It is widely recognized that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) can be successful with effective sensing of the environment surrounding the vehicle feeding into the algorithms enabling autonomous navigation. Given the absolute reliance on sensing in life-critical situations, multiple sensor modalities are used with the data being fused together to augment each other and provide redundancy. This allows each technology to play to its strengths and deliver a better-combined solution. One of the important technical issues that is yet to be agreed upon is the lidar wavelength that is best suited to ADAS/AD.
From an article in eeTimes by Bahman Hadji.
The three modalities that will be prominent for the sensor used in vehicles for ADAS and AD going forward are image sensors, radar, and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). Each of these sensors has its own strengths and together they can comprise a complete sensor suite delivering data to enable the autonomous perception algorithms to make decisions with sensor fusion — the ability to provide color, intensity, velocity, and depth for every point or kernel in the scene.
Of these three principle modalities, LiDAR is the most nascent technology to be commercialized for mass-market use, even though the concept of using light to measure distance goes back decades. The market for automotive LiDAR is set to show spectacular growth rising from $39 million in 2020 to a projected $1.75 billion in 2025, according to Yole Développement, driven by the proliferation of autonomous systems requiring the complete sensor suite.
The opportunity is so large that there are well over 100 companies working on LiDAR technology, with cumulative investments into these companies exceeding $1.5 billion dollars by 2020 — and this was prior to the deluge of SPAC-driven initial public offerings by more than a handful of LiDAR companies that began in late 2020. But when there are so many companies working on a single technology — some of which are fundamentally different such as the wavelength of light being used (prominent examples being 905nm and 1550nm) — it is inevitable that there will be a winning technology and consolidation, as has been seen time and time again, whether it was Ethernet for networking or VHS for video.
For the complete article on lidar wavelength CLICK HERE.
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