Innovusion announces its high-resolution image-grade LiDAR system

Innovusion Inc., a designer and developer of innovative hybrid Solid State LiDAR systems for vehicle safety applications, has announced the availability of its Cheetah system.

Based on its innovative rotating polygon optical architecture, Innovusion has melded together proprietary detector electronics, advanced optics and sophisticated software algorithms to offer a system that has no equal in the long-distance, high-resolution LiDAR vehicle mobility system industry.

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 metres on objects with 10% reflectivity and clearly detecting objects out to 280 metres, 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. Because of Cheetah's exceptional image quality, its 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.

Based on its superior performance enabled by the innovative 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 efficient 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.

Dr. Junwei Bao, Innovusion CEO said, “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 optimise 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 maximising 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,” he added.

Applications of the new LiDAR system includes vehicle safety systems, autonomous vehicle systems and V2X (vehicle-to-everything) for automobiles, trucks, buses, trains and off-road vehicles.