However, Far 2020 has come to our eyes. The dream flying car doesn't seem to be realized yet, but autonomous driving is indeed closer to us. Just at the CES show in the United States, which opened today, Bosch not only unveiled the first automotive-grade lidar, but also announced that it has entered the stage of mass production and research and development.
Coincidentally, besides Bosch, Innoviz? Technology, energy? Systems and other manufacturers have said that they will realize the mass production application of lidar in the near future. And we always hear that lidar is the "right hand man" of autonomous driving technology. So what is it, and why does the burden of autonomous driving fall on it?
Why choose lidar?
2065438+In April 2009, Musk publicly stated: "Only fools can use lidar. Now whoever relies on lidar will be finished! " Admittedly, the "lidar uselessness theory" may be too extreme, but after all, the most expensive lidar owned by head autopilot company Waymo is as high as $70,000, which is a bit exaggerated for a businessman who needs to cut costs crazily to enter the China market.
So why is there such a high-cost lidar, and some people are obsessed with this "hard bone", and even new technologies and startups are constantly "moths to the fire"? The reason is that the existing vehicle detection methods, such as vehicle-mounted radar/millimeter wave radar/camera, all have performance disadvantages that cannot be ignored.
On the other hand, lidar has higher range resolution, angle resolution and speed resolution than other detection methods; The overall detection accuracy is higher and the distance is wider. Compared with the former, it has strong anti-interference ability (good robustness) and can generate multi-bit images more intuitively. The most important point is that the external lighting conditions have little influence on the imaging of lidar, which plays a vital role in achieving a higher level of automatic driving.
Once the lidar reaches the conditions of mass production and commercialization, it will be a huge cake only from the perspective of vehicle demand. Whoever can take the lead in the competition will have the right to speak in the doubles.
Main types of lidar
Lidar can be divided into single line number and multi-line number, but the single line number can only be scanned in plane, which is not suitable for the complex environment of automobile driving. Therefore, compared with the single-line lidar, the multi-line lidar applied to automobiles has improved its size. At present, there are 4 lines, 8 lines, 16 lines, 32 lines and 64 lines in the international market, and even some head enterprises have introduced 128 line products.
The above types are classified according to the number of lines, and in multi-line lidar products, according to the different scanning methods, they are divided into mechanical rotary, MEMS, FLASH and phased array lidar.
Among them, the traditional mechanical rotation is the earliest born lidar, and it is also the most mature type at present. However, this kind of mechanical rotary lidar also has some disadvantages that can't be ignored. Because the internal core includes complex and precise components such as laser, scanner, optical element, photodetector, receiving IC and positioning navigation device, the overall hardware cost is high and the mass production threshold is high. At present, many companies developing lidar have abandoned this type and switched to solid-state lidar.
The so-called solid-state lidar, that is, non-traditional mechanical rotating lidar types, are MEMS, FLASH and phased array respectively. Among the three, MEMS is the most popular system, which can replace the scanning mechanism for scanning near-infrared laser, thus achieving the purpose of reducing costs. Moreover, it can dynamically adjust its scanning mode to focus on special objects, collect detailed information of farther and smaller objects and identify them, which is impossible for traditional mechanical laser radar and one of the necessary abilities to deal with complex driving conditions.
The system can direct the fixed laser beam in different directions through a small mirror. Due to the small mass and volume of the mirror, the overall inertia is not large, so it can move quickly and the reaction speed is further improved.
Solid-state laser radar is realized by using the principle of phased array, which completely cancels the mechanical structure and is equipped with a row of transmitters. By adjusting the relative phase of the signal, the emission direction of the laser beam is changed, and the phase of the signal is strictly controlled to realize beam pointing scanning, so it can also be called electronic scanning technology. However, this method is easy to form sidelobes, which affects the working distance and angular resolution of the beam, and most of them only stay in the laboratory stage.
