LeddarTech Lab: Recent Episodes
LeddarTech
Welcome to LeddarTech Lab, a podcast by LeddarTech, the leaders in high performance, affordable solid-state LiDAR sensing technology, platform, and modules for automotive and mobility applications.
Key Points:
Shortcomings of front-view perception solutions today
How LeddarTech’s LVF-E compares against competitors
LVF-E’s performance and cost advantages
How LVF-E benefits automotive OEMs and Tier 1s
Key Points:
LeddarTech’s differentiated sensor fusion and perception technology
Introduction to low-level sensor fusion and perception
Addressing industry challenges: Solutions for L2 to L5 autonomy
LeddarTech’s strategic positioning for growth
Key Points:
- LeddarTech's technology portfolio at CES 2024
- Solutions for ADAS and AD
- On-road demo with LeddarCar
- Low-level fusion and perception demonstrated on embedded hardware
Sneak Peek: LeddarTech at CES 2024
Key Points:
- Who should visit the booth and how to make the most of your time
- LeddarTech demos AI-based low-level fusion and perception technology for ADAS and AD at CES 2024
- LeddarCar on-road demo, Front and surround-view products, new product launch
- Interactive dashboards for automotive OEMs, Tier 1-2s, Industry analysts and Investors
Key Points:
- Ficosa's smart parking assistance system was developed with LeddarTech.
- The need for smart parking assistance.
- System architecture and development framework.
- Stages of development: From concept to commercialization.
Key Points
- How data enables building machine learning models used for perception systems
- The different types of data
- Explanation of the workflow: From sensor integration to validating perception software stacks
- How data enables expanded operation design domain
- Data acquisition standards for perception systems
- Why does it mean when a company announces that they have collected X thousand miles of data
Key Points
- How data enables building machine learning models used for perception systems
- The different types of data
- Explanation of the workflow: From sensor integration to validating perception software stacks
- How data enables expanded operation design domain
- Data acquisition standards for perception systems
- Why does it mean when a company announces that they have collected X thousand miles of data
On the second episode of the LeddarTech Podcast, host Michelle Dawn Mooney continues the discussion with Charles Boulanger, CEO of LeddarTech, and Manju Hegde, CEO of Uhnder about how the two companies tackle harsh weather performance, what happens when a sensor fails or provides conflicting data, and what is the outlook for ADAS. Is universal adoption just around the corner? Find out in this episode!
According to Forbes, about 1.3 million people die annually from road accidents, highlighting the role that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have in delivering not only comfort but safety as well. The combination of digital radars and sensor fusion and perception may just be the solution to developing ADAS solutions that save lives.
“Sensor fusion is the solution to the increasing number of automobile accidents. Using only one sensor can promote safety but the fusion of two sensors has higher performance” explained Charles Boulanger
“Digital radar offers better resolution, contrast, and immunity to interference compared to analog radar” explained Manju Hegde.
“We have moved to a three-year cycle,” Palao said. “That means the development of the future protocols will be on a three-year basis. So then, the next milestone will be in 2026 and the one afterwards in 2029. For the most immediate future, for 2026, the main goal is to tackle robustness. That’s one word that’s been mentioned many times in the 2030 roadmap.” Michelle Dawn Mooney, the host of ADAS for Road Safety, spoke with Pierre Olivier, Chief Technology Officer at LeddarTech, and Adriano Palao, Technical Manager ADAS/AD at Euro NCAP to discuss active road safety, ADAS, and perception systems.
“There is a difficult compromise between intervention for an actual hazard, what we call true positives, and false interventions, or false positives,” Palao said. “This is a fine balance that you need to keep in mind to design the systems so that your system will account for the vast majority of situations in which you are exposed to danger. On the flip side, you don’t want your car to break for every situation you encounter on the roads.” Michelle Dawn Mooney, the host of ADAS for Road Safety, spoke with Pierre Olivier, CTO at LeddarTech, and Adriano Palao, Technical Manager ADAS/AD at Euro NCAP, discussing Active Road Safety, ADAS, and Perception Systems.
In this episode of LeddarTech Lab, we invite Stav Yoffe, Senior Manager of Business Development and Strategy at LeddarTech to talk about the differences between object-level fusion and low-level fusion and the advantages of the techniques. Stav informs us about software-defined vehicles and the role that sensor fusion and perception systems can have on electric vehicles.
Hear from Ronny Cohen, VP of Business Development and Automotive Strategy, and Daniel Aitken, VP of Global Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations as they discuss what LeddarTech will showcase at CES 2023, the importance of this event to the wider automotive and technology community, and what it means to LeddarTech.
Daniel Aitken, Vice President, Global Marketing, Communications and Investor Relations, LeddarTech discusses "What to Expect from LeddarTech at 2023 CES". Daniel discusses LeddarTech's history at CES, why CES is important to LeddarTech and what visitors expect to see from LeddarTech at CES.
