BEIJING – The Automotive LiDAR 2022 Annual Conference and Exhibition is the only worldwide summit, specifically focused on automotive LiDAR technologies and applications, which has been already held 5 times in the United States, and it’s the highest-level industry exchange summit of automotive-grade LiDAR. ZVision was invited to participate the summit as the leader in the Chinese LiDAR market, and vice president Frank Li gave a speech “MEMS-based LiDARs for ADAS&AV Application” in the summit.
With the rapid progress of autonomous driving technology, LiDAR, as a core sensor in perception, has moved beyond aerospace, military, robotics and meteorology into automotive industry, attracting more and more attention. This new technology shows its huge potential. It is expected that the global automotive LiDAR market will exceed US$20 billion by 2025.
Frank noted that as the demand of the autonomous driving market increases, single LiDAR cannot meet the requirements in safety redundancy and high-level autonomous driving. Thus, multi-LiDAR solution: L+S (Long range LiDAR + Short range LiDAR) is necessary, which can provide blind area detection and full perception around the car body. L stands for long-range LiDAR, facing forward, applies for long-range detection, S stands for short-range LiDAR, facing sides, applies for blind area detection around the car. L + S solution can cover the applications from passenger car to robotaxi.
LiDAR, which acted as “the eye of autonomous driving”, is an active sensor that can emit laser beam to measure the precise distance of the target. As a necessary perception sensor above L2, the ML-30s+ short-range LiDAR from ZVision has an ultra-wide FOV of 140° x 70°, and more than 20m@10% detection range, which can provide wide vision coverage, high-resolution 3D pointclouds, thus can minimize risks in blind area around car body. Meanwhile, ML-30s+ uses advanced silicon-based MEMS mirror, beneficial from small size and pure silicon material, it has no metal fatigue, no noise, low risk in shock and vibration, has long life time, and can be highly integrated.
As a representative long-range LiDAR, ML-Xs is automotive grade and deliver excellent performance with 1550nm wavelength laser. In consideration of human eye safety, ML-Xs has higher signal intensity, lower background noise, and better beam quality, thus can achieve long detection distance, of 250m@10%, with a high density of 180 lines,. ML-Xs has a unique vertical ROI design in full horizontal FOV, and the vertical resolution is less than 0.1° in ROI region. Also, it has a modular horizontal FOV (45° / 30° / 45°) design, which is compatible in both high-speed forward detection and medium/low-speed wide FOV applications.
Among worldwide major LiDAR providers, Chinese companies are pioneers both in mass production and technology innovation. Lots of MP projects means products are fully verified in functions and reliability. And leading advantages in specification, performance and variety show technology innovation. In the end, Frank added “Compared with oversea giants, Chinese companies has advantages in both performance and cost. Besides the technical advantages in solid-state vs mechanical, Chinese manufacturers have more cost down potential in R&D, manufacturing, logistics, and labor etc.”
