/PRCWT/Shenzhen, January 3, 2024 - 2023 is destined to be an extraordinary and ups and downs year. From the accelerated decline in fuel vehicle sales to the price war of the new energy arena, everyone has felt the madness of change in the new energy era. Driven by the wave of artificial intelligence technology innovation such as BEV and large models, autonomous driving applications have also experienced ups and downs: from the earliest intelligent driving function was not recognized, to the later rapid improvement of the intelligent driving experience, and then became a must-have option for the vast majority of car buyers.
In the past year, we have witnessed the arrival of the inflection point of smart driving applications, and we have also seen the white-hot competition in the entire industry in smart driving. But in the context of the real economic environment, competing for prices and grabbing shares seems to have become the subconscious of the entire industry's survival; how to "reduce costs and increase efficiency" while maintaining smart driving as the core selling point of automotive products has become an important proposition.
For lidar, is it not the case? From the doubts about the necessity of lidar and the promotion of pure vision solutions at the beginning of the year, to the later smart driving solutions with lidar that showed value and were accepted by consumers, as well as the continuous increase in overall lidar shipments, all reflect the ever-changing industry. But the temporary tailwind does not mean anything, we still need to think and practice: where should lidar go?
One Path believes that the entire industry urgently needs to revolutionize the lidar architecture through technological innovation, so that lidar is no longer an expensive decoration for a few models, and is no longer a "precision instrument" that car companies love and hate.
On the eve of the popularization of smart driving, ZVISION EZ6 took the lead in shouting the slogan of "LiDAR equal rights", with the goal of "realizing the demand of reducing the cost of smart driving of the whole vehicle and providing easy-to-use lidar", to promote the large-scale application of lidar in smart driving, so that more consumers can enjoy the safe and sophisticated smart driving experience brought by high-end auxiliary driving equipped with lidar.
If moving forward with a heavy load is the portrayal of 2023, then light travel is the main theme of 2024. On January 2, 2024, One Path Technology officially released a cost-effective long-range lidar based on a new generation of SPAD architecture for ADAS pre-assembly production: ZVISION EZ6!
PART.1
The new SPAD architecture opens the era of digital lidar
Highly integrated SPAD architecture, leading the era of laser radar thousand yuan
Putting aside the general trend of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" for the time being, just looking at the LiDAR vehicle sensor itself, the most criticized point by car companies is that it is too expensive - it is true that the entire industry has worked hard for many years to reduce the price of LiDAR from the original hundreds of thousands of yuan to a few thousand yuan, but this is still not enough. After all, the Camera, which is also a key sensor for smart driving, is only a few hundred yuan, and the whole vehicle still has a strong demand for cost reduction for LiDAR. However, to this day, the price of a large number of long-distance LiDARs in front of mass production is still around 3,000 to 4,000 yuan, which is also the most fundamental reason why LiDARs are loud on the car but have a low loading rate.
ZVISION EZ6 takes "the highest cost performance for mainstream applications" as the core demand and fundamental starting point of the market. Through a new generation of SPAD lidar architecture, the product meets the performance required by high-end intelligent driving while achieving a substantial reduction in LiDAR costs.
The core component of this architecture is a stacked single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) depth sensor applied at the receiving end, which combines a large-scale single-photon pixel array at the front end and a high-speed signal processing chip at the back end. It can directly detect the multi-pulse photon signal in front of it with high sensitivity, and perform time-of-flight measurement (TOF) on it. By accumulating histograms, key lidar information such as distance and signal strength can be directly obtained.
Compared with the traditional SiPM or APD-based lidar architecture, a SPAD chip replaces most of the discrete components of the previous optoelectronic front-end → amplification link → analog-to-digital conversion → digital signal processing, which greatly simplifies the architecture complexity; At the same time, thanks to the core distance information acquisition has been completed in SPAD SOC, the back end only needs to be equipped with an ultra-low computing power processor to complete all the signal processing of the lidar.
ZVISION EZ6 effectively enhances the integration of the laser radar receiver and reduces the requirements for the computing power of the core processor, achieving a substantial cost reduction of the receiver link. At the same time, the EZ6 also adopts the latest VCSEL linear array chip with high integration at the transmitter to replace the high-cost solution of the previous single-point VCSEL array.
Through architectural innovation to achieve a high degree of chip and integration of lidar, the cost of the EZ6 has been effectively reduced, and its price has taken the lead in breaking the boundary of 2,000 yuan, truly entering the "1" era. In addition, the cost reduction gain is more obvious when lidar evolves to high wiring harnesses (such as 128 → 192), reflecting the advantages of digital radar, as the so-called "plus volume does not increase price". It is also through architectural innovation that one path can achieve a healthy cost reduction, providing high-quality products with attractive prices and competitive performance, while ensuring the healthy and "profitable" development of the company's future business.
LiDAR is digitized, and the core is replaced immediately.
Through the increase in the number of front-end SPAD pixels and the improvement of the bandwidth and capability of back-end digital signal processing, the SPAD chip can achieve a leap in performance quality without a significant increase in cost. Directly reflected in the lidar, it is the increase of scanning harness, the improvement of ranging ability or the increase of frame rate; for the lidar of the SPAD architecture, the core replacement is new!