Vital partner ecosystems must exist and thrive to achieve autonomous driving as a scalable solution for transportation. Heinz Oyrer, Director of Strategic Partnerships at LeddarTech, and Christopher Wiegand, Product Manager at dSPACE, spoke on the strength of LedderTech and dSPACE’s relationship.
“The very basic idea of a partner ecosystem is to create synergies,” Wiegand explained. “And an ecosystem is a network of companies aligned to added value. And the added value of the offering of the ecosystem typically exceeds the value of the added individual activities of offerings of each individual company.” The goal of ADAS technology is too complex for any one company to solve, so an ecosystem needs to exist to achieve these synergies.
“Today’s product markets are such a complex web of technologies and intelligence that we see a strong future for ecosystems and promising opportunities for them to create competitive advantages,” Oyrer said. “So, we could better serve customers, create new experiences, and drive innovation and disruption.”
According to Wiegand, the idea of working together to create an ecosystem so the tech industry can benefit is a notion that’s taking hold when speaking recently with an automotive manufacturer. “The client said we need to work more closely together and keep our eye on overarching synergetic goals. In our culture, there is too much competitive thinking. And especially when we are talking about the validation process. We generally concentrate only the individual components.” Wiegand said that ecosystems are necessary to break these competitive habits to evolve the technology.
What technology is currently being used to monitor railroads? What are the shortcomings? How can safety and efficiency be increased with better monitoring? On this episode of LeddarTech Lab, host Tyler Kern is joined by John Dinan, Field Application Engineer for LeddarTech for a discussion about how railroad monitoring can be improved with innovative technology.
On this episode of LeddarTech Lab, Voice of B2B Daniel Litwin talked with LeddarTech Director of Strategic Partnerships Heinz Oyrer about the LeddarTech ecosystem: how it functions and how it’s been designed and structured from the very beginning.
On this episode of LeddarTech Lab, Voice of B2B Daniel Litwin talked with LeddarTech Director of Strategic Partnerships Heinz Oyrer about the LeddarTech ecosystem: how it functions and how it’s been designed and structured from the very beginning.
Cars that drive themselves are a possibility, but they won’t be coming overnight.
Still, there’s plenty of reason to think autonomous technology will be part of technological advances in the near future, said Vincent Racine, Senior Product Line Manager for LeddarTech, especially with many municipal and regional governments beginning to loosen regulations on testing some of those technologies in real-world scenarios.
“The active market segments are areas where there’s less regulation, where you can do trials – for example, if you talk about autonomous trucking applications, there are roads in the United States where it’s allowed to do autonomous driving testing,” Racine said. “These are areas that will be more active on the short-term horizon. If we go longer, then we talk about the passenger car, but that’s still further down the road.”
No matter the timetable, utilizing sensors will be a key technology for the future, and companies are looking for rugged sensors that will work. LeddarTech’s solid-state LiDAR sensors fit the bill, outperforming many competitors in the same space in how long it takes for a sensor to fail.
“Ruggedness is key,” Racine said. “For a system integrator or a vehicle manufacturer, obviously the goal is to have a sensor that will last as long as the vehicle itself. This is exactly what we’re targeting with our sensor. If you look at the marketplace and other technologies available, our solid-state approach will be 10 to 15 times more durable than other solutions on the market today.”
Counting cars isn’t just a way to pass the time on a long road trip, as an accurate count can help avoid missed collections for toll road operators.
With tollbooths, which cause more accidents and are more expensive to manage, on the way out in most countries around the world, making sure the right electronic toll collection system is in place can be critical.
For John Dinan, Field Application Engineer at LeddarTech, LiDAR is the way to go, with a flash solid-state option one of the best choices.
“The return on investment needs to follow the accuracy increase and operation side of the system, but here, with the solid-state LiDAR and especially with LeddarTech’s T16, which is a product used on many, many tollway systems, what you get is a higher accuracy for your detection system, especially for tailgating, very high speed vehicles and very tight traffic,” he said.
That sets it apart from other systems currently in place, but mechanical scanning LiDAR is also helpful in other scenarios, such as if the width of a vehicle is needed or a group wants to monitor two, three or even four lanes with one system.
“This higher angular resolution is going to be helpful to have a better resolution on the width of the vehicle,” Dinan said. “That is, I would say, an advantage. However, in practice, the width of the vehicle is seldom used for classification purposes. It’s not data that brings added value, but it’s still an advantage.”
While autonomous vehicles may be one of the most hotly discussed technologies in recent years, according to Pierre Olivier (embed contributor page), Chief Technology Officer at LeddarTech, in the industry autonomous vehicle development is not a fleeting trend. “As far as serious development, commercial development has been more than 50 years and yet, we're still looking many years out as far as privately owned passenger cars,” Olivier explained.
