CARIAD selected the InnovizTwo next-generation LiDAR sensor and perception software.

This is Innoviz’s third design win with a major automaker and first deal as a Tier-1 supplier. With this win, Innoviz’s forward-looking order book was updated to $6.6 billion

The company selected Fabrinet based on its deep expertise in advanced optical packaging and precision optical. This in addition to its knowledge of electro-mechanical and electronic manufacturing services, through which its LiDARs will be produced and assembled.

The partnership represents a strategic move for Cepton, accelerating its goal to make LiDAR an essential component put to use in everyday consumer vehicles. Prior to the announcement, the company had begun initial production of Vista-X90 assemblies at Fabrinet’s facility in Chonburi, Thailand in September 2021. The facility is automotive qualified with IATF 16949 certification.

The Vista-X90 itself features Cepton’s patented MMT (Micro Motion Technology), a LiDAR imaging mechanism that enables long-range, high-resolution, 3D imaging through a dense scan pattern. Free of rotation, mirror, and friction, MMT was designed to provide the industry with scalable LiDAR solutions that carefully balance performance, reliability and cost.

Vista-X90 also packages Cepton’s proprietary LiDAR engine ASICs, designed for optimal illumination control, detection and signal processing. In utilizing Fabrinet’s experience in high-volume optical and opto-electrical manufacturing, the company aims to deliver high-quality, cost-effective, assemblies to ramp up production and achieve scalable growth.

Outside, the doors leverage a smart ISD interactive system and UWB wireless communication technology with 10cm-level positioning. This allows the EV to automatically detect people, keys, and surrounding vehicles.

Inside the cabin features a fully digital setup headed by HiPhi Bot, an AI companion capable of automatically adjusting many aspects of the user experience. The assistant interacts with passengers and comes with a 8-direction, adjustable, robotic arm that can perform a variety of delicate movements . Further along the interior is a 23-speaker Meridian audio system and racing bucket seats.

Accelerating from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3.8 seconds, the car comes with rear-wheel steering and an IVC vehicle dynamic control system that generates a steering angle of 13.2 degrees. The vehicle’s 120kWh high-performance battery pack leverages Cell to Pack technology and cooling liquids to offer heat diffusion and help prevent fires while providing up to 705 km of battery life.

Powering the vehicle’s ADAS is the OEM’s proprietary HiPhi Pilot system, which provides dual-redundancy for perception, communication, braking, steering, and power supply. In further enabling advanced safety safety, the HiPhi Z leverages an NVIDIA Orin X chip and BlackBerry’s QNX Neutrino OS to utilize 34 sensors and LiDAR technology to constantly scan its surroundings and perform assisted driving and parking functions. This combination of technologies also enables the vehicle’s smart summon feature, which see the vehicle autonomously drive to the user’s location.

The HiPhi Z’s pricing will range from $89,000 to $129,000 and, in the lead-up to further details being announced, it will be on display in Shenzhen from July 6. Human Horizons plans to debut the EV further across 11 key major cities. The OEM also confirmed that the HiPhi Z’s launch date will be announced at the Chengdu Auto Show in August, where interested users will be able to test drive the vehicle.

Valeo’s third-generation LiDAR sees everything, even when an object is far ahead, invisible to the human eye. It can identify objects more than 150 meters ahead that neither the human eye, cameras nor radars can, such as a small object with very low reflectivity, for example a tire lying in the road. It recreates a 3D image of the vehicle’s surroundings using a point cloud, with an as yet unparalleled resolution for an automotive system. It can map the ground topology and detect road markings.

Valeo LiDAR also features embedded high performance software based on artificial intelligence algorithms, which enables it to steer the vehicle’s trajectory, anticipating obstacle-free zones on the road ahead. It can self-diagnose and triggers its cleaning system when its field of vision is obstructed. Like all Valeo LiDAR, the technology is automotive grade, meaning that the data it generates remain fully reliable and accurate in all usage and weather conditions (from -40 up to +85°C). It stands as the key component in a sensor system enabling vehicles to achieve approval for SAE conditional driving automation (level 3), meeting the legal requirements of UN-R157.

Valeo’s third generation LiDAR makes driving safer and gives time back to the driver in bothersome driving situations, such as when traveling at low or medium speed in heavy traffic. These challenges are central to the partnership between Stellantis and Valeo. Through its data collection capabilities, this LiDAR will enable new services to be offered to Stellantis’ customers.

