Veoneer partners with Baraja to deliver Spectrum-Scan LiDAR...

19 Jul 2021

...and further self-driving LiDAR announcements from AEye & Nvidia; and ON Semiconductor & AutoX’s Gen5 solution.

Automotive technology company Veoneer has signed an agreement with LiDAR company Baraja to industrialize their Spectrum-Scan LiDAR technology for what the partners describe as “the next market wave of L2+ (“Advanced partial”) through L4 (“Highly”) autonomous vehicle applications”. Under the agreement, Veoneer will develop, market and integrate a scalable Spectrum-Scan platform from Baraja to serve the automotive market.

Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan LiDAR connects a wavelength-tunable laser to a prism-like optics, deflecting the light to achieve scanning with higher reliability and lower cost. Baraja’s Random Modulation Continuous Wave technology enables interference rejection and a means to to measure instantaneous velocity, which distinguishes it from traditional Time of Flight approaches.

“Veoneer is a natural partner for us. We built our Spectrum-Scan technology to enable autonomous driving that is safer, more accessible and ready today for the next generation of vehicles,” said Federico Collarte, Founder & CEO of Baraja. “By combining our technology with Veoneer’s vast experience in automotive design and platform integration, this partnership helps ensure the world’s leading automotive brands can bring that autonomous reality to more people.”

‘Level 4’ autonomy

Instead of relying on fragile moving parts and oscillating mirrors, Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan LiDAR employs dispersive optics to scan the environment, which significantly improves reliability and robustness compared to conventional Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave or spinning LiDAR.

The Spectrum-Scan LiDAR creates high-resolution pointclouds to detect objects at more than 250 meters distant at speed, while remaining immune to interference from other sensors or light sources. The technology is also more tolerant to factors that have hindered traditional LiDAR systems such as heat, shock and vibration.

Jan Carlson, Chairman, President and CEO of Veoneer, commented, “We have performed extensive research among 70 LiDAR technology companies globally, and have come to the conclusion that by partnering with Baraja, we will be able to offer and integrate scalable automotive-grade LiDAR-sensors in future cars, at competitive prices.”

AEye’s LiDAR available on Nvidia’s Drive platform

AEye, a developer of adaptive, high-performance LiDAR solutions, is working with Nvidia to bring its adaptive, intelligent sensing to Nvidia’s Drive autonomous vehicle platform. AEye’s SDK (development kit) and Visualizer will allow developers to configure the sensor and view point clouds on the platform.

Drive is an open, end-to-end solution covering the self-driving Level 2+ automated driving to Level 5 (“Fully”) autonomous driving.

The partners’ July 16th launch statement said, “With AEye’s intelligent, adaptive LiDAR supported on the Nvidia DriveR, autonomous vehicle developers will have access to next-generation tools to increase the quality of data collected as they build and deploy state-of-the-art ADAS and AV applications.”

Blair LaCorte, CEO of AEye, said, “ADAS and AV developers wanting a best-in-class, full-stack autonomous solution now have the ability to use a single adaptive LiDAR platform from Level 2+ through Level 5 as they configure solutions for different levels of autonomy.”

“AI-driven sensing and perception are critical to solving the most challenging corner cases in automated and autonomous driving,” said Glenn Schuster, senior director of sensor ecosystems at Nvidia. “AEye’s adaptive, intelligent-sensing capabilities complement our Drive platform, which enables safe AV development and deployment.”

Sensor development enables 360° vision in self-drive platform

ON Semiconductor has announced that its image sensing and LiDAR technologies power key functions of AutoX’s Gen5 self-driving platform.

Revealed at last week's World Artificial Intelligence Conference, in Shanghai, China, the new Gen5 autonomous vehicle technology is said to enable “the first fully driverless RoboTaxi, designed to democratize autonomy and provide universal access to the transportation of people and goods”.

“In our quest to bring our Level 4 autonomous RoboTaxi to the market, ON Semiconductor is the obvious partner for our sensing needs,” said Jianxiong Xiao, founder and CEO of AutoX.

“The AR0820AT 8 MP image sensor enables high-resolution camera fusion with other sensors. This extends the practical sensing distance to beyond 300 meters to enable autonomy at freeway speeds, where objects or signs must be recognized farther away from the vehicle to enable sufficient reaction time.”