How to Buy LiDAR Products?

In recent years, with the advancement of autonomous driving projects of leading companies such as Google and Baidu, LiDAR has become a heated topic as an essential sensor for autonomous driving. LiDAR has been integrated into more commercial application scenarios from the military or aviation field. With the technological innovation of major LiDAR start-ups and the verification of technology paths, various LiDAR product models have also appeared one after another. Faced with so many LiDAR products, customers become confused about how to choose a proper LiDAR to meet their actual needs?

 1. The choice of mechanical LiDAR or solid-state LiDAR

Determine the application scenario and sort out the requirements. Most of the customers who actively consult LiDAR products have a technical background. They have some knowledge of LiDAR technology and are relatively clear about the difference between mechanical LiDAR and solid-state LiDAR. Therefore, for the application scenario, it can be preliminarily judged whether to use mechanical LiDAR or solid-state LiDAR for the specific scenarios. Because the performance of rotating LiDAR is particularly low in some application scenarios, such as V2X, rail traffic, and other application scenarios. If the mechanical LiDAR meets the requirements of the scene, the next step is to assess the indicators such as budget and resolution. in the following, we will focus more on solid-state LiDAR products procurement.

2. Consideration of resolution, detection distance, Field of View

The resolution, detection distance, and field of view are three important factors that should be considered when choosing a solid-state LiDAR. Based on different market scenarios of customers, the priority order or focus of these three factors may be inconsistent. The resolution will determine whether the scanned object can be seen clearly and completely and whether the object’s size and accuracy can be scanned. The detection distance is the effective detection range based on the reflectivity of the scanned object. The field of view determines the scanning range. There is no doubt that these three indicators are positively related to technical difficulty and product price.

3. LiDAR procurement budget

For LiDAR products, to a certain extent, it is a seller’s market, and the value of the LiDAR product itself is still relatively high, and the model of each LiDAR product does not necessarily meet all-round needs perfectly. There is a trade-off at the level of one or some factors. In the long run, LiDAR products do not play a supporting role. Innovative solutions based on LiDAR will essentially solve the difficult problems in the industry, to bring about unprecedented innovation and progress in the industry.

4. Software services based on LiDAR

LiDAR itself is a three-dimensional sensor device. Similar to other sensors, it is a data collector. If you want to make it more effective, you need to pass these raw data through the system, and the algorithm will convert the data into effective data. At present, there are roughly two situations for customers in the market. One type is that they have their software teams, which can perform system integration or secondary development based on the original data of LiDAR. In this case, it is more important to consider whether the performance of the LiDAR sensor itself meets the requirements. The other type of customer does not have a software team. If they just buy a LiDAR product, they cannot achieve the ultimate goal. This requires LiDAR suppliers to provide supporting software services or even complete LiDAR solutions. This will place higher technical requirements on the software team of LiDAR manufacturers, such as the need to include recognition algorithms, behavior analysis, trajectory tracking, alarm triggering, and other value-added functions. To be able to provide additional value-added services according to the needs of customers, LiDAR companies also need to have an excellent team which might be a great project team with strong development capabilities of high-performance products, timely after-sales support, and project construction experience.

Customers need to choose a suitable LiDAR product and use it smoothly in their projects to increase efficiency and safety and also reduce costs.

Neuvition Inc. is an innovative company providing high-quality LiDAR sensors, LiDAR software, and LiDAR solutions to global customers: USA, Canada, Germany, UK, Singapore, Japan, China, etc.

We have various LiDAR series. Titan M1 series of MEMS+1550nm LiDAR has a 700-lines high resolution, 600-meters effective detection range, and video fusion technology.

Titan S2 series flash LiDAR supports short-range detection and low-speed driving collision avoidance.

Our high-precision LiDAR is stable and reliable, mainly used in scenarios: autonomous driving, V2X, rail traffic, 3D mapping& measurement, and industrial machine vision, etc. We are looking for global agents and partners. Welcome to contact us for win-win cooperation and a smarter future!