The startup Perceptin has developed Autonomous Pods for the “narrow thaler”.
Autonomous vehicles do not exist yet, because there are still many problems to solve. One of the problems is the speed. The faster a car drives, the higher it has to go Sensor range be, the higher the must computing capacity and the faster it has to be data processing success.
Perceptin Pod. Source: spectrum.ieee.org
If you take this factor of speed out, much is already possible, as the startup Perceptin shows. If the vehicle is slow, it can not build bad accidents. If you drive slower, it is due to the older sensors that you can use, also cheaper – because the range does not have to be so high. Perceptin has introduced a pod, a small autonomous vehicle that can only drive slowly.
The start-up was founded in 2016 by Shaoshan Liu, who has been working for a long time Baidu worked and at the University of California studied in Irvine. The vehicle, according to Liu, is said to be an e-car that costs $ 5,000. With the hardware and software for the autonomous driving one comes to a sum of under 10,000 US dollar.
Of course they should not be on the Highway but on demarcated areas, such as parks or on University Campus or on the premises, Nobody bothers you when you brake for a squirrel. The market is limited, but it’s enough for a startup, so the thought. It is hoped to sell around one million of the slow pods.
Currently, the startup has only five bots on offer, but already a customer: The Chinese telecommunications company ZTE. The company uses the vehicle type for the large campus in Shenzhen, These are with four cameras, four medium-range radar systems, ten ultrasonic sensors and GPS fitted.
In addition, acoustic sensors are installed in the wheels, which serves to count the revolutions. In this way you can map the position with an accuracy of 20 centimeters. The radar looks 50 meters and the ultrasound up to five meters. With a point cloud, the cameras enable a 3D image and what a lidar replaced.
These skills are for companies like Waymo too low, but it’s enough for low speeds, as on a campus. Perhaps the delivery services will open up a new business model, according to the founder of Liu.
source (English)