(Original title: The auto-drive market is hot, the laser radar is popular, how can this problem be solved?)
Although the autopilot technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, the development of the entire industry has been repeatedly constrained. In addition to the day-to-day changes in government regulation and technological complexity, the severe shortage of LiDAR has now begun to drag on auto-driving cars.
You know, without these sensors, the self-driving car loses its "eyes."
out of stock
According to Lei Feng, it is necessary to wait at least six months for the Lidar to be purchased. And a year ago, a few weeks after placing an order, customers will receive the goods.
According to data from laser radar manufacturer Velodyne, the demand for laser radar has risen sharply recently. This is the chief culprit for the lack of products. The release of market potential has also attracted many companies to join the manufacturing army of laser radar.
Lidar out of stock has forced some manufacturers to reduce the number of road test vehicles, and researchers have also been affected.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo's Automated Driving Lab said that because of the failure of the laboratory's lidar, their work has been in a state of complete stagnation. After placing an order with Velodyne, the lab received a response that it took six months to get a new lidar, leaving researchers disheartened.
Lidar's tightness made Velodyne laugh, and the founding company in California for 33 years ushered in its second spring.
Last fall, internal data obtained by foreign media sources revealed that Velodyne expects revenue growth in 2017 to increase at least three times, from US$50 million in 2016 to US$190 million. In 2018, this figure may continue to grow to $320 million. Velodyne’s profit levels are unknown to us, but the company’s chairman, Mike Jellen, said in an interview that the company’s profitability is very strong.
Right now, Mike Jellen thinks that Velodyne's main task is to step up its production capacity. The company sold only a few thousand laser radars last year. After the new plant is completed this year, shipments will exceed 10,000 units. In the future, Velodyne will continue to expand production and move forward with the goal of producing millions of units a year.
“Our shipments have doubled in the last quarter and we expect the shipments to increase by another 200% this quarter,†said Jellen. "The demand is really too great. We are stepping up production to meet customer needs."
LiDAR's full name is Light Detection And Ranging, which is laser detection and ranging. It can continue to emit light beams in all directions to help cars "see" the surrounding environment and plan the correct road. A medium-range Velodyne LiDAR costs as much as $3 to $40,000. If the order is large, the price can be reduced.
Last year, Velodyne got $150 million in investment from Baidu and Ford. The two companies are also investing heavily to ensure their own laser radar supply in the future. Ford plans to mass-produce self-driving cars on the road in 2021 and it is now the best time to begin layout. A Ford spokesperson said that the company does not rely solely on Velodyne's products; they are still seeking other potential partners.
Now, customers have begun to complain about not being able to buy a laser radar. A customer of Velodyne LiDAR stated: “Velodyne's position in the industry is no longer what it used to be, but their production capacity is always up, so customers will be selected when they sell.â€
Influx of new troops
Although it looks like the future is bright, continuous out-of-stock may push Velodyne's customers to other vendors. At the moment, the field of vehicle laser radar rarely competes with Velodyne, but many companies are already gearing up to grab Velodne's "rice bowl."
Among these companies are the mysterious Silicon Valley company Luminar Technologies, and the well-known Quanergy and Innoviz. However, these three companies have not yet produced suitable vehicle-mounted laser radars. The traditional auto parts supplier camps are in a state of irritability, droughts, etc., and are subject to heavy traffic. XII/P>
In addition to veteran Velodyne, the most noteworthy Luminar Technologies on the market today; the start-up company is Cepton Technologies, which has many engineers from Velodyne and is quite mysterious. According to reliable sources, the Cepton Lidar has officially shipped. In addition, the large automotive parts suppliers Continental and Valeo have also joined the competition and they will strive to get the laser radar market as soon as possible.
As an old customer of Velodyne, Google is also developing its own laser radar technology. In the future, Uber will be brought to court by its own autopilot, 燱aymo犑褂谩W罱ç–aymo. The main reason is that former Google employees founded Otto. Uber acquired the Google's laser radar design. Uber responded by saying that Google's complaint was "groundless."