Valeo is already world number one in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), equipping one in three new cars globally with its technologies. It was the first, and to date remains the only, company to produce an automotive LiDAR scanner on an industrial scale. More than 170,000 units have been produced and the technology is protected by more than 500 patents. The Group intends to accelerate even further in this field, as announced in February 2022 with the launch of its Move Up plan, the value creation strategy at the heart of the four megatrends disrupting mobility (electrification, ADAS, reinvention of the interior experience and lighting).

Upon receiving the permit, Vueron conducted a test in which its LiDAR drove a vehicle autonomously from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The test vehicle equipped with the company’s LiDAR completed a 383-mile route that ran through Interstate 5 and Interstate 580, driving for six hours at a maximum speed of 70 mph.

Vueron has said that the safety driver inside Vueron’s vehicle did not hold the steering wheel for the duration of the test, and that no further autonomous assistance was provided by other technologies, such as cameras, radars, GPS, or high-definition mapping systems. Likewise, Vueron advised that it further verified the solution through self-driving tests conducted in a variety of roadway conditions and environments.

In Q3 2022, Vueron expects to unveil the next generation of its LiDAR platforms that can be worked on immediately by its customers. The company is also aiming to provide these systems at an affordable price point without compromising on delivering a safe, secure, driving experience.

The new test demonstrates the sensor’s capabilities in adverse weather conditions, and behind a first surface (in this case, a windshield). It was conducted to study the impact of adaptive LiDAR on the performance and safety of automated functionality. AEye’s team used a rain machine to simulate wet weather and mounted the sensor behind a piece of windshield glass to gauge long-range sensor performance in heavy rain. In a second test, its LiDAR sensor was able to detect small objects in a tunnel (through rain and a second surface) at 120 meters. It also detected five bricks and a black dog not visible to the human eye at the same distance, alongside a pedestrian and a child at 110 meters.

In March, the firm announced that VSI Labs had verified its LiDAR’s range, resolution, and speed capabilities, and its ability to place the sensor behind first surfaces (such as the windshield or grill) with a minimal impact to performance. The latter is critical to automotive OEMs, as it provides flexibility in implementing sensors within their vehicle designs without compromising on aesthetics or changing aerodynamics.

AEye’s bistatic architecture streamlines vehicle integration by separating the transmit and receive paths. This provides an optical isolation that ensures any light reflected does not blind the sensor, ensuring optimal performance – even in adverse weather conditions. This performance is further enhanced by AEye’s use of 1550 nanometer lasers that provides detection in areas with lower visibility – such as rain, snow, and smoke.

AEye’s intelligent LiDAR utilizes adaptive sensing to deliver this enhanced performance. The technology addresses the most difficult challenges facing autonomous driving while meeting functional safety requirements. AEye’s adaptive LiDAR is also capable of scanning the scene around it while focusing on important objects to enable safer, quicker, decision-making in complex scenarios.

In addition to performance testing from VSI Labs, the sensors were also validated by NTS, who put them through extreme automotive shock and vibration tests.

The solid-state Velabit sensor now has a simultaneously achievable maximum horizontal FoV of 90° and maximum vertical FOV of 70°, approximately three times more points per second than the previous model. The next generation Velabit takes all of Velodyne’s learnings to offer a configurable and dynamic field of view and delivers a high-resolution zoom capability, all within a compact and lightweight sensor.

Versatile Performance

This lightweight and versatile Velabit sensor features a small form factor and low power consumption to maximize battery life and vehicle range. The small size and low cost allow the sensor the unique ability to be utilized in multiple industries and for critical safety applications, such as:

• Automotive and new mobility
• Autonomous mobile robots
• Industrial forklift and warehouse
• Infrastructure and smart city
• Sidewalk and last-mile delivery
• UAV mapping and navigation

Engineered to be an optimal automotive-grade lidar solution for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles, Velabit can fill sensing gaps, helping automakers achieve full coverage around a vehicle. The sensor enables robust perception coverage for ADAS features including Blind-Spot Monitoring, Cross-Traffic Detection, and Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking (PAEB). Additionally, the wide vertical field of view makes this an ideal technology for near-field sensing and robotics applications.

Software + Hardware Integration

Velabit will be combined with Velodyne’s lidar-based perception software, Vella, to streamline customers’ projects and advance a broad spectrum of vehicle safety functions. The software translates Velabit’s high-quality point cloud data into valuable perception outputs, including object classification and tracking, obstacle detection, scene segmentation, and object velocity, that can be readily utilized by vehicle systems. When combined with vehicle odometry data, Vella provides time and distance to collision measurements, enabling safer vehicle response.

