Innovusion’s Quest to Deliver the World’s Best Performing LiDAR Systems.
Innovusion is the world’s first commercial LiDAR company to go into mass production and, as of early 2023, has mass produced 70K Falcon Kinetic units. They are on track to set a new precedent as the-facto leader in the LiDAR industry.
We are particularly excited to recently have become an official distributor for Innovusion, a dynamic company in the field of image-grade LiDAR production, and we have their second generation of LiDAR units, the Falcon range, in stock. (Demonstration units are available!) At DigiFlec, we are always interested in our partners’ histories, values, mission, and achievements, so let’s take a look at Innovusion’s story so far!
Innovusion work with the very tight objective to increase the capabilities of transport automation systems through the creation of the world’s best performing state-of-the-art LiDAR systems, and their position at the vanguard of long range, image grade LiDAR production reflects this. Industry leaders in the areas of smart transportation, automated vehicles, rail transit and industrial automation have chosen to embrace Innovusion technologies – Falcon is already in mass production and standard equipment of NIO ET7, ET5, and EL7 –, and Innovusion attribute their success to their tireless dedication to quality engineering and an unwavering commitment to their customers.
Innovusion, which has its headquarters in Los Altos, California, was founded in 2016 by Junwei Bao and Yimin Li, who worked together at Baidu, a Chinese tech multinational. Bao, as Head of the Autonomous Driving Unit, realized that existing LiDAR units were both costly and did not perform well enough to develop autonomous vehicles at SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers ) level of automation 3, or beyond. This prompted him, alongside Li, to develop a better, more efficient system, and Innovusion was born.
The way was paved for Innovusion’s current range by the development and release of the their ‘Cheetah’ LiDAR unit in 2019. The Cheetah featured a dual rotating polygon optical architecture, which allowed Innovusion to claim the device offered ‘the safest and most reliable detection’ on the market at the time. The company believes that ‘safety’ has three vital components: accuracy, reaction time and reliability, making these qualities the defining factors in performance. The innovative technology was the result of the investigation of existing technologies, such as MEMS, Galvo, dual-Galvo and Solid State so that the team could understand what building blocks were available to help them deliver the high performance they were aiming for. The high resolution of the system allows for great accuracy, which increases the available reaction time, and the elegant design which uses mature technology enabled a robust build quality, making the units highly reliable. Innovusion, through focused research and adherence to their values, produced a unit which performed highly in the three areas they identified as essential for high performance. The Cheetah, and its sister unit, the Jaguar, enjoyed success in China, where they enjoyed a high record of reliability.
In 2020, Innovusion announced the release of a new LiDAR unit: the ‘Falcon’, which, they say, ‘perceives the world in a way that allows it to surpass the sight capability of a human eye’. The Falcon sensor offers a competitively priced unit for ADAS systems and offers all vehicle makers the ability ‘to capture complex visuals at a greater distance.’ This means that vehicles which have a long braking distance, including buses and trains, could benefit from LiDAR even though they aren’t capable of fully autonomous driving. Instead, LiDAR can be used to assist the driver, detecting objects as small as 20cm high at a considerable distance to facilitate smooth deceleration.
The Falcon Kinetic gives a high-resolution image-like 3D point cloud and offers a dynamic region of interest (ROI), which ensure clarity of key object detection and safe autonomy over a range of diverse environments. Falcon units can be used in automotive autonomy, rail infrastructure and vehicle applications, smart city infrastructure and mining, among others.
DigiFlec are delighted to become part of the Innovusion story. If an Innovusion Falcon Prime or an Innovusion Falcon Kinetic LiDAR unit seems like a good fit for you, drop Steve an email at enquiries@digiflec.com and tell us about your project!