At the moment, the autopilots on the road test for various manufacturers use the Velodyne laser radars. Their fleets range from a few cars to dozens of cars, and some of them plan to expand fleet vehicles to more than a hundred vehicles this year.
Of course, the ultimate goal of these lidar manufacturers is to reduce the cost of expensive laser radar products to several hundred dollars or less. After all, in order to ensure 360 ​​degree coverage, a vehicle needs to be equipped with multiple laser radars (remote, medium). Cheng, short-range cooperation.)
The lack of laser radar
According to Lei Feng network, the manufacturing threshold of vehicle-launched laser radar is high because it requires processing equipment with powerful electronic equipment, experts in optics and mechanics, and software that can handle huge amounts of data is also indispensable.
The most important thing is that laser radar must be used with cameras and other types of sensors. If the car encounters bad weather or road conditions, the entire system is prone to problems.
In fact, many companies in Germany and Japan can produce laser radars, but none of their products can provide 360-degree coverage, and Velodyne uses ball bearings to intelligently solve the problem of laser beam irradiation.
However, the reliability and durability of such a design are skeptical. After all, a car must experience wind and rain for at least a few decades on the road. It has more friction, and ball bearings will definitely go wrong.
The aforementioned lidar emerging companies are all trying to develop non-ball bearing laser radar products, and the newly designed Veledey new laser radar will also be completed next year.
It is worth noting that a car that wants to achieve a 360-degree, dead-end coverage requires at least 3 lidars. In addition, there are not enough Lidars for light because it can only acquire “structural†information such as the shape or distance of objects.
The “organizational†information such as lane markings, traffic lights, and pedestrians’ direction of movement cannot do anything about it. Such work requires a camera. In addition, Lidar is also congenitally deficient in the ability to monitor small objects and their movement speed. This part of the task requires radar sensors.
Lidars, cameras, and radar sensors must now be used in combination to build a high-definition “map†around the vehicle and determine nearby object movements in advance.
In the future, if the performance of cameras and radar sensors has been greatly improved, the importance of laser radars will plummet. Tesla's solution put the lidar in a more secondary position.
Long way ahead
David Hall founded Velodyne in 1983 when the company was an audio company. After entering the new century, Hall began producing subwoofers in China, and the old factory in Morgan Hill was idle. In an interview, Hall stated that he had chosen to return to the country after hearing that the U.S. government had to subsidize researchers to drive autonomous cars.
In 2004, Hall took part in the government's "Grand Challenge" competition with his stereo camera system. During the game, Hall realized the limitations of the camera data, so he took out the rotating laser radar and took this product to participate in the second "Grand Challenge" competition in 2005. Two years later, researchers began using Velodyne's products, and the price of laser radar at the time was as high as $100,000.
Last year, Velodyne launched a laser radar with a price of only $7 to $8,000. The relatively low price once again ignited the enthusiasm of researchers.
As of last year, the main task of Lidar was to draw a map. It could help map companies collect data such as the location of traffic lights or landmark buildings. Now, these maps drawn by laser radar have become a good helper for self-driving cars and can help them to know the road conditions ahead of the road. This year, the application of laser radar in self-driving cars will fully exceed the application of map mapping.
Jellen said that in the future, the price of laser radar will indeed fall to several hundred dollars, while high-end products will remain at the price of several thousand dollars. In addition, Lidar's annual shipments will reach as many as one million in the next 15 to 20 years. However, the first products to popularize such products are still developed countries because they have relatively complete road transport infrastructure.
Jellen also admitted that the existing laser radar products are not perfect and there is still much room for improvement. In the future, the ability of laser radar to detect black objects will be greatly enhanced. At the same time, the spacing between laser beams will be greatly reduced, and the data resolution obtained by laser radar will be higher.
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