The sensor can also be combined with other Velodyne lidar technologies, such as the Velarray H800, for high-speed operation or function as a standalone lidar solution in low-speed applications.

Designed for Mass Production

In combination with MLA, Velodyne’s fully automated manufacturing process and global manufacturing partnerships enable cost optimization and high-quality mass production, as early as Q4 2022.

Since its launch, Velabit has received widespread industry acclaim, including being named a winner in the 2020 Best of What’s New awards by Popular Science. The sensor also was named the winner of the 2020 Innovation Award by Silicon Valley Robotics.

Key Velodyne customers and other top global innovators in automotive and robotics technology are scheduled to attend Velodyne’s upcoming Velabit Demo Days to witness the Velabit in action, and will have an opportunity to reserve future capacity.

The funding will be used to increase the production capabilities of its automotive-grade LiDARs, support supply-chain partners for mass production capabilities, and further expand Innovusion’s research and development efforts around advanced LiDAR Technologies.

In January 2021, NIO announced ET7, its first vehicle with full-stack autonomous driving capabilities, scheduled to be delivered in the first quarter of 2022. The vehicle is equipped with an image-grade ultra-long-range LiDAR developed jointly by Innovusion and NIO, a key component of ET7’s NIO Autonomous Driving (NAD) system. A model application in the field of autonomous driving, the LiDAR has a 120-degree horizontal viewing angle, ultra-high resolution, and the industry’s longest detection range, capable of “seeing” up to 500 meters. Innovusion’s unique “flexible gaze” function generates a more detailed three-dimensional point-of-view to better track vehicles and pedestrians while simultaneously maintaining high-resolution across the entire field of view, even in low-light conditions.

The shuttles are expected to achieve level 4 autonomy, enable fully automated driving and be used to transport both passengers and cargo in various geo-fenced settings. The agreement is expected to generate hundreds of millions in revenue throughout the life of the program.

The new design win followed a stringent two-and-a-half-year due diligence process conducted by the Tier-1 automotive supplier. As part of the selection process, the supplier completed a thorough review of Innoviz’s product reliability, manufacturing processes and maturity, automotive qualifications, corporate processes certifications and more.

Unlike costly mechanical spinners installed on car roofs, InnovizOne is a low-cost, automotive-grade, lightweight solution. InnovizOne is designed to ensure that the shuttles circumvent even the smallest of obstacles. A number of sensors placed in various spots around the shuttle provide both short and long-range vision, removing blind spots and enhancing safety.

Pony.ai is set to deploy automotive-grade production autonomous fleets in 2023 globally. The next-generation fleet will seamlessly integrate Luminar’s Iris and feature a multi-sensor 360-degree configuration and a slimmest profile roofline at just 10cm off of the vehicle roof. The goal of the partnership is to increase safe, autonomous driving in complex urban environments with an integrated sensor design that leads advanced development to production scale.

The partnership followed Pony.ai’s expansion of its Robotaxi service across five cities in China and the U.S., including Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Irvine and Fremont, CA. Pony.ai began testing China’s first Robotaxi service, PonyPilot, in late 2018 in Guangzhou, and in 2019 became the first company to roll out a public-facing Robotaxi service in California. It is the only self-driving company with large-scale deployment across five cities internationally and a fleet of over 200 autonomous vehicles.

The result is a sensor believed to be the industry’s longest-distance sensing range capability of 400 meters, with dark-object detection for safe highway driving. Argo Lidar also offers ultra-high resolution perception, providing the photorealistic imaging required to identify small objects for safe operation on complex city streets.

Ready to Scale

The Argo SDS capabilities, combined with the company’s fleet dispatch infrastructure and operations experience, translate into clear advantages when it comes to commercialization:

• Safe operations in cities, suburbs, and on highways enables connections from warehouses to urban and suburban routes for middle- and last-mile delivery, or service to the most in-demand ride-hailing routes to and from airports;
• Scaled operations based on extensive testing and development in six U.S. cities, with additional cities coming online this year, as well as expansion into Europe;
• Service experience, including address-to-address routing within urban and suburban areas of operation, maximizing effectiveness for deliveries or commuters.

