Velodyne LiDAR

Velodyne LiDAR
Private
Industry LiDAR
Founded 1983
Headquarters San Jose, California, United States
Key people
 David Hall, CEO
Mike Jellen, President[1]
Marty Neese, COO[2]
Products LiDAR
Number of employees
 220[3] (2017)
Website www.velodynelidar.com

Velodyne LiDAR is a Silicon Valley-based LiDAR technology company spun off from Velodyne Acoustics.[4] As of August 2016, the company worked with 25 self-driving car programs.[5]

History

David Hall founded Velodyne in 1983 as an audio company specializing in subwoofer technology.[1][6]

Velodyne's experience with laser distance measurement started in 2005, when David Hall and his brother Bruce (then president of Velodyne) entered a vehicle in a driverless car race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The experience led them to realize shortcomings in existing LiDAR technology, which only scanned a single, fixed line of sight.[7] Velodyne developed new sensors for the 2007 race. The brothers sold their non-visual detection system as a steering input to five of the six teams that finished the race. The system used a spinning ball that shot out 64 lasers and used the length of time it took the light to bounce back to create an image of the road ahead.[8] The new system produced one million data points per second, while earlier systems produced 5,000 data points per second.[7]

A Velodyne HDL-64E sensor in 2009

Velodyne donated one of its early prototype sensors to the Robotics Collection at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in 2011.[9][10] In 2015, Frost & Sullivan gave Velodyne's VLP-16 sensor the North American Automotive ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) Sensors Product Leadership Award.[11]

In 2016, Velodyne's LiDAR department was spun off from Velodyne Acoustics as Velodyne LiDAR, Inc.[12] On August 16, 2016, Velodyne announced a $150M investment from Ford and Baidu.[5] Five months later, the company announced plans to expand a megafactory in San Jose, California, in order to ramp up to 1 million units annually by 2018.[13] Velodyne is also building a new R&D facility in Alameda, California.[14]

Technology

An autonomous vehicle with a Velodyne LiDAR sensor on its roof

Velodyne LiDAR focuses on applications of LiDAR technology for use in autonomous vehicles, vehicle safety systems, 3D mobile mapping, 3D aerial mapping and security. Velodyne's sensors have a range of around 120 meters, a longer range than those of cameras.[15] When in use on a moving vehicle, a Velodyne sensor can create an intricate image of the road ahead, including details like street signs and foliage.[16]

In December 2016, Velodyne announced significant progress in the development of solid-state LiDAR sensors, enabling the company to produce sensors more compact than their traditional predecessors at reduced cost.[17] Solid-state sensors are also at reduced risk for malfunction, since they contain fewer moving parts.[18]

In April 2017, Velodyne announced Velarray, a sensor that uses a fixed set of lasers and receivers, rather than the spinning array in previous sensors. The Velarray sensor is also smaller than its predecessors,[19] and does not create a 360-degree image of its surroundings, as Velodyne's other sensors do. Instead, it maps a 120-degree arc, with the intention that a car will be equipped with multiple Velarray sensors—one at the front and one at the rear, or one at each of its corners.[20]

Major customers and partners

In 2010, Google (now Alphabet) began testing self-driving cars on the streets in the San Francisco Bay Area using Velodyne’s LiDAR technology.[21] Alphabet's first self-driving car prototype (built on Toyota's Prius model) used Velodyne's HDL-64E LiDAR sensor.[22] Since then, Alphabet has stopped using Velodyne sensors in its vehicles.[23]

In 2012, Velodyne LiDAR signed a contract with Caterpillar for a supply of LiDAR sensors to be used for off-road vehicles.[24] These sensors help Caterpillar map quarries, farms and work sites during construction.[15]

In 2012 through 2015, Velodyne's spinning HDL-32E sensors have been seen on mobile mapping vehicles by Nokia Here,[25] Microsoft Bing Maps,[26] Tencent,[27] Baidu, and TomTom.[28] Leading mapping providers like Topcon[29] and Leica Geosystems[30] also use Velodyne's scanners for their turnkey mobile solutions.

In 2016, Ford Motor Company announced that it will expand its fleet of self-driving R&D vehicles and use Velodyne LiDAR's next-generation solid-state hybrid LiDAR pucks with no moving parts.[22][31][32]

Models

Name Puck Puck Lite Puck Hi-Res HDL-32E Ultra Puck HDL-64E VLS-128
Model VLP-16[33] VLP-16-LW[34] VLP-16-Hi-Res[35] HDL-32E[36] VLP-32C[37] HDL-64E[38] VLS-128
Announced Nov 2014 Feb 2016 Sep 2016 Nov 2010 Apr 2016 Aug 2007 Nov 2017
Channels 16 32 64 128
Range 100 m 200 m 120 m 300 m
Accuracy ±3 cm ±2 cm ±2 cm
Field of View (Vertical) +15.0° to -15.0° +10.0° to -10.0° +10.67° to -30.67° +15° to -25° +2.0° to -24.9°
Angular Resolution (Vertical) 2.0° 1.33° 0.4°
Field of View (Horizontal) 360°
Angular Resolution (Horizontal) 0.1° - 0.4° 0.08° – 0.35°
Rotation rate 5 – 20 Hz 5 – 20 Hz
Data Points per second 300.000 (single)

