Lorenz competes in the LiDAR market with MEMS galvanometer technology

At the recently concluded 2024 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), automotive related technologies and solutions shone brightly, and a group of Chinese LiDAR suppliers competed on the same stage.

The technologically advanced products, systematic solutions, continuously increasing delivery and market retention have to some extent proven that in the context of the development of automotive intelligence, LiDAR, as an emerging sensing component, has gone through a complete path from technological research and development to industrialization.

The Chinese LiDAR market has entered the fast lane. The market size of China's LiDAR in 2022 is 2.64 billion yuan, the market size of China's LiDAR in 2023 is 7.59 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 13.96 billion yuan in 2024. In terms of shipment volume, the global shipment volume has exceeded 500000 in 2023 and is expected to exceed 1.5 million in 2024.

Until now, the emergence of various types of NOA and the transition from L2 to L3 are a major driving force for breaking the old pattern of the LiDAR industry. In terms of autonomous driving perception sensors, the battle between LiDAR and pure visual routes is still ongoing, and the outcome is still difficult to distinguish today. The technological innovation of autonomous driving has brought the LiDAR industry into a new cycle, accelerating the reshuffle and transforming the industry landscape once again.

At present, the mainstream long-distance vehicle grade LiDARs on the market are rotary mirrors and MEMS galvanometers. The rotating mirror scheme has a large number of components, resulting in high overall cost, high power consumption, and high noise. The MEMS galvanometer scheme has fewer components, resulting in low overall cost, low power consumption, low noise, and small size. The existing silicon-based MEMS mirrors have limited performance in mechanical vibration, impact, and durability, resulting in their size, resonant frequency, and scanning angle being unable to continue to increase, thereby affecting the improvement of core indicators such as detection distance and field of view angle of the entire machine.

Founded in 2017, Lorentz Technology is an intelligent perception and artificial intelligence company that focuses on 3D LiDAR, logistics and traffic scene perception algorithms, and solutions. CEO of Lorenz, Du Chenguang, stated that the Lorenz team is led by professors from the Department of Precision Instrument at Tsinghua University, with senior master's and doctoral teams from Tsinghua University and the University of Science and Technology of China as the main body. After several years of diving, they have mastered key technologies of LiDAR, especially low-cost, high reliability, and high-performance titanium alloy MEMS galvanometer technology, making it possible for the popularization of in vehicle LiDAR and the ultimate popularization of autonomous driving technology.

After years of development, basic sensors such as ultrasound, cameras, and millimeter wave radar have met the requirements of cost and stability. However, the laser radar can accurately determine the distance between surrounding objects.

The Lorenz team has previously launched the 905nm automotive grade MEMS LiDAR - Lorenz E series, which is a hybrid solid-state medium to long range automotive grade main LiDAR developed for pre production of autonomous driving, using a new titanium alloy MEMS solution as the scanning component.

The Lorenz E series, as the main LiDAR for autonomous driving, has a resolution of over 300 lines. In complex urban traffic scenes, it can accurately identify various traffic participants and obstacles such as vehicles, pedestrians, roadblocks, water horses, height limit poles, cones, and low obstacles; The detection distance can reach over 300m, ensuring that the vehicle has sufficient reaction time in high-speed scenarios; The size has been further compressed, and the height of the entire machine has been reduced to below 40mm, making it easy to install on the roof.

The Lorenz E series can meet the needs of intelligent connected vehicles for high-performance, vehicle grade long-range LiDAR. Its advantages lie in simple electronic system architecture, low system power consumption, small overall size, and the ability to achieve thousands of yuan in large quantities. Compared with mainstream mass-produced products in the market, the resolution has increased by more than 60% and the cost has decreased by more than 40%.

At present, Lorenz's main customers are vehicle manufacturers, and their product LiDAR plays a role similar to "eyes" in intelligent connected vehicles, mainly collecting road condition information. It can quickly draw 3D panoramic maps based on scanned point cloud data, achieve obstacle avoidance, 3D reconstruction, SLAM navigation, and so on.

Du Chenguang revealed that Lorenz's titanium alloy MEMS galvanometer LiDAR is a better solution, with the advantages of small size, low cost, low power consumption, and low noise.

In response to the increasingly clear demand for perception solutions, almost all mainstream LiDAR manufacturers have chosen the path of product platformization and self-developed chips. In addition to optimizing and upgrading performance indicators, this should be considered another obvious development trend in the LiDAR industry.

From the perspective of the global LiDAR market pattern, Hesai Technology, Tudatong, Fareo, Sagitar Juchuang and others have bulk shipments in the automotive field. At the end of 2023, many car companies experienced a peak in sales for the year, directly driving up the sales of LiDAR. It is reported that over 80% of users in the large orders of Xiaopeng G9 have chosen the MAX version model with LiDAR.

In terms of financing, Lorenz has received three rounds of tens of millions of yuan in financing, with investors including Tsinghua Tongfang, Qidi, Dongfang Guoshi, New World, etc.

In terms of team, Lorenz is led by a professor from the Department of Precision Instrument at Tsinghua University, with senior master's and doctoral teams from Tsinghua University and the University of Science and Technology of China as the main body. The core team graduated from Tsinghua University, the University of Science and Technology of China, and UCLA, with decades of industry experience in the fields of lasers and artificial intelligence.

Source: Sohu