Innovusion Inc., a designer and developer of hybrid Solid State LiDAR systems for vehicle safety applications, announced the availability of its Cheetah system. Based on a rotating polygon optical architecture, Innovusion has melded together proprietary detector electronics, advanced optics and sophisticated software algorithms to offer a long-distance, high-resolution LiDAR vehicle mobility system.

Smart architecture, streamlined optics design, and integrated optical paths result in rapid manufacturing, scalability into automotive production, and lower cost. The ability to provide a detection range of 200 meters on objects with 10% reflectivity and clearly detecting objects out to 280 meters, provides the best and most advanced notification available today, creating more reaction time for the vehicle to determine the best course of action resulting in optimum safety performance.

The system achieves picture-like imaging due to its high number of vertical and horizontal scanning lines covering the entire field of view.

Every object is represented by an exceptionally dense point cloud, resulting in optimum safety through the ability to not miss important objects in the field of view.

Cheetah’s point cloud is especially suitable for fusing with camera data in the pixel level, producing a rich data set resulting in groundbreaking reliable object detection and classification.

Innovusion says that because of the performance enabled by the rotating polygon approach, unique detector electronics and proprietary algorithms, the Cheetah platform is ideal for safety system architects as the main perception sensor for L3+ autonomous vehicles, thus reducing the need for multiple LiDAR systems.

Key specifications of the Cheetah system include a screen resolution of 300 vertical pixels, while simultaneously maintaining a frame rate of 10Hz. Picture-like resolution is achieved though its 0.13-degree resolution over its 40-degree vertical FOV, and 0.14-degree resolution over its 100-degree horizontal FOV.

Because of the rotating polygon architecture, Cheetah draws under 40W, making it the most energy efficient system of any high-performance LiDAR currently available.

The Cheetah LiDAR platform is miniature and robust with the sensor head dimension measuring 112 mm (h) x 145 mm (w) x 105 mm(d), with a roadmap to substantially reduce the future footprint and formfactor.

Our technology strategy was to create the Cheetah platform using a judicious combination of mature industry-proven technology combined with innovative in-house optical and systems expertise to be able to optimize the price/performance and manufacturability of the resulting solution. Our team of innovative and highly-skilled precision optical system designers created the industry’s first Image grade high performance polygon-based solution that is robust enough for the demanding requirements of the automotive industry.

We knew early on in order to build the safest mobility system possible, we needed to utilize 1550nm laser combined with a large aperture polygon to achieve the best possible distance and resolution thus maximizing reliability and safety. We believe that Cheetah delivers picture-like images and the best price/performance offering in the industry today which we are confident will result in its rapid adoption in the marketplace.

—Dr. Junwei Bao, Innovusion CEO

Applications include vehicle safety systems, autonomous vehicle systems and V2X (vehicle-to-everything) for automobiles, trucks, buses, trains and off-road vehicles.

Innovusion successfully concluded its A Round funding of $30 million in Summer 2018.

Resources

• WO 2018/125725 Al: 2D Scanning High Precision LiDAR Using Combination Or Rotating Concave Mirror And Beam Steering Devices