I teach you how to understand the key laser radar for driverless driving.
Since Google’s driverless car screens in 2012, the “family barrel†on the roof has always been so eye-catching. And this "family barrel" is the legendary lidar.
The supplier of this laser radar is from Velodyne in the United States. At that time, the "family barrel" cost was as high as 70,000 US dollars, which is more expensive than the car! To be precise, you should be able to buy 5 BYD...
OK, when it comes to this, everyone must ask, Lidar seems to hear the frequency very high recently?
That's right, when it comes to laser radar, I have to mention the ADAS that has been in the limelight. At present, ADAS, laser radar, millimeter wave radar and visual sensor are the mainstream means for surrounding environment sensing, and are necessary for realizing ADAS.
The so-called laser radar is to use the laser beam to detect the target, obtain the data and generate an accurate digital elevation model. Its working principle is not difficult to understand, that is, transmitting and receiving laser beams. Inside the lidar, each set of components contains a transmitting unit and a receiving unit. We illustrate the rotating mirror design of Velodyne, the most famous company in the field of laser radar.
How Lidar works (picture from Velodyne)
The set of transmitting/receiving components and the rotating mirror combine to scan at least one plane. The mirror not only reflects the light emitted by the diode, but also reflects the reflected light back to the receiver. By rotating the mirror, a viewing angle of 90 to 180 degrees can be achieved, and the complexity of system design and manufacturing is greatly reduced because the mirror is the only motion mechanism in it.
The principle of detecting the distance is based on the time when the light returns. The laser diode emits pulsed light. After the pulsed light is irradiated onto the target, a part of the light is reflected back. A photon detector is installed near the diode, which can detect the returned signal and transmit it by calculation. The time difference from the detection can be used to calculate the distance of the target. Once the pulse distance measurement system is activated, a large number of point clouds can be collected.
If there is a target in the point cloud, the target will appear a shadow in the point cloud. Through this shadow, the distance and size of the target can be measured. A 3D image of the surrounding environment can be generated by the point cloud. The higher the point cloud density, the clearer the image.
After talking about the principle of lidar, comrades may have doubts. Why do two radars need to be installed in ADAS. What is the difference between lidar and millimeter wave radar?
Xiao Bian deliberately gave everyone a picture, comparing the various capabilities of lidar and millimeter wave radar, we can see at a glance:
Overall, lidar is more accurate but expensive.
The advantages of lidar are very obvious, and the range of detection is wider and the accuracy is higher. However, performance is greatly reduced in extreme weather or smoke environments, and because of its large data collection, the price is very expensive. The 64-line laser radar currently installed on Baidu and Google driverless cars (the more lines, the better the performance, the more expensive the price), the price is as high as 700,000 yuan.
Millimeter wave radar is subject to wavelength, but at a lower price.
The millimeter wave radar technology is relatively mature, its wavelength is between the centimeter wave and the light wave, so the millimeter wave has the advantages of microwave guidance and photoelectric guidance, and its guide head has small volume, light weight and high spatial resolution. In addition, the millimeter wave seeker has a strong ability to penetrate fog, smoke, and dust, which is a big advantage over laser radar. However, due to the direct constraints on the received band loss, it is impossible to accurately model all obstacles around it. However, thanks to the maturity of technology, its unit price is also lower, only about 100 US dollars, and the market demand is more than the laser radar.
So in order to complement each other, most ADAS will be equipped with two radars. However, to promote ADAS and realize the lofty ideal of unmanned driving, the cost of laser radar has become a key issue. Imagine that a laser radar is more expensive than a car. Will there be a user paying the bill?
So, everyone is looking for ways to reduce the cost of laser radar, and then! Solid-state laser radar was born!
Solid-state Lidar first appeared in the public's field of vision. At the US CES in January this year, laser radar startup Quanergy Systems announced that it is the world's first solid-state lidar sensor, and said that if the order quantity is 10,000 units The cost of each laser radar is expected to be under $100. (This company will do a detailed introduction below, we don't have to worry about Baidu)
100 dollars, what concept... Originally hundreds of thousands of things, buy hundreds of pieces now! What is it doing to make the cost drop so much?
We have to go back to the principle that the traditional laser radar is operated by 360-degree mechanical rotation, while the solid-state laser radar uses a scheme based on electronic components for reading and writing data, removing mechanical rotating parts, using integrated circuits. The sensing wafer scans in all directions and then outputs a 3D image around the vehicle. In addition, Quanergy has reduced its line count to 8 lines, which not only greatly reduces the cost, but also reduces the size.