Alongside custom-designed sensors and high-performance computing, Argo Lidar is the centerpiece of the Argo SDS. It is designed to handle the most complex aspects of human driving, such as:

• Seeing the darkest of black-painted vehicles—those that reflect less than 1% of light even at long range and in the pitch blackness of night
• Safely navigating left-hand turns onto roads with oncoming high-speed traffic by utilizing a 360° field of view
• Managing instant transitions from darkness to bright light, such as when entering and leaving a tunnel, which often temporarily blind human drivers
• Distinguishing small, moving objects such as animals from vegetation and static objects

The innovation behind Argo Lidar is known as “Geiger-mode” sensing. Argo AI’s proprietary Geiger-mode lidar has the ability to detect the smallest particle of light—a single photon—and is key to sensing objects with low reflectivity. This, combined with higher-wavelength operation above 1400 nanometers, gives Argo Lidar its unique capabilities, including longer-range, higher-resolution, lower-reflectivity detection and full 360° field of view—all from a single sensor.

The Argo AI Hardware Development team is working with a highly experienced contract manufacturer for series production of the new lidar sensor. The first batch of Argo Lidar sensors is already supporting on-road testing of Argo’s self-driving test vehicle fleet. Soon, volume production plans with Ford and Volkswagen Group will lead to the widespread commercialization of autonomous delivery and ride hail services.

The design cycles for ADAS are complex and automotive OEMs and suppliers need systems that streamline the transitions between simulation, lab-based and physical test environments to ultimately create safer vehicles. Today, disparate tools cause siloed processes, time-to-market delays, and lead to higher costs that reduce the pace of innovation and hinder the quality of advanced technologies.

This approach combined with NI’s software-connected systems will help transportation customers streamline the transitions between simulation, lab-based and physical testing environments. In doing so, NI will now enable vehicle manufacturers and suppliers to accelerate the shift to self-driving vehicles.

In conjunction with this acquisition, NI also announced a strategic collaboration with Ansys, the global leader in engineering simulation. Ansys’ industry-leading simulation solution enables sensor vendors to simulate the fundamental physics of their radars, LiDARs, and cameras from design through manufacturing. Together, NI and Ansys will help solve the complex challenge of recreating real-world simulation to validate sensors and inject data into software and hardware under test in real-time. This shared focus will provide customers with critical insights into how products will perform in market by bridging the worlds of simulated and physical test with more precise outcomes.

Gatik uses Velodyne’s lidar sensors as a key part of a fully redundant sensor suite to deliver goods safely and efficiently between micro-fulfilment centers, dark stores and retail locations – a logistics flow known as the middle mile. Gatik fulfills revenue-generating autonomous orders daily for multiple Fortune 500 customers in the US and Canada, including Walmart, reducing customer costs and keeping delivery times short.

Gatik uses Velodyne’s Alpha Prime and Ultra Puck lidar sensors to support short-haul logistics with precise, reliable navigation for real-time autonomous operations. Gatik operates a fleet of class 3-6 trucks, equipped with multi-temperature compartments, 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, on routes up to 300 miles in multiple markets across North America. Gatik’s solution helps retailers meet consumer demand for rapid delivery of goods driven by soaring e-commerce growth, increase road safety for all road users and help customers meet an unprecedented expectation for contactless delivery.

Velodyne’s Alpha Prime and Ultra Puck sensors, which use Velodyne’s patented 3D surround view technology, provide real-time object detection needed for safe navigation and reliable operation. The sensors provide the range, accuracy and resolution that make them ideal solutions for autonomous logistics services. They detect and track vehicles, pedestrians and other obstructions to help autonomous vehicles safely navigate at various speeds, traveling night and day in a range of road conditions such as rain, sleet and snow.

As a 3D sensor, lidar has the features of long range detection, excellent resolution, little influence from ambient light, and direct acquisition of object distance information, which can significantly improve the reliability and user experience of the intelligent driving system. However, due to its high cost, difficulty in mass production, and unsatisfactory product reliability, lidar has not been applied to the automotive mass production market. But with the cooperation between Livox and Xpeng on its new P5 model, it is about to achieve a breakthrough.

Heavy investment only for automotive-grade lidar

To overcome the three bottlenecks in the lidar industry: high price, low production scalability and poor reliability, and ensure that HAP can meet automotive-grade reliability requirements, Livox has established a test center that can undertake over 70 automotive-grade testing items, and has introduced state-of-the-art testing equipment. Supported by a team of leading industry experts, the test center provides Livox with impressive and efficient testing capabilities, which greatly speed up the product development and iteration in the DV stage.