In addition, thanks to the digital architecture, the SPAD chip can be flexibly adjusted according to different pixel combinations and usage methods, with angular resolution and detection range, which can meet the needs of future high-end intelligent driving for LiDAR flexible ROI - software-defined lidar is no longer a dream.
In terms of engineering implementation, the SPAD technology route can make lower-coupling module designs for transmitting, scanning, receiving, etc., making the overall LiDAR architecture platform-based. Subsequent product upgrades (angular resolution, ranging capability or frame rate improvement) or product morphological evolution (pure solid-state architecture, blinding products, or in-cabin solutions) can be rapidly developed and iterated under the same technical framework to make full use of the development experience and algorithm capabilities accumulated by the platform, so as to realize the reuse of development resources.
More importantly, based on the evolution of family-owned products under the same platform, although the product form has changed and the ability has become stronger, the point cloud characteristics of its output are continuous. Customers will not be unfamiliar with it. At the same time, under a wide range of working conditions, especially for corner case scenarios, the accumulated optimization projects for lidar will be effectively reused, avoiding repeated adaptation work in the laser upgrade process, and truly realizing incremental autonomous driving development.
PART.2
ZVISION EZ6 is a useful lidar
For the mass production market, to define a sufficiently attractive lidar, only low cost is not enough, and it needs to be easy to use enough to ensure that customers can maximize its value in the development process of autonomous driving. As a masterpiece of One Path Technology's "equal rights", the EZ6 can achieve a perfect balance between performance and cost.
192 lines, clearer
The ZVISION EZ6 has industry-leading 192 lines and the number of vertical scanning lines, which is nearly 50% higher than the traditional solution, and has taken another step in the resolution of stereoscopic space. Its image-level point cloud feature can ensure excellent perception ability and deep integration with image information; at the same time, the point cloud output by the EZ6 is uniform and regular, compared with the non-uniform point cloud, which can reduce the uncertainty of perception network adaptation and reduce the adaptation cost of the initial project.
More importantly, the resolution of the 192 line can provide more point cloud information in the height direction for low objects in the field of vision, such as small obstacles in front, road edges, etc., so that low objects can be effectively distinguished from the ground plane, which substantially enhances the recognition ability of general obstacles.
A LiDAR is easy to use. In addition to performance, the more important thing is to make customers feel comfortable and reduce the "service" cost of lidar in the process of self-driving development. Therefore, EZ6 has also made many considerations in engineering, making full use of the advantages of the new generation SPAD architecture, solving the problems exposed in the past lidar mass production process, "standing on the shoulders of the pioneers", and striving to make better lidar products.
Small size, easy to integrate
Thanks to the high degree of integration of the SPAD architecture, the EZ6 has achieved a significant reduction in components, which in turn significantly reduces the PCB area required inside the sensor. Combined with the compact opto-mechanical design experience accumulated over the years, the EZ6 has achieved the extreme size of the lidar 110 * 110 * 45 (unit: mm, W * D * H), which can be easily replaced in the process of "cost reduction and efficiency increase" for car customers.
In addition, the EZ6's ultra-low power consumption (< 15W) can reduce the heat dissipation risk of customers under the original heat dissipation architecture, enabling more stable sensor performance under extreme operating conditions.
Dirty and rainy days no longer worry
The current pain point in the industry is that the performance of lidar deteriorates significantly on rainy days, which in turn limits the ODD of smart driving in vehicles, and also gives the public a feeling that "lidar is too precious".
Based on the analysis of industry pain points and essential demands, EZ6 is designed to minimize the impact of rainy days and increase the robustness of abnormal weather. For example, EZ6 will not appear "defects", "voids" and other abnormal phenomena when the light window is hung with water.
At the same time, the ZVISION EZ6 is also very resistant to dirt, and is equipped with advanced dirt detection algorithms. There will be no point cloud abnormalities due to slight dirt, and even if there is dirt, the EZ6 can accurately report the dirt information, which also solves the itch of the smart driver LiDAR "after long-term operation, the light window is dirty, resulting in abnormal function, and there is dirt but it cannot be effectively judged", which really makes customers feel at ease and comfortable.
PART.3
ZVISION SPAD product matrix helps smart driving to the next level
Thanks to the scalability of the SPAD architecture, its lidar products can be evolved according to market demand. In terms of product performance, angular resolution, detection range and frame rate can be improved. In product form, it can evolve from semi-solid to solid state, expand from extravehicular to intravehicular, and expand from forward-looking lidar to large-angle blinding lidar.
Focusing on the SPAD architecture, One Path Technology has launched a full-application scenario product matrix to meet the differentiated needs of lidar in the context of low-cost urban NOA applications in the future.
PART.4
ZVISION EZ6 is coming to 2024 CES
ZVISION EZ6 is the painstaking work of Yicao Technology for the passenger car market after a long time of polishing. We know that we are the catcher on the track of LiDAR; but we hope that EZ6 can lead the LiDAR industry to further improve efficiency and reduce costs, so that more consumers can use LiDAR, and really promote the popularization of smart driving! LiDAR equality, do the best intelligent driving infrastructure. ZVISION EZ6, Make Smart Driving Easier!
2024.1.9~ 2024.1.12, ZVISION EZ6 will officially debut CES2024, the appearance is also bright sword, welcome to come to exchange test sword!