The last one is a flash lidar, 3D? Solid-state lidar based on flash technology belongs to non-scanning radar, and the laser beam emitted by it will directly spread in all directions, and the scene will be illuminated by flash. The invention has that advantage that derivative problems cause by the movement of targets or laser radars in the scan process are avoided. But the detection distance of this kind of lidar is close, because if the detection distance is expanded, the natural pixels will be larger and the signals to be processed will increase. When a large number of pixels are crammed into the photodetector, the accuracy will gradually decrease.
Generally speaking, considering the factors such as cost, stability, accuracy and driving scene matching, solid-state lidar is the main research and development direction of various companies at present, among which MEMS is a cost-effective solution, so this form will become the main product of future vehicle-borne lidar.
"Disputes" between domestic and foreign enterprises
When it comes to lidar, we have to mention-Wilden, the world's largest supplier of lidar, is also the first "pioneer" to enter the field of lidar. All this can be traced back to 2006, when China's automobile market was still in the primary stage of development, and the founder of Verdun, David? Hall holds the patent of multi-beam lidar sensor.
In the second year, in the Autopilot Challenge organized by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, five of the six completed racing models were equipped with Lidar technology from Wilton. Since then, Weideng has become famous and once became the head enterprise and synonym of lidar.
Subsequently, Wilton developed vigorously and became the top supplier in its own field, and made continuous improvement in mechanical scanning radar. Influenced by Moore's law, the company's products are updated quickly. Combined with its own technology, in 20 17, a laser radar with a line as high as 128 has been launched. But again, the price does not strictly follow Moore's Law, because the retail price of this product has reached 700,000 yuan. To sum up, mechanical lidar is expensive. Although the technology is at its peak, it can be installed in the car, so it is difficult to reduce the integration center that needs to process a lot of data, and it needs to occupy a lot of interior space, which has become a "heart disease" of VLS- 128. Coupled with the continuous growth of solid-state lidar, VLS- 128( 128 line lidar) can only become the representative work of Wilden.
The cost of WILDEN is high, and the solid-state radar is almost backward. In recent years, it has also encountered the rising period of domestic laser radar startups. Among them, the most representative companies are Wosai Technology and Sagitar Juchuang.
The latter are mainly 16 line and 32 line products. According to the local advantages and relatively cheap labor costs, the benchmark product only reaches half of that of Verdun. It is worth mentioning that just a few days before Verdun announced the abolition of its China office, Sagitar Juchuang released a solid-state lidar with line 125, with a retail price of only 1898 USD.
On the other hand, in China, Baidu used to be the "gold owner" of Verdun, but Verdun, which just launched the solid-state lidar on 20 18, was obviously unsatisfactory. Since then, Baidu has switched to Jose technology and developed autonomous driving technology through the Apollo platform.
Market share has been eroded by domestic start-ups. In the middle of 2065438+2008, a lawsuit was formally filed against domestic Wosai Technology and sagitar Juchuang, claiming that the two companies infringed the US? The patent No.7969558 also officially marks that domestic and foreign lidar has entered a stage of fierce competition.
When did you enter every household?
Having said that, when will the laser radar start mass production? Its mass production means that the autopilot function will take a historic step, and it will be farther away from realizing the "dream" in composition.
Once upon a time, five years ago, the mass production forecast of L3 and L3 was generally concentrated in 2022-2023. The recent forecast of this goal is conservative, and the time is extended to 2025. The main reason is that the popularization speed of lidar is much slower than people's judgment.
Regarding the mass production of lidar, in addition to Bosch's announcement that its first automobile-grade long-range lidar has entered the stage of mass production research and development, Israeli manufacturer Innoviz? Technologies also said that its second-generation lidar products were delivered in the summer of 20 19, and mass production is planned for 2020.
In addition, American Quanergy? Systems also plans to put lidar on production models in 20021year; Pioneer electronics of Japanese Pioneer Company is conservative, and it is expected to be installed on special vehicles such as local buses in 2020.
It can be seen that if the plan is carried out as scheduled, lidar will be mass-produced as soon as this year. At that time, you and I will be witnesses to the leap forward of the automobile industry.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.