The HAP officially released today has passed over 70 items of automotive-grade reliability test, such as EMC (Electro Magnetic Compatibility), mechanical engineering, environmental reliability, to enable it to meet major car makers’ standards and other industrial standards, such as ISO 16750.

Mass production is the mission

In order to comprehensively improve HAP’s mass production efficiency and control its production process, and ensure consistent product quality, Livox has decided to build a new intelligent manufacturing center, and introduced fully automated lidar assembly lines. Through the patent multi-laser transmitter and receiver module integration and packaging technology (DL-Pack), Livox has greatly improved the efficiency of bottlenecks in traditional lidar production, such as the focusing process. By increasing the UPH (units per hour) to 40 pieces/hour, each of the HAP production lines boasts an annual capacity of up to 200,000 pieces. In addition to the highly automated lidar assembly lines, the intelligent manufacturing center is also equipped with several world-class SMT (Surface Mount Technologies) production lines with the designed PPM (Parts Per Million) at 10 to meet Livox’s future expanding needs for the efficient production of its own core lidar components.

Thanks to the above efforts, HAP’s manufacturing capacity has been significantly ahead of the industry average, and it is at the forefront of mass production in the lidar industry, which fully guarantees the potential for mass production of lidars and their serial application in vehicles.

Consistent superior performance

The detection range of HAP for objects with low reflectivity (at 10% reflectivity) can reach 150m. HAP features a horizontal FOV of 120°, an angular resolution of up to 0.16°*0.2°, and a point cloud density equivalent to 144 lines.

Suppported by HAP lidar, the traditional ADAS system will be more effective in dealing with scenarios such as HWP (High Way Pilot), close cut-in vehicles in urban traffic jam, night driving, adaptive cruise on curves, and Park-by-Memory, so that users can enjoy a better functional experience with ease and security.

Enhanced safety with ultra FPS

Through a cleverly designed rotating-mirror technology, Livox developed and applied a brand-new “ultra FPS” (Frames Per Second) lidar technology concept. When HAP is turned on, the objects within the lidar’s ROI of FOV will be scanned twice against the rest area. The feature offers enhanced safety for road users when driving at high speeds or surrounded by crowds of pedestrians and bicycles.

InnovizTwo LiDAR sensor is specifically designed for automakers and Robotaxi, shuttle, and delivery companies requiring an automotive-grade, mass-producible solution. Leveraging on previous generations InnovizPro and InnovizOne, the new InnovizTwo 905nm LiDAR enjoys the vast expertise developed at Innoviz. 

The new design includes a new detector, scanner, and multiple advances in the optical packaging and the electric design. InnovizTwo’s significantly improved performance is driven by:

1. Extended Field of View (FoV) of 125×40 degrees.
2. Increased native resolution of 0.07×0.05 degrees, over 8000 lines each second, leaving no hazardous object undetected. 
3. Exceeding market demand with a range of 300m, with the ability to see small, dark objects with 10% reflectivity at over 220m under strong sun conditions of 100Klux using the high resolution of 0.07×0.05 degrees and 20 frames per second, keeping full field of view.  
4. Configurable FoV, Region of Interest (ROI) and frame rate, allows adjustment to dynamic scenario configuration. The combination of very wide FOV with very long range replaces the need for installing multiple LiDARs.
5. Embedded Innoviz’s Automotive-grade Perception Platform (InnovizAPP) for object detection and classification of cars, pedestrians, motorcycles as well as providing shape, orientation, velocity, acceleration and occlusion status. InnovizTwo provides a secure and holistic solution that includes classification and detection capabilities in addition to the point cloud within the same box.
6. ASIL B(D) functional safety, full temperature range of -40 to 85 Deg C, AUTOSAR, ASPICE, automotive ethernet interface & cyber protection.    
7. Flexible and modular design to allow multiple design tradeoffs between multiple markets and verticals.

InnovizTwo samples will undergo rigorous testing and revisions this year in order to reach an optimum design. Innoviz expects that the product will enter series production during 2022 to serve leading OEM car programs due in 2023. Innoviz is also developing new manufacturing tools in order to enable it to reach production levels of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 units per year by 2024.

