The world's first L4 autonomous driving LiDAR system is released, which is not only "good quality" but also "affordable"

We all know that LiDAR is the best sensing hardware for the current car's autonomous driving function, but early mechanical LiDARs are expensive, with costs of hundreds of thousands or millions, so they cannot be used in large quantities on mass-produced cars. Therefore, autonomous driving still relies mainly on millimeter-wave radars and high-precision cameras. In recent years, with the development of technology, cost-controlled solid-state LiDARs have emerged, and cars have been equipped with LiDARs to improve autonomous driving technology, but another shortcoming is that it is large in size, and installing it on the roof of the car poses a hidden danger to car safety. However, as the popularity of autonomous driving increases, it has almost become a must-have function for cars, especially for L3-level autonomous driving functions, which require the use of LiDARs. Many related companies are also increasing their research and development efforts. According to foreign media reports, recently, the Australian Baraja LiDAR manufacturer has developed a LiDAR that can support L4-level autonomous driving functions.

Baraja was founded in Australia in 2016 and is committed to developing LiDAR for future autonomous driving. The company has independently developed Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology. The newly released Spectrum HD, the world's first LiDAR system that can be used for L4 autonomous driving, is built on the Spectrum-Scan™ solid-state scanning platform.

Spectrum HD has the following key features to achieve the range, resolution and performance of LiDAR systems required for truly autonomous driving.

Eliminates blur and speckle, and is immune to interference from ambient light sources, including other lidars.

l Point-by-point Doppler velocity measurement performance at the hardware level, combined with tunable lasers and randomly modulated continuous wave (RMCW) ranging methods, does not need to rely on computationally intensive frame-to-frame velocity estimation like traditional LiDAR systems, and makes trade-offs in performance, accuracy, and timeliness of key measurements, providing unparalleled performance and accuracy in detection distance and speed

l It adopts a unique, world-first new architecture, making it the only lidar in the industry that can embed the Doppler function into its own hardware, allowing for a smaller package.

Spectrum HD connects a wavelength tunable laser to a prism optical element. When light propagates to the prism optical element, it deflects in different directions, so there is no need for a rotating laser or a moving mirror. Considering that the laser array is one of the most expensive components in the LiDAR system, this greatly reduces the overall cost. The cost per unit of Spectrum HD is controlled to less than $1,000, which can meet the cost budget of mass-produced cars.

Spectrum HD is ready for mass production and will provide samples in 2022, which will be another milestone in autonomous driving technology.