Along with electrification and connectivity, it is one of the pillars of the ongoing automotive revolution. Automatic – or autonomous – driving continues to develop. It already exists through features present on many new, rather high-end vehicles: automatic emergency braking, cruise control which adapts to vehicles driving ahead, lane keeping, parking assistance. We are talking about level 1 or 2 of autonomous driving, which has five, the last consisting of a complete delegation, in all circumstances and in all places of driving to a robot car.
But, thanks to regulatory changes authorizing and developing automatic driving in Europe, the year 2022 could well be the occasion of a new big step towards the disappearance of the human driver. One of the French pioneers of this technology, the automotive supplier Valeo, understood this well by releasing, on Tuesday 23 November, its third generation of lidar, called “Scala 3”, one of the essential sensors of a car. self-driving. A Lidar (for “light detection and ranging”) can detect, day and night, all surrounding objects up to a distance of 200 meters, identify them and measure their speed and direction. It complements the radar (with less range but more precision and more angle) as well as the camera (which has the qualities and defects of the eye).
“See what is invisible”
The new camera, which will be marketed in 2024, has seen its resolution multiplied by 12, its range by 3 and its viewing angle by 2.5. The result: it adapts to all light conditions, is able to assess the density of raindrops and follows vehicles that are no longer in the driver’s field of vision, says Valeo. “These technical improvements, associated with new algorithms, make it possible to anticipate the trajectories of a cyclist or a pedestrian even if they are hidden by another vehicle, specifies Geoffrey Bouquot, Valeo R&D director in charge of strategy. He can see what is invisible to a man, a radar or a camera. “
Valeo intends to consolidate a lead that places the company among the champions of the autonomous car. The French group, which employs 300 engineers on this sole subject of Lidar, has already sold 150,000 units of previous generations of Scala. If its competitors – Bosch, Continental, Velodyne, Velodyne – have also embarked on the industrialization of Lidar, Valeo has long been the only one able to exit at an industrial rate from its factory in Wemding, Germany, and thus achieve costs corresponding to the requirements of the automotive industry. “99% of vehicles using a lidar are equipped with Valeo”, says the group.
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