Two lidar systems have been honoured by awards at the upcoming 2019 consumer electronics show, CES. The annual technology event will be held 8 to 11 January 2019 in Las Vegas, USA.
Israeli company Innoviz Technologies has been awarded with the 2019 CES Best of Innovation honour for its InnovizOne automotive-grade solid-state lidar device, while RoboSense has been named a CES 2019 Innovation Awards honouree for its RoboSense RS-IPLS Intelligent Perception lidar system.
Earlier in 2018, BMW announced it planned to deploy InnovizOne as part of its autonomous vehicles programme beginning in 2021, while HiRain Technologies, a Tier 1 Chinese automotive supplier, has also partnered with Innoviz.
Innoviz’s lidar solution is a solid-state, MEMS-based design, offering a 250-metre detection range, an angular resolution of 0.1 x 0.1 degrees, a frame rate of 25fps, and a depth accuracy of 3cm. It is based on 905nm laser light.
InnovizOne combined with Innoviz’s computer vision software delivers a complete software stack for autonomous vehicles. The software provides object detection, classification, tracking, lane marking, and simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM).
With $82 million in venture capital funding, the company has grown since its founding in 2016 and now employs more than 200 people. It has expanded beyond its Israeli headquarters to include a presence in the US, China, Japan and Europe. It has strategic partnerships with Tier 1 solution providers including Aptiv, Magna International, HiRain Technologies, and Samsung Harman.
RoboSense develops hardware and algorithm-based solutions for autonomous driving. Its RS-IPLS system is based on high-performance MEMS solid-state lidar. The system incorporates ‘gaze’ technology, which identifies and locks onto a target of interest in its field of view.
In October 2018, RoboSense obtained $45 million in strategic financing from Alibaba’s Cainiao network and some of China’s top OEMs - the largest single financing ever in China’s lidar industry.
Other technology to be honoured at CES 2019 include: GaN-on-silicon monolithic microLED display technology from Plessey Semiconductors, designed for augmented reality devices; and Bot3’s BB-16-VSLAM vision positioning and navigation module, for localisation and mapping of mobile robots.
