How important is LiDAR for autonomous driving? It’s time to understand

Inventory of cutting-edge technology, autonomous driving undoubtedly occupies a place. Especially since 2020, the two major favorable blessings from the policy level are expected to start a new round of take-off for the entire industry chain of autonomous driving.

The new infrastructure has contributed to the advancement of autonomous driving. Since March, new infrastructure is undoubtedly the biggest topic in the industry. Among the seven major areas of new infrastructure announced earlier, artificial intelligence ranks first, and autonomous driving is an important part of artificial intelligence, and it covers almost all types of artificial intelligence technology. In mid-April, the National Development and Reform Commission made an authoritative interpretation of the highly-discussed scope of new infrastructure. Among them, autonomous driving belongs to the intelligent transportation infrastructure among the integrated infrastructure. It can be seen that autonomous driving has always been among the new infrastructure, and its potential for development is self-evident.

The country has vigorously promoted the development of autonomous driving, breaking through a large number of basic obstacles to a certain extent. However, if we want to continue to accelerate the development of autonomous driving, we need to work more on key basic technologies for autonomous driving, such as high-precision sensors. As a link in the industry chain, can sensor suppliers make good use of the opportunity and assume responsibility?

Importance: LiDAR is the eyes of unmanned vehicles

Chips, high-precision maps and navigation, algorithms, simulation, radar and multi-sensor fusion… There are many key technologies for autonomous driving, but sensors undoubtedly determine whether unmanned vehicles can go well and go further.

Speaking of sensors, LiDAR, millimeter-wave radar and cameras are recognized as the three key sensor technologies for autonomous driving. From a technical point of view, LiDAR has a powerful three-dimensional resolution capability compared with the other two. The “China Intelligent Connected Vehicle Industry Development Report (2019)” prepared by the Chinese Society of Automotive Engineering and the National Automobile Research Institute of Intelligent Connected Vehicles stated that in the current important application scenarios of artificial intelligence, the field of autonomous driving and assisted driving of intelligent connected vehicles, laser Radar is one of the core sensors to realize environmental perception. The report believes that among the sensors used for road information detection, LiDAR has certain advantages over millimeter-wave radar in terms of detection range and accuracy.

The “eyes” of unmanned vehicles are what many people think of LiDAR. Especially after a series of safety accidents in Tesla’s self-driving cars using cameras as sensors, the industry is vigilant that completely unmanned driving cannot escape the protection of LiDAR “eyes”.

Policy opportunity: huge demand released within 5 years

Autonomous driving integrates almost all technical sectors of artificial intelligence. The advantage that the new infrastructure brings to the field of autonomous driving is that it provides a matching informationized road and traffic environment for smart cars, and enhances vehicle-road collaboration. For example, China’s first self-driving super-high-speed Hangzhou-Shaoyong Smart Expressway has begun construction, commercializing speed-increasing self-driving.

Not only driverless taxis, but also e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Meituan are combining logistics business scenarios to promote short-distance delivery of driverless vehicles. During this year’s epidemic, the contactless delivery trolley of Wuhan Fangcai Hospital was also equipped with LiDAR. In fact, many car companies and Internet giants such as Alibaba and Tencent have also deployed the driverless field. Among them, many companies in the field of autonomous driving have chosen the products of domestic LiDAR companies.