Huawei LiDAR Preview
By: Shuai Chen
Tags: Self Driving Cars, Huawei, Lidar, Autonomous Vehicles, Autonomous Cars

Huawei’s sensor product family includes the 5th generation millimeter-wave radars, multibeam LiDARs, and 5.4MP cameras, dedicated to highly automated and fully autonomous vehicles.

Within the LiDAR category, Huawei aims to offer multiple models with long, medium to close range for all driving scenarios such as highways, urban roads and parking.

In this article, we will preview one of the LiDAR models to get a sense of Huawei’s technical path and capabilities. This mid-range LiDAR is currently being tested on a quasi volume production vehicle, according to the company.

Rotating mirror scanning methodology

After weighing all the scanning methods out there, Huawei ended up with rotating mirror, which can well balance automotive-grade requirements and high performance. (For a list of Chinese LiDAR startups and their technical path, see my earlier post.)

A rotating mirror is strictly speaking a mechanical architecture while provides more reliability as oppsed to a 360-degree spinning architecture. Valeo’s SCALA 1, as the world’s first automotive-grade LiDAR, has proved it.

Some LiDAR vendors achieve large horizontal field of view by putting together multiple dimensions but Huawei’s 120-degree horizontal FOV is achieved by one time scan for better quality point cloud.

96-beam high resolution

More laser beams would bring a challenge to the design and manufacturing process but conribute to higher resolution. The 96-beam specification came out of experiment on various corner cases like encounters with small obstacles on highway.

More importantly, Huawei’s laser beams are distributed evenly on the verticle dimension. While meeting the minimum angular resolution, it supports higher pitch tolerance for improved consistency between theoretical and actual driving experience.

Detection range of 150m@10% remission

Huawei has done very thorough customer (OEMs) research to understand the “strict” specifications in the pre-equipped market. It has adopted a highly sensitive transceiver system and a unique anti-interference algorithm to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, which greatly improves the quality of the returned signal and meets the requirements for distance measurement at a high level of confidence.

120-degree horizontal FOV

Given the complex China road conditions, a LiDAR needs to meet a minimum of 150m detection range straight ahead and also a fairly good range in lateral areas. Through an unique optical design, Huawei’s LiDAR can achieve at least 120m detection distance even in the edges of its FOV.

Below is an illustration of Huawei’s FOV (left) and a common design on the market with 150m detection range (right).

(Source: jianyuecheping)

Automotive-grade

Huawei designed the product taking consideration of end consumers who are individuals unlike robotaxi fleets that could do regular inspection and maintenance to LiDARs. It also strives to keep the product size reasonably small and meanwhile reach the standard opearting temperature range (-40 ºC to 85 ºC). Also, Huawei’s capabilities in motor technology can address wear-and-tear issues and service life.

Practical for OEMs

Huawei’s LiDAR comes as a solution with features like smart cleaning and smart heating, which makes it a practical choice for OEMs. Even the glue is strictly chosen to cope with extreme cases.

Scale Production

Huawei summarized three key capabilities towards scale production: automated equipment and process design, sub-micron precision manufacturing, and optical tolerance design. As production efficiency and yield rate improving, LiDAR’s cost will drop.

The information above is from a local media interview (jianyuecheping) with the manager of Huawei’s in-vehicle sensor team. After putting pieces together, there are still key factors missing, about which Huawei is planning an official product release.

Mechanical 96-beam LiDAR:

Earlier this year, a Huawei official mentioned its Optoelectronic Technology R&D center in Wuhan with over 10,000 people, where LiDAR is being developed. (Wuhan has come up a lot with an autonomous driving tag. Read my earlier post for details.) The short term goal is to offer multi-bean lidar within $200 cost or even $100.

Huawei’s Auto Ambition certainly caught lots of attention since announced in 2019. We are going to find out if it meets the hype, from the LiDAR solutions and many more.