Customers that are using InnovizOne today will be able to switch to InnovizTwo as their programs scale to leverage cost and performance improvements. InnovizOne, already in production, was chosen by BMW for use on several of its models, supporting its first generation of consumer autonomous vehicles. InnovizTwo high volume production is planned to be managed and scale though Innoviz’s multiple tier I partners.

InnovizAPP is based on Innoviz’s advanced Perception Software, which leverages the rich data derived from Innoviz’s LiDAR sensors, coupled with proprietary AI algorithms, to analyze the point cloud and estimate an object’s speed with high precision. The software can accurately detect and classify objects in any 3D driving scene up to 250 meters away, including cars, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians, and more. It also executes perception algorithms in real time, detecting and classifying pixels as collision relevant or non-collision relevant.

The InnovizAPP hardware provides an automotive-grade reference design based on low-cost automotive-grade components. It connects to existing vehicle systems and enables real-time perception in a simple plug-and-play manner, allowing automakers to test and learn how to build their own autonomous driving systems.

Both the perception software and Innoviz’s solid-state LiDAR sensor, InnovizOne, are designed and developed to conform with the automotive industry’s highest standards and are being adopted by key industry leaders, including BMW.

The R brand program is expected to begin series production with Luminar starting in 2022, with the parties’ longer-term goal being widespread standardization across all vehicle lines.

As part of the close collaboration, Luminar will also be establishing an office in China, to be located in Shanghai alongside SAIC Motor, where SAIC would also be providing local support for the partnership.

The partnership is expected to deliver the first autonomous production vehicles in China, establishing SAIC’s technology leadership position and Luminar’s production launch in the region. Luminar’s Iris lidar is seamlessly integrated into the roofline of the R brand vehicles at the optimal vantage point, while acting symbolically as a crown of the vehicle for safety and autonomy. Certain software components in Luminar’s Sentinel solution including object detection, classification and tracking is also planned to be integrated into R brand, helping to enable planned Highway Autonomy and Proactive Safety capabilities on the vehicles.

Luminar engineers will work closely with SAIC Motor engineers to integrate hardware and software technology into its vehicles and fully optimize their performance and capabilities, which will also incorporate over-the-air updates to expand the operating domain of autonomy and further improve the safety of vehicles over time.

The new Insight 400 retains many of the key features of Insight LiDAR’s ground-breaking ultra-high resolution, long-range sensor and has been optimized for long-range rear facing and early ADAS applications. As with the Insight 1600, the Insight 400 delivers instant velocity in every pixel, multiple returns per pixel and industry leading object detection probability in a reduced size and an even lower cost. When combined with the Insight 1600, the Insight 400 enables full 360-degree long-range lidar coverage at a total lidar cost per vehicle of less than $1500; up to 4X cheaper than other solutions.

Insight is able to achieve this industry -leading performance and cost by putting all the key optical components onto Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) and sharing most components between the two models.

Key Features:

• Highest resolution on the market enabling safe navigation in a variety of environments
• Instant velocity with every pixel, reducing system latency and improving accuracy
• Small size – 13 cm x 5 cm x 5.5 cm
• Proprietary true solid-state, fast axis scan
• Insight’s patented tunable laser control algorithms for higher pixel count and much higher resolution
• Wide Field of View, enabling full 360-degree coverage at minimal cost

The introduction of the Insight 400 means that Insight LiDAR now is able to offer full long-range, 360-degree lidar coverage around a vehicle at a price of a single 120 degree sensor from competitors.

Peter Croonen and several other industrial private equity investors, with a background in automotive and mobility are amongst the 9 to express their confidence in XenomatiX, the Leuven based, high-tech company.  

With the additional capital, the company will accelerate the industrialisation of price competitive lidar modules. In a few weeks, XenomatiX will launch a new product to join its portfolio of true solid state lidars for automotive and industrial applications.  

The new investments will also support XenomatiX’ road measuring applications, known as 6D Road Scanning. This big data business activity of XenomatiX makes use of the company’s solid state Lidar technology to digitize and characterize roads. The resulting data reveals the road quality, the need for maintenance and the precise location of road defects.  

Ouster’s high-performance digital lidar sensors are used in three locations on the bus, and help the bus eliminate blind spots with their wide field of view and high resolution. This deployment is the result of a multi-year strategic customer agreement entered into in August 2020.

QCraft launched China’s first regularly operated 5G robobus project in Suzhou, China followed by Shenzhen, China last year. QCraft plans to have at least 100 autonomous buses on open roads in China by the end of this year, with significant growth anticipated in the years ahead.