comes from the sensors to do all the object detection, classification and path planning,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are too many startup companies going after the same prize in lidar,\u201d he concluded. \u201cThere\u2019s clearly going to be a shakeout in this market.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The buzz at Sensors Expo 2019 pitted LiDAR-tech optimism against the reality of an impending shakeout. For more than a decade, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2589,"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588\/revisions\/2589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovusion.adascdevelopment.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}