Explaining this with a relatively easy-to-understand diagram should be this:
However, "solid state" means that the laser radar cannot rotate 360 ​​degrees and can only detect the front. However, as long as you install a few more on the vehicle, you can solve the problem of the detection range.
In addition to solid-state laser radar, there is currently a hybrid solid-state radar, which is another transitional product. Although the hybrid solid-state radar does not see the rotation mechanism of the traditional laser radar from the appearance, in order to 360 full-view, there are actually some mechanical rotating parts inside. It's just that this set of mechanical rotating parts is very compact and hidden inside the fuselage.
However, although the above two schemes have reduced the price of the laser radar, it still cannot solve the problem of the performance degradation of the laser radar in extreme weather. Therefore, ADAS still needs to combine lidar with all-weather millimeter-wave radar to ensure detection performance in all environments.
After discussing the problems of Lidar 7787, let's take a look at some of the more representative companies in the field of laser radar.
Velodyne
When it comes to laser radar, you have to mention Velodyne! I still remember the hundreds of thousands of KFC family barrels mentioned in the opening small article, that is the product of their family.
Velodyne currently sells Lidar in volume (picture from Velodyne)
It was founded in 1983 in Silicon Valley, USA. In 2005, it began to develop laser radar, and it is mainly used in the field of driverless cars. In 2007, he emerged as a developer, manufacturer and supplier of real-time lidar sensor technology. In 2009, Google launched the driverless car project, using Velodyne's huge laser radar, and Velodyne became famous. In 2016, Velodyne set up its laser radar division to form Velodyne LiDAR, and this new company won a $150 million joint venture between Ford Motor and Baidu this year.
Velodyne currently has three laser radars in volume production: HDL-64E (64-wire), HDL-32E (32-wire), and VLP-16 (16-wire). In addition to 64-wire products for driverless cars such as Google, Baidu, and Uber, some car manufacturers use 32-wire and 16-wire products for testing.
You may want to ask why their products are so expensive?
In fact, the main reason for the high price is because Lidar is far from reaching the point of large-scale application. And Velodyne's factory in the Bay Area is still in the manual assembly and training phase, and the labor costs are very high.
In the case of Lidar's 64-line tuning, each line has a pair of laser transmitters and receivers: 20 revolutions per second, and a laser beam of 100 to 200 meters. In the assembly process, in order to ensure that the emitted laser light is received by the paired receiver, there can be no deviation. In this case, the 64-ray radar can only complete two finished products in a week. This assembly and tuning process is extremely complicated and time consuming.
However, their situation should be improved this year, because Velodyne plans to hand over the products to China's first-line foundry companies.
Quanergy
Quanergy is known for publishing "the world's first solid-state laser radar for autonomous vehicles" at the CES Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, and claims to cut the price of lidar products to around $100.
Founded in 2012, it is a startup that specializes in the development of laser radar. As a company founded less than four years ago, it has been favored by venture capital and auto parts giants:
In 2014, he received seed investment from Samsung Electronics Venture Capital, Tesla Founder and Tsinghua Entrepreneur Association Angel Fund; completed the A-round financing of 30 million US dollars in the same year; obtained Delphi strategic investment in 2015, Delphi acquired a portion of Quanergy's equity, currently Engineers from both companies are working hard to develop a laser radar system; in 2016, they received $100 million in Series B financing.
Currently, they are working with Delphi to develop products, but they have to wait another two years before entering the mass production phase. ..
Ibeo
Ibeo from Hamburg, Germany, is not a newcomer in the field of laser radar. Ibeo was founded in 1998 and was acquired by sensor manufacturer Sick AG in 2000. In 2009, the company separated from Sick AG and in 2010 cooperated with Valeo to start mass production of ScaLa, which can be used in automobiles. This year, it was acquired by auto parts supply giant ZF (ZF) for a 40% stake. The two sides will cooperate to develop the next generation of Lidar, which should also be solid-state laser radar.
Have you talked about such a foreign company, is there any breakthrough in our domestic enterprises?
Xiao Bian said that it is a pity that most of the core technologies of Lidar are still in foreign companies. At present, there are about 10 companies doing laser radar in China, but most of them are used in air pollution detection and 3D mapping. There are only a few of them focused on the development of on-board laser radar, mainly including Escort Industry, Radium Intelligence and Siwei Technology. Three. Due to the limited technical strength, the domestic laser radar companies in the unmanned field generally lack the right to speak, which also makes the domestic unmanned application development and industrial ecology face many challenges. If a startup wants to enter this field, it needs to consider how the laser radar can reduce the cost while maintaining the detection accuracy, so that it is possible to get out of the market.
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