Innoviz Technologies, an Israel-based LiDAR maker that has raised $82 million since being founded in January 2016, has launched InnovizPro, a developer version of its automotive-grade LiDAR solution. InnovizPro will be on display next week at CES 2018 in Booth 2101 in Tech East, Westgate.
InnovizPro features a detection range of 150 meters and a frame rate of 20 frames per second (FPS). Innoviz tells Robotics Business Review that InnovizPro “is being sold initially at a few thousands dollars per device, depending on scope and volume.”
No doubt it’s a sign of how confident the company is in its technology in a space that’s becoming more competitive by the day. Innoviz wants to get this into the hands of autonomous vehicle developers to give them a preview of what’s to come with InnovizOne, the solid state LiDAR the company plans to launch in 2019 for “a few hundreds dollar per device.”
InnovizOne is designed for autonomous driving Levels 3-5, the company says. It features a detection range of 250 meters and frame rate of 25 FPS. InnovizOne also has a host of perception capabilities, object detection and classification, lane detection, object tracking, SLAM, and more.
Innoviz was founded by former members of the elite technological unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. The group has expertise in the fields of electro-optics, computer vision, MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) design and signal processing.
Innoviz has partnerships with Magna International and Aptiv, which is giving self-driving taxi rides to CES attendees. So if you’re one of the many who wait in line for an Aptiv self-driving demo, perhaps you’ll experience Innoviz’s technology first hand.
Lowering LiDAR costs
There’s a lot of work being done to lower the cost of LiDAR sensors, which are one of the most critical and expensive components of autonomous vehicles. This is good news, obviously, as significant price reductions will help facilitate widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles.
Earlier this week, Velodyne slashed the price of its most popular LiDAR sensor, the VLP-16 Puck, from $8,000 to $4,000. According to Velodyne, the main reason it was able to reduce the price of the VLP-16 by 50% was because of the new “megafactory” it opened in San Jose, Calif., in 2017 that has a streamlined manufacturing process.
In October 2017, Cruise, a self-driving startup acquired by GM, purchased LiDAR maker strobe that has condensed an entire LiDAR array to a single chip. Analysts predict GM’s acquisition will lower the cost of the technology by 100%.
And of course in early 2017, Google’s Waymo touted the fact that it reduced LiDAR costs by 90%. Waymo originally outsourced LiDAR production, but as of December 2015, it started building the technology in-house.
According to Waymo CEO John Krafcik, “A few years ago, a single top-of-the-range LiDAR cost upwards of $75,000. Today, we’ve brought down that cost by more than 90%.”
The Roadmap for Self-Driving Cars
If you’re attending CES and want to learn about the latest self-driving developments, make sure to attend our “Artificial Intelligence: Insights into our Future” conference on Jan. 9 from 9 am to 12:30 PM that covers the state of artificial intelligence, including how robots and self-driving cars are benefiting.
Here’s the info on our self-driving car session called “The Roadmap for Self-Driving Cars” that takes place 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Room N260 in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center:
Panelists: Michael Fleming, CEO, Torc Robotics; Andrew Kouri, CEO, lvl5; Andy Zeilman, vice president of business development and strategic alliances, Affectiva
Self-driving cars promise to save millions of lives and revolutionize the transportation industry. This panel will analyze how AI and other technologies are improving self-driving cars and how to safely integrate them onto our roads. It will also examine the in-car experience and the technological and regulatory hurdles that remain. More Info