There are many challenges facing autonomous vehicle developers. Two of the major concerns include the legal framework for liability and social acceptance. Without a driver, it is difficult to address who is liable in an accident. From a social standpoint, many consumers express that they would be afraid to ride in a fully automated vehicle.
Cost is another challenge the autonomous vehicle industry still needs to overcome. “The cost is still an issue because you need to add lots of sensors and lots of processing to deliver the functionality. Today the cost is way in excess of what people are prepared to pay for automation features, for once again for passenger privately owned vehicles,” Olivier noted. “These are the challenges that the industry needs to address,” Olivier said. Due to these challenges, the time to market continues to be pushed further and further out for autonomous vehicles, leaving those who are eager to utilize the technology with a longer wait time.
The biggest tech show of the year, CES 2020, kicks off on January 7th, with the newest in everything from hobby toys to transformative AI. Daniel Aitken, Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications at LeddarTech, will be at the conference showcasing the latest technological advancements in LiDAR solutions for autonomous transportation. Aitken sat down with us on MarketScale's Transportation Podcast to give a sneak preview of LeddarTech’s vision for CES 2020.
“This year, we’re partnering with several different organizations, and we’ll be directly on their booth,” Aitkin said. “This will now allow people to be much more accessible to LeddarTech’s technology and be able to see it in some real-life situations, for example, in an automobile.”
The strategy this year is for LeddarTech to be able to blanket all of CES instead of one area.
The exciting product people will get to see at this year’s show is LeddarTech’s Leddar Pixell Cocoon LiDAR. The product provides up to 360° coverage of an autonomous vehicle, which eliminates blindspots, virtually, the surroundings of the vehicle. LeddarTech has more than 50 customers already engaged with the product, and they received an honorary CES 2020 award for it.
LeddarTech partnered with the government of Canada for this year’s CES 2020, and people can catch demonstrations of Leddar Pixel technology in their area in the Tech East part of the convention center.
“We’re also working with Karma Automotive, and they’ve designed a concept vehicle with our technology in it, and that will be at our booth as well,” Aitken said.
For more information about the upcoming CES2020 conference, go to ces.tech [embed: https://www.ces.tech/], and for more details about LeddarTech’s participation, go to leddartech.com/events [embed: https://leddartech.com/events/#upcoming-events/].
LeddarTech President and COO Frantz Saintellemy joined host Daniel Litwin on this episode of MarketScale's Transportation podcast to explore the applications and trends surround LiDAR sensor technology and everything it touches, and how the industry is handling a transition from ADAS to autonomous technology.
Saintellemy has a lengthy career in the space, previously working for Integrated Device Technology as the company’s VP, Automotive and Industrial and as ZMDI AG’s Executive VP, Global Sales.
On this episode, Litwin and Saintellemy dove into the innovations in sensor technology, the transition from Automated Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to automation, the challenges facing global implementation of autonomy, and more.
“The most powerful innovation has been in the components side of the technologies,” Saintellemy said. “One of the challenges the industry has always faced was the availability of high-performance components at low cost that could be adopted by passenger cars. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen tremendous acceleration and advancements.”
In the quest for the global scaling autonomous vehicles, Saintellemy said, standardization will play a major role.
“For the industry to accelerate, you’re going to see more standardization,” he said. “There will be standard platforms where everyone can operate on the same platform with the same reference, the same definition, the same specs, the same common look and feel … Today, it’s too fragmented. Everyone’s trying to do something different.”
Pierre Olivier’s involvement in LiDAR technology runs throughout his 10 years with LeddarTech. Olivier, LedderTech’s Chief Technology Officer, popped by The LeddarTech Lab to share his thoughts on how LiDAR is making true autonomy in vehicles a reality.
“There are various ways to define the scope of the ODD (operational design domain)," said Olivier.
From highway on/off ramps to geographical areas, weather conditions, and time of day, the definition can be broad. Autonomous vehicle levels range from 0-5, with zero being no autonomous driving and five being total automation. For consumer-based driving solutions, Olivier believes advanced economically viable autonomous vehicle solutions (level 3 and above) are still a decade away.
“However, if you look at the level four fleet deployments both for robotaxis and goods like delivery, they are probably much closer, because the economic model is very different,” Olivier said.
LiDAR technology helps bridge the gaps in what today’s camera technology can do in vehicles.
LiDAR is an active solution. It’s more robust than cameras in conditions. Currently, a combination of cameras, radar, and LiDAR are required to handle autonomous functionality. It’s the 3D point cloud functionality of LiDAR that makes it so important for use in autonomous vehicles now, and it will continue to gain importance in the future.