The seems-too-good-to-be-true solid-state lidar technology from Israeli startup Opsys Technologies is making a step toward production reality with the announcement that the company’s no-moving-parts lidar array is under contract with Chinese Tier 1 supplier Hasco for a planned SAIC vehicle scheduled to debut next year.
Opsys and HASCO began their lidar technology collaboration in 2021 and, since that time, HASCO has developed object detection and perception software based on Opsys lidar sensors to enable autonomous and semi-autonomous driving applications. This is important because, unlike some ADAS sensor products, Opsys lidar relays raw point cloud data to the ADAS computer rather than processed object detection, pointed out Opsys chairman Eitan Gertel in a press briefing.
“After several years of cooperation with Opsys Technologies and extensive testing of the Opsys product, Hasco has selected to work with the Opsys True Solid-State Scanning lidar technology to satisfy customers’ needs,” stated Xie Bin, General Manager of Hasco ADAS Business Unit. “We plan to deliver mass production quantities of our better automotive ADAS systems including Opsys lidar sensors to our customers beginning in 2024.”
Manufacturing practicality for Opsys is thanks to a huge advantage in silicon yields for its vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), Gertel reported. “That compares to an 8-to-15 percent yield for horizontal silicon lasers,” he said.
Additionally, Opsys achieves a 90 percent probability of detection from an ultra-high-speed 1,000-frames-per-second image. The device is the size of a deck of playing cards and it can be mounted behind a vehicle’s windshield with only a 5 percent loss of performance due to the glass, Gertel continued.
This has been made possible thanks to Apple’s uses of gallium arsenide VCSEL components for its iPhone facial recognition technology. The huge volume of the consumer electronics industry has driven the cost of this technology down one thousand-fold, according to Gertel.
As a solid-state device using consumer electronics technology, the Opsys lidar units can be manufactured at volume without human participation. The company says that it is using a Thai contract manufacturer to build the devices on an entirely automated production line.
With pricing forecast to fall to just $150 per unit with four of the units employed to provide 360-degree coverage for vehicles, Opsys anticipates achieving volumes in the “multi-hundreds of thousands of units” per year, according to Gertel.