Automotive Lidar FAQs: Driving Safe Autonomy

Why is lidar still essential for vehicles, when camera-based computer vision is advancing so fast?

A few automakers use camera-based computer vision for assisted and automated driving. However, AI solely based on camera data cannot make the vehicle’s brain sharp enough for error-proof autonomy, due to physical constraints on camera’s performance in poor lighting conditions and its 2D nature.

Lidar enables a powerful yet streamlined dataset by increasing its accuracy and adding depth information, as it is inherently a 3D sensing technology that does not rely on external illumination. While cameras “see” things, lidars “touch” them.

What does this mean? We explained here.

How do lidar and radar differ?

While both use electromagnetic waves, their key difference lies in precision. How so? Check out this blog post.

That difference translates into different capabilities for detecting and locating objects. While radar can tell you there’s something ahead on the road, lidar goes further to inform you of its exact distance, size, lane position and whether it’s a car or a group of pedestrians.

Radar, as a highly industrialized technology, has been widely used to enable today’s assisted driving capabilities. However, it alone will not suffice for the higher levels of safety and autonomy required.

How far do lidars need to “see” for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles?

It’s not just a matter of how far a lidar can 'see,' but how well it sees. Range doesn’t mean much without resolution.

While a longer range may seem appealing, for automotive lidars, excessively long ranges are often unnecessary and come at the expense of other critical features such as size, power consumption and cost.

Under current speed limits, a maximum lidar detection range of 200m to 250m is more than sufficient for today’s ADAS platforms. Why this conclusion? Find out here.

For fully autonomous vehicles, a longer detection range is only needed when they are allowed to drive faster than vehicles today – would you say that it’s happening soon? In autonomous vehicles, field of view coverage is more important than range, due to its critical role in providing comprehensive situational awareness.

Why is power consumption so important for lidars?

Minimizing power consumption is crucial for automotive lidar to enhance vehicle efficiency and enable seamless integration into existing vehicle designs, particularly for electric vehicles.

High lidar power consumption not only impacts the overall vehicle's energy efficiency but also results in sensor overheating. This can compromise sensor performance, lead to safety risks and reduce operational reliability.

Some manufacturers integrate an active cooling system with their lidar, but we don’t think that’s the optimal solution. Learn how we tackle the issue instead in this blog post.

Why must automotive lidar be compact?

Compact lidar designs are essential for automotive applications, where sleek vehicle aesthetics and functional integration are paramount.

As vehicle designs evolve towards greater sophistication and aerodynamics, compact lidar solutions enable discreet placement behind windshields, in rooflines, or within vehicle fascia without compromising performance.

Size reduction doesn’t mean compromising performance. There are a few things lidar manufacturers can do to deliver compact lidars with long range and high resolution, with low power consumption. Read more here.

Why is lidar adoption in passenger cars taking so long?

Like any other automotive technology, we want to make sure lidar is deployed safely. While some automakers are more aggressive with self-driving features, even to the extent of autonowashing, most OEMs implement rigorous validation before deploying lidar in large volumes of consumer vehicle.

Extensive efforts are entailed on both sides of an OEM-lidar partnership, including testing the lidar on component and system levels, full-stack software support, physical vehicle integration and cybersecurity.

More importantly, lidars need to be produced in automotive volumes at affordable costs, which is a key challenge for the industry. What’s our strategy to ramp up volume production? Find out in this blog post.