- AEye’s 4Sight sensor series provides breakthrough capabilities for the next generation of LiDAR sensors and intelligent robotic vision systems
- Its 4Sight M sensor includes a huge range benefits such as advanced perception, vibration resistant, enhanced visualisation and lower cost
AEye Inc, a developer of artificial perception systems has launched 4Sight, a groundbreaking new sensor family built on its unique iDAR platform. 4Sight revolutionises LiDAR performance, creating a benchmark for the next generation of LiDAR sensors and intelligent robotic vision systems. Debunking previous assumptions that high performing, long-range 1550nm LiDAR could not achieve both solid-state reliability and lower cost, 4Sight achieves to delivers on all three aspects of performance, reliability and price.
The 4Sight M (first of the 4Sight series releasing next month) has been designed to meet the diverse range of performance and functional requirements of power autonomous and partially automated applications. 4Sight leverages the iDAR software platform, which incorporates an upgraded visualisation feature, allowing you to model various shot patterns. The software also has a comprehensive SDK, which makes it fully extensible and customisable. 4Sight family of sensors has been developed and tested with customers and integrators coming from automotive, trucking, transit, construction, rail, intelligent traffic systems (ITS), aerospace and defence markets.
“The primary issue that has delayed broad adoption of LiDAR has been the industry’s inability to produce a high-performance deterministic sensor with solid-state reliability at a reasonable cost,” said Blair LaCorte, President of AEye. “We created a more intelligent, agile sensor that is software definable to meet the unique needs of any application – the result is 4Sight.”
Wide advantages
Some of the interesting features of the 4Sight M are:
LiDAR Performance
- Software definable range optimisation of up to 1,000 meters (eye – and camera safe).
- Up to 4 million points per second with a horizontal and vertical resolution less than 0.1 degrees.
- Instantaneous addressable resolution of 0.025 degrees.
Integrated Intelligence
- Library of functionally-safe deterministic scan patterns that can be customized and fixed or triggered to adjust to changing external environments.
- Integrated automotive camera, boresight aligned with AEye’s agile LiDAR – instantaneously generating true colour point clouds. A parallel camera-only feed can provide cost-effective redundant camera sensor.
- Enhanced ground plane detection to determine topology at extended ranges.
Advanced Vision Capabilities
- Detection and classification of objects with advanced perception features such as intraframe radial and lateral velocity.
- Detection through foliage and adverse weather conditions such as rain and fog through the use of the dynamic range, full-waveform processing of multiple returns.
- Detection of pedestrians at over 200 metres.
- Detection of small, low reflective objects such as tire fragments, bricks or other road debris (10x50cm at 10 per cent reflectivity) at ranges of over 120 metres.
Reliability
- Shock and Vibration – designed and tested for solid-state performance and reliability. 4Sight has proven in third-party testing to sustain the mechanical shock of over 50G, random vibration over 12Grms (5-2000Hz) and sustained vibration of over 3G for each axis.
- Automotive-grade production:
- Automotive-qualified supply chain utilizing standard production processes and approved by global manufacturing partners
- Designed for manufacturability using a simple solid-state architecture consisting of only 1 scanner, 1 laser, 1 receiver and 1 SoC
- Common hardware architecture and software/data structures across all fully autonomous to partially automated applications (ADAS) – leveraging R&D and economies of scale
Price
- 4Sight can be configured for high-volume mobility applications with SOP 2021 at an estimated 2x-5x lower price than any other high-performance LiDAR. Additionally, for ADAS applications with SOP 2023, 4Sight is designed to be priced 1.5x-3x lower than any other long or medium range LiDAR.
Besides setting new standards for performance, reliability and price, the 4Sight M is also extremely power efficient. 4Sight’s groundbreaking system attributes also include time-to-detect, agile scanning, shot energy optimization, power optimization of returns and boresight camera/LiDAR data generation. These greatly reduce the processing and bandwidth typically required for full perception stacks. When implemented in a vehicle, AEye’s 4Sight sensors are nearly power neutral with a vehicle’s perception stack power budget.
“In my work with automotive OEMs, the value delivered by the 4Sight sensor surpasses anything I have seen in the automotive industry,” said Sebastian Bihari, Managing Director at Vektor Partners. “By starting with understanding the data a perception system needs, AEye has developed a simpler more responsive design for efficiently capturing and processing perception data. In doing this, 4Sight establishes standards for the industry that will take years for others to achieve.”
