Introducing the 1km Safety Cocoon with VizioPrime 6K

The development of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is a multifaceted technological endeavour, with one of the most critical aspects being the vehicle's ability to perceive its environment. Among various sensor technologies, long-range sensors stand out for their vital role in ensuring the safety and reliability of AVs. However, as the dawn of AVs draws near, has the industry really succeeded in addressing the problem of long-range, high resolution sensing?

Why Long-Range Sensors Are Essential

1. Enhanced Anticipatory Capabilities

Long-range sensors extend the perceptual horizon of AVs, allowing them to ‘see’ further down the road. This capability is essential for advanced planning and decision-making, especially at higher speeds where reaction times are crucial. The ability to detect objects or road changes from a distance provides more time to calculate and execute manoeuvres safely, making it easier for regulators to assess the potential risks in adopting features such as “hands-off” motorway driving experiences.

2. Improved Highway Driving

On highways, where vehicles travel at higher speeds, long-range sensors are indispensable. They enable AVs to monitor the speed and position of other vehicles over greater distances, crucial for tasks like adaptive cruise control, lane changing, and overtaking. If we look at the current state of autonomy, this is actually a crucial limiting factor in the transition to L3+ autonomy, as many “hands-free” systems on the market today are limited to low speed applications.

3. Enhanced Safety in Adverse Conditions

Long-range sensors can offer enhanced safety performance in challenging visual conditions like fog, heavy rain, or glare, which often impair short-range sensors or human vision. With long range sensors, autonomous systems can spot hazards well in advance of a human, so even if vision is temporarily obstructed, the system can take appropriate actions in advance. This capability is crucial to ensure the robustness of autonomous systems in a variety of conditions.

Current Challenges

Existing on-the-market camera or LiDAR sensors typically max-out at around 300m range, with a rare few LiDAR sensors extending out to 600m in ideal conditions. However, in both cases, these sensors are limited by visual obstructions such as rain, fog or snow, and may also be impeded by poor lighting environments such as at night or when exposed to glare from the sun.

Radar sensors have historically been the “go to” choice for long range sensing, due to their ability to penetrate fog, rain and other environmental obstacles. However, until very recently, radars have always been limited to basic object detection and ranging applications, while high resolution object classification and 3D environmental mapping were left to LiDAR and camera sensors.

Introducing VizioPrime 6K

Delivering a 600m range and exceptional point cloud density, all within a discreet and scalable design, VizioPrime6K is the first market-ready solution to outperform LiDAR for L3+ applications. Let’s examine how VizioPrime addresses the aforementioned industry challenges:

1. Range: VizioPrime provides a 600m sensing range in all weather & lighting conditions. This is a 2x improvement over even the most advanced automotive LiDARs today.
2. Robustness: VizioPrime is considerably more robust than LiDAR or camera when it comes to providing accurate and reliable data in visually challenging environments. Even in dense fog, VizioPrime can see the road ahead as though it were a clear day!
3. 3D Mapping: VizioPrime offers 3D point cloud resolution comparable to that of modern LiDAR systems. This means that unlike radars of the past, VizioPrime can provide enough 3D spatial resolution to accurately detect and classify objects, such as cars, cyclists, pedestrians and even road debris!
4. Safety: When combined with the 360-degree perception provided by VizioPlex 138, VizioPrime provides a 1km vehicle safety cocoon. This level of long-range perception capability is unheard of in the industry and unique to Provizio’s proprietary sensor and software technology.
5. Cost: Compared with the latest forward-facing automotive LiDAR technologies, VizioPrime 6K offers comparable resolution and 3D mapping performance, with longer range and more robust all-weather performance for a fraction of the cost.

Additional Benefits

In addition to addressing the key industry challenges referenced above, VizioPrime offers a plethora unique advantages over existing industry solutions:

• Low latency: Unlike most market solutions, VizioPrime leverages on-the-edge processing to slash hazard response times from 300ms to under 5ms - an almost 100x improvement! This means vehicles can respond faster to unexpected hazards, ensuring the best possible outcome for passengers.
• Less Sensors: Unlike the approaches adopted by many autonomy market leaders, VizioPrime eliminates the need for quad-sensor implementations (Camera, LiDAR, radar, ultrasonics). With high resolution 3D mapping, 600m long range sensing and a 5cm range resolution, VizioPrime can effectively replace both LiDAR and ultrasonic sensors, without compromising performance or safety.
• OTA-Updates: With our unique approach to on-the-edge perception, sensor-level updates can be applied over-the-air, enabling enhanced performance and functionality over the lifetime of the vehicle. In addition, OTA updates enable SOTA functionalities, providing automakers even greater flexibility to offer customers a unique purchase experience.

Conclusion

VizioPrime 6K provides the necessary foresight and situational awareness for the effective operation of autonomous vehicles, particularly in high-speed scenarios and challenging environmental conditions. If you’re interested in learning more about our long-range perception solution, visit the VizioPrime 6K product page, where you can find detailed tech specs and demonstration videos. Alternatively, if you’d like to get in touch with us directly, please visit Contact Us.