Innovusion starts shipping Image-Grade LiDAR System for Autonomous Vehicles

On the heels of the funding, the company's LiDAR system, the Innovusion Cheetah, is now available for ordering. Innovusion Cheetah is the world's first image-grade LiDAR system to support level 4+ autonomous driving solutions.

With the autonomous vehicle market expected to reach $80 billion by 2035, LiDAR, the sensor technology that allows self-driving cars to efficiently detect and measure the objects on the road around them, is essential for reliable, safe Level 4+ autonomous vehicles.

Innovusion Cheetah LiDAR detects objects more than 200 metres away and generates an exceptionally dense point cloud (300 lines), more than double of that of other providers in the space, while maintaining a high frame rate and achieving low-cost in high-volume production. Innovusion is ramping production to meet worldwide demand starting in Q4 2018.

"LiDAR technology is critical to accelerating the adoption and deployment of autonomous vehicles, and we look forward to working with providers and manufacturers to ensure their solutions are supported with the best-in-class technology for superior range and resolution," says Junwei Bao, co-founder and CEO of Innovusion. "This round of funding will allow us to expand our R&D team and manufacturing facilities to more quickly develop, market and deliver Innovusion Cheetah LiDAR to customers around the world, helping drive innovative perception solutions in autonomous vehicles."

Innovusion was founded in November 2016 and began shipping samples of Innovusion Cheetah LiDAR in the second quarter of 2018. Innovusion Cheetah is the first LiDAR technology to feature the unique combination of image-grade resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio required for long-distance detection.

"LiDAR is a key component for autonomous driving, especially high performance LiDAR. Cheetah is one of the most advanced LiDAR sensors we have seen in the market," said Ian Zhu, managing partner at NIO Capital. "When looking at the robo-taxi market and the amount of testing needed, we see a strong immediate need for high performance LiDAR sensors. As for the OEM market, we see automakers putting more and more efforts on testing and integrating sensors for autonomous driving with more strict requirements related to cost, auto-gradability as well as performance. We strongly believe Innovusion will lead and greatly benefit from these booming markets."