AEye Inc. is licensing its long range lidar to TuSimple to further the development of Level 4 self-driving trucks.
TuSimple is working with Volkswagen’s Traton Group to develop commercial-ready systems for heavy-duty trucks as well as co-developing Level 4 self-driving trucks with Navistar. TuSimple is targeting a production date of 2024.
According to Acumen Research and Consulting, partially and fully autonomous trucks are expected to reach about $88 billion by 2027, growing by a compound annual growth rate of more than 10% between 2020 and 2027.
(Learn more about the levels of self-driving cars on Globalspec.com.)
Self-driving trucks are seen as the next step in first-mile shipping and logistics that will help address the nation's current truck driver shortage that has roughly 50,000 unfilled driver positions. That shortage is expected to grow to 175,000 by the mid-2020s, according to sources in the trucking industry. These autonomous trucks will also help with the increase in demand that is expected in the e-commerce industry, requiring more trucks on the road.
AEye’s lidar increases the safety of all vehicles with a range of 1,000 meters, about twice the range and more than two times the resolution of any long-range lidar. The lidar features automotive-grade reliability, solid-state microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) scanner performance. This allows the lidar to scan through rain and other obstacles adding safety to autonomous trucks.
The adaptive lidar scans an entire scene and focuses on obstacles in the road to make self-driving trucks safer, smarter and faster in complex scenarios.
