Velodyne wants to promote autonomous driving in China and finances a competition.
The industry leader in lidar systems, Velodyne, announced the funding of a competition for autonomous driving in China on. This promises the company more sales of Lidarsensoren.
VLS-128 Velodyne lidar sensor. Source: Velodyne
Lidar is currently essential to autonomous driving. Only a few manufacturers, like Tesla, dispense with the sensor. Although the price of Lidar has fallen sharply in recent years, it is still the most expensive sensor. Price erosion has to do with the development of Solid-State Lidar, which is more robust and has no moving parts.
Velodyne wants to be a financier on the occasion of the tenth competition Intelligent Vehicles Future Challenge (IVFC). There, the Lidar of the manufacturer is often used. 27 teams take part in the competition and 20 of them use the Velodyne sensors. Last year’s winner, Pioneer from the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Xi’an Jiaotong University, also used Velodyne sensors.
The competition took place in the city of Changshu last November. The teams have gathered at universities and start-ups. The organization took over the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the municipal government of Changshu.
The conditions for the competition consist of driving through real environments and through test areas. So you drive on inner cities and suburbs, but also on the city highway. They had to complete various traffic scenarios. These included driving in heavy traffic, in the rain, through construction sites or without GPS,
Who wins the next IVFC, gets a Velodyne HDL-64E Lidarsensor and two sensors of the model Puck.
About David Flora
I’ve been writing about Autonomous & Connected Driving since 2011 and also talk about it on other sites like the Smart Mobility Hub. I studied social sciences at the HU Berlin and since 2012 I am a freelance journalist. Contact: mail@autonomes-fahren.de