600.000 (dual)

 695.000 (single)

1.390.000 (dual)

 1.300.000 (single)

2.200.000 (dual)
Power 8 watt 12 watt 60 watt
Weight 830 g 590 g 830 g 1.0 kg 12,7 kg
Diameter 103 mm 85 mm 215 mm
Height 72 mm 144 mm 283 mm

References

  1. 1 2 "Management". Velodyne LiDAR. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  2. ↑ Schubarth, Cromwell (9 February 2017). "SunPower COO lured to job at auto tech startup building San Jose 'megafactory'". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  3. ↑ Baker, David R. (17 January 2017). "Lidar factory for self-driving cars opens in Silicon Valley". SFGate. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  4. ↑ Snavely, Brent (28 August 2016). "Tech firm Velodyne moves from audio to self-driving cars". Detroit Free Press. USA Today. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  5. 1 2 "Ford, Baidu bet $150M on Velodyne laser radar". Retrieved 2016-08-16.
  6. ↑ Snavely, Brent (16 August 2016). "Ford to double Silicon Valley presence; invests $75M". Detroit Free Press. USA Today. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  7. 1 2 "Engines of change". Government Computer News. 2007.
  8. ↑ "Robots, start your engines". SFGate. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  9. ↑ Williams, Martyn (8 July 2013). "Driverless cars yield to reality: It's a long road ahead". PC World. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  10. ↑ Wiley, Kate (5 April 2011). "Smithsonian Adds to Robotics Collection and Invites Public to National Robotics Week Activities in Spark!Lab". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  11. ↑ "Frost & Sullivan Awards CyPhy Investor, Velodyne LiDAR :: Unmanned Aerial Online". unmanned-aerial.com. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  12. ↑ "Business Search". California Secretary of State. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  13. ↑ Ohnsman, Alan. "How A 34-Year-Old Audio Equipment Company Is Leading The Self-Driving Car Revolution". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-03-30.
  14. ↑ Ross, Philip E. (18 January 2017). "Velodyne Plans a Lidar Megafactory". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  15. 1 2 Morra, James (22 August 2016). "Velodyne Funding Highlights Lidar's Role in Driverless Cars". Electronic Design. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  16. ↑ Cunningham, Wayne (19 December 2016). "How lasers map the world for self-driving cars". Roadshow. CNET. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  17. ↑ Ackerman, Evan. "Velodyne Says It's Got a "Breakthrough" in Solid State Lidar Design". IEEE Spectrum (13 December 2016). Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  18. ↑ Etherington, Darrell (13 December 2016). "Velodyne's latest solid-state LiDAR design keeps costs low for production at scale". TechCrunch. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  19. ↑ Murphy, Mike (19 April 2017). "It's getting harder and harder to tell a self-driving car from a regular one". Quartz. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  20. ↑ Cunningham, Wayne (19 April 2017). "Velodyne lidar enters the no-spin zone". Roadshow. CNET. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  21. ↑ Guizzo, Erico (2011-10-18). "How Google's Self-Driving Car Works". spectrum.ieee.org. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  22. 1 2 "Google's Waymo invests in LIDAR technology, cuts costs by 90 percent". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2017-01-12.
  23. ↑ Amadeo, Ron. "Google's Waymo invests in LIDAR technology, cuts costs by 90 percent". Ars Technica (9 January 2017). Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  24. ↑ "Velodyne's LiDAR Division Announces Agreement With Caterpillar for Laser Imaging Technology | Virtual-Strategy Magazine". www.virtual-strategy.com. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  25. ↑ http://photos.mercurynews.com/2015/07/28/photos-here-a-nokia-company-has-global-fleet-of-cars-for-3d-street-mapping/#1
  26. ↑ "Velodyne LiDAR to Provide HDL-32E Sensor for Bing Maps Imagery | SPAR 3D". SPAR 3D. 2014-10-28. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  27. ↑ "Tech in Asia - Connecting Asia's startup ecosystem". www.techinasia.com. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  28. ↑ Kastrenakes, Jacob (2015-07-27). "TomTom is now making maps for autonomous vehicles". The Verge. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  29. ↑ https://www.topconpositioning.com/news-events/news/product-news/topcon-announces-next-generation-3-d-mobile-mapping-system
  30. ↑ "Pegasus:Backpack, Leica's Wearable Scanner | SPAR 3D". SPAR 3D. 2015-06-03. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  31. ↑ "Ford Tripling Autonomous Vehicle Development Fleet, Accelerating On-Road Testing of Sensors and Software | Ford Media Center". media.ford.com. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  32. ↑ "A breakthrough in miniaturising lidars for autonomous driving". The Economist. Retrieved 2017-01-12.
  33. ↑ "VLP-16". velodynelidar.com. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  34. ↑ "VLP-16 (Puck LITE)". velodynelidar.com. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  35. ↑ "VLP-16 (Puck Hi-Res)". velodynelidar.com. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  36. ↑ "HDL-32E". velodynelidar.com. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  37. ↑ "VLP-32C". velodynelidar.com. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  38. ↑ "HDL-64E". velodynelidar.com. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
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