Geo Week News

October 13, 2021

Quanergy's solid state lidar successfully detects objects out to 130 meters

A successful independent test of hard-to-detect objects have buoyed the company's hopes to become an automotive lidar supplier.

Quanergy Systems, the maker of solid-state LiDAR sensors that went public this year have announced the successful demonstration of its S3 Series LiDAR, a true solid-state LiDAR sensor using Optical Phased Array (OPA) technology. 

The demonstration was conducted in partnership with Santa Clara University’s School of Engineering, Robotics Department who utilized an S3-4, a solid-state LiDAR test platform with four scanning beams. The test included the tracking and identification of several difficult-to-detect objects. These included a target with 10% reflectivity mounted on a driving vehicle, a black SUV, and a person wearing dark clothing.

Each of the test objects were initially located 100 meters from the test platform, and were successfully tracked by the S3-4 test sensor as they moved to 130 meters. According to Dr. Christopher Kitts, Associate Dean of Santa Clara University, School of Engineering, the test results were “very promising” for Quanergy’s potential automotive and industrial applications.

“Quanergy’s OPA architecture with electronic beam steering and no moving parts, is ideally suited for many high-vibration outdoor mobility applications, from passenger vehicles to challenging robotics applications like agricultural and construction unmanned guided vehicles (UGVs). Its Adaptive Zoom capability is extremely innovative and it can enable a whole new set of applications.” 

Quanergy’s S3 Series LiDAR sensor is designed to meet the most stringent automotive requirements for object detection and collision avoidance.  The sensor’s unique electronic beam steering without any moving parts offers immunity to shock and vibration. The S3 Series provides over 100,000 hours MTBF (mean time between failures), and it is targeting a price of $500 for mass-market production. 

“Quanergy is continuing to advance the performance of its OPA-based solid-state technology towards relevant use cases for IoT and mobility applications. We are very excited about this demonstration of 130-meter detection range because it was not only achieved in full daylight with a 10% reflectivity target but it was also extended to real world objects like a pedestrian and a black vehicle,” said Dr. Tianyue Yu, Quanergy Co-founder and Chief Development Officer. 

“The multi-beam setup used provides higher density coverage and builds on the single beam test we conducted in July, underscoring the rapid rate of evolution of our solid-state platform development!” 

For more information, visit www.quanergy.com

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