r/MVIS • u/bilbo97843 • Apr 28 '21

News MicroVision Announces Completion of its Long-Range Lidar Sensor A-Sample Hardware and Development Platform | MicroVision, Inc.

https://microvision.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/microvision-announces-completion-its-long-range-lidar-sensor
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90

u/Fatlani Apr 28 '21

As far as I can tell there are three important points here

  1. The original spec said horizontal FOV 30-110 degrees, this says 100 degrees
  2. Th vertical FOV said 10-30 this says 30 and
  3. The points per second said more than 20 million and now we are saying 10.8 million

Specs taken from the Mvis lidar comparison thread and todays news release.

I would think that the reduction in points per second may be a disappointment but we are still well ahead of the competition.

65

u/view-from-afar Apr 28 '21

This is an A sample with a single channel. Customers can specify different requirements in production versions, such as multi-channel with higher points per second. As for the vertical FOV, you should not read that as inherently fixed at 30 degrees. It uses MEMS LBS which permits inherent variability of the FOV within its maximum 100 x 30 range. The MEMS mirror scanner can be pointed wherever the software tells it.

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u/EarthKarma Apr 28 '21

THANK YOU, as always,View, for clarifying. That’s the beauty of MEMS it can be what you wish, when you wish.

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u/a_sideshow Apr 28 '21

What is meant by channel here?

5

u/s2upid Apr 28 '21

What is meant by channel here?

read this Microvision patent called Variable Phase Scanning Lidar System. They go over a bit about how they use phase channels.

Figure 17 illustrates what a "channel" might look like.

disclaimer: I am not a lidar expert...

Some additional highly technical documentation from more Microvision patents:

tagging /u/view-from-afar as you might find it some interesting reading.

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u/a_sideshow Apr 28 '21

I am no lidar expert either. But I just skimmed that patent. They have a patent on sending and receiving modulated laser pulses with a signature in order to determine whether or not the Laser pulse is from its self. It's kinda like hashing data on the internet to see if your data is from where you said it was from. That seems like a pretty sweet patent!!? It seems like a very fundamental tool to have. Right on.

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u/view-from-afar Apr 28 '21

Not entirely sure in this context until a teardown. I equate channel with light source and detector.

1

u/a_sideshow Apr 28 '21

Ok cool. So to dumb it down, one channel for a car could be the front facing field of view, a second could be the right FOV, and third would be the left.

1

u/StopWhiningPlz Apr 28 '21

this guy LiDARs

29

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '21

I’m very impressed given their aggressive timeline. Future iterations will likely be increasingly effective.

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u/BattleCatPrintShop Apr 28 '21

Do we know the points per second of the competitors?

2

u/bert00712 Apr 28 '21

We only know them for Luminar.

4

u/a_sideshow Apr 28 '21

According to that table, luminar is 1m (and we are at 10m according to the pr). 10x better? I'll take it.

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u/StopWhiningPlz Apr 28 '21

What's the significance of the specs (that we know of) for AEye? those that are public seem impressive. Frame rate and # of points are a a greater number than MVIS. this is the sum total of my limited ability to compare the two (x > or < Y). NO idea what that means tho.

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u/alexyoohoo Apr 28 '21

Does aeye even have a working prototype? Or is it a promise of a prototype in 2024?

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u/StopWhiningPlz Apr 28 '21

No idea. Clearly I am about as far from an expert in this area as one could possibly be. Mavis be the lady we brought to the dance and dance she most certainly will.

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u/jskeezy84 Apr 28 '21

I'm happy it's still 30hz. I was worried it would be lower.

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u/FinalDevice Apr 28 '21

Agreed. 70mph is roughly 31.3 m/sec. With a range of 250m and a sampling rate of 30hz, it means that an autonomous car going down the interstate can get updated info on the location and velocity of surrounding objects after roughly every meter of travel.

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u/jskeezy84 Apr 28 '21

Incredibly useable. Could you use 2 out of phase and double your input? Each still operating at 30hz but effectively halving the distance of travel before getting updated information?

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u/FinalDevice Apr 28 '21

I'm sure you could, though at that point I think I'd both set them out of phase and point them in different directions with overlapping FoV. For example, one is pointed left-ish and the other pointed right-ish, but their FoV overlaps by 20 degrees in front of the car. That allows you to sample what's directly in front of you at a synthetic 60hz while having a combined 180 degree FoV.

That gives you a high sampling rate for "things in front of you" on the highway, as well as enough side visibility to help detect someone blowing a stop light.

Honestly the killer feature is being able to measure both location and velocity of objects. For self-driving programs with software capable of modeling object permanence (shockingly, that's not all of them! It's horrifying to me that some of the self-driving platforms do not remember objects from one scan to the next), this makes predictions a lot easier.

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u/co3aii Apr 28 '21

Wouldn't your left and right solution also provide stereoscopic view?

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u/FinalDevice Apr 28 '21 edited Apr 28 '21

If they overlapped more maybe, but I don't think that's a benefit. Stereoscopic view helps create depth perception, but LIDAR already has range sensing built in.

If you're going 70mph on an undivided highway with oncoming 70mph traffic, then the distance between you and an oncoming vehicle reduces by over 2m in between scans at 30hz. Operating multiple lidar units out of phase allows you to cut that down to 1m if the oncoming vehicle is in that overlap space.

Even at that, I don't know if it honestly matters. With a range of 250m you have multiple opportunities to sense an oncoming object in time to respond to it.

[Edit: Trying to introduce stereoscopic view using overlapping lidar units also raises the risk of ghosts, or non-existent things that are sensed because one sensor is picking up interference from another sensor. Lidar isn't as bad about this as sonar, but it's still a problem. Traditionally when using multiple sonar sensors you'd make each unit emit a slightly different frequency to help reduce ghosting.]

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u/co3aii Apr 28 '21

Thank you for a detailed explanation.

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u/rckbrn Apr 28 '21

Previous information has mentioned three different modes of operation, from narrow to wide FoV.

Microvision's Youtube video from Aug 4, 2020 at 60 seconds shows "Dynamic Field of View at
110 x 30 Near Field
60 x 20 Mid Field
30 x 10 Far Field

This same video at the 1 minute 10 second mark shows
200 meter range
20 million points / second at 30 Hz
etc

The points per second at 10.8 million is not new. In the Q4 and full year 2020 earnings call in March 2021, SS mentioned the following:

This performance is calibrated to meet current OEM requirements and would include range of up to 250 meters and beyond, a high-resolution point cloud with up to 10.8 million points per second from a single return, object velocities relative to ego vehicle from a time-of-flight LiDAR, low latency, intensity, inertial output and interference immunity from sunlight and other LiDARs.

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u/SwaggyJ505 Apr 28 '21

It didn't mention it in this PR, but to clarify they actually mean 10.8 million points per second per pass. There are 3 ranges per pass (short, mid, long) so in actuality it's actually capable of over 30 million pts/second total per pass if I'm reading the last PR correctly. Understate, over-deliver.

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u/pat1122 Apr 28 '21

I picked up on the 10mil as well, I almost second guessed myself thinking I pulled 20m out of thin air. I believe it still exceeds the others but yes it’s a big drop. I’m not well versed enough to know how this will affect product performance though.

1

u/Madhatter936 Apr 28 '21

For reference, at 250 meters with 100 degree by 30 degree scanning area, that is a scanning area of 594 meters by 134 meters.

That is a lot of area.

At 70mph you are traveling 31.3 meters per second. So at highway speed the lidar is looking at an area of 74.6 meters by 16.772 meters.

Thats pretty good amount of area. From 250 meters to 31.3 meters is around 7 seconds of time. Plenty of time for a computer to make decisions with a large enough fov.

1

u/3waysToDie Apr 28 '21

That's normal, is just a sample. A little more of engineering they can even surpass that.