Source: Star Daily

Lidar, known as the 'eye of the machine,' has become an important tool for Siasun Robot&Automation to perceive the environment due to its high precision, wide range, and strong stability. With the increasing penetration of Lidar in the robotic field, many Lidar manufacturers have recently released Bullish Signals.

It is reported that at the upcoming CES, $Hesai (HSAI.US)$ (Hesai Technology) will launch its latest product—a mini high-performance 3D Lidar designed specifically for the robotic and industrial market. A company representative told Star Daily that the mini high-performance 3D Lidar features high resolution, low power consumption, and is lightweight and flexible, primarily used in mobile robots, delivery robots, lawn mowing robots, cleaning robots, Agriculture robots, and more.

At the Earnings Conference held earlier, $ROBOSENSE (02498.HK)$ CEO Qiu Chunchao revealed that the company's future research and development focus will be on key modules such as vision, touch, Electric Machine, and execution units, providing core incremental components and solutions for the AI robot era, reducing the technical and cost thresholds for robot applications.

According to further information, Suta Jun Chuang will continue to explore new market spaces in fields such as Robots and Drones. By the end of the third quarter of this year, the company's partners in the robot field have increased from 2,400 to 2,600. It is expected that the shipment volume in the robot field will break six figures next year.

The robot field may become an important growth engine.

Undoubtedly, robots, as a symbolic field of Intelligent Manufacturing, are demonstrating unprecedented market development space and potential. With breakthroughs in large models and embodied intelligence technology, various robots in traditional industrial and commercial fields are accelerating their transition to a new stage of intelligent unmanned upgrades.

According to related reports from Zhuzhi Consulting, the market size of robotic Lidar solutions is expected to grow from 8.2 billion yuan in 2022 to 216.2 billion yuan in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 50.6%.

$ROBOSENSE (02498.HK)$ It is mentioned that as the market space for robots continues to expand, 3D perception Sensors, represented by Lidar as a core component of the robot field, may experience explosive growth. Therefore, the robot industry will become an important growth engine for the Lidar market going forward.

According to their introduction, Suta Jun Chuang's Lidar products are platform-based, with products designed for robots coming from the R platform and E platform. Among them, the R platform is a traditional mechanical LiDAR that can cover most performance needs of robots and has been widely applied in various scenarios; while the E platform product is the world's first mass-producible full-solid-state wide-angle Lidar platform covering both the Passenger Vehicle and Intelligent Robot fields, capable of meeting the detection needs for large angles and high precision at close distances in the robot field.

All manufacturers are actively developing new products that can be applied in the field of robots.

In addition to Hesai Technology’s upcoming mini high-performance 3D Lidar, Suoteng Ju Chuang also revealed to Star Daily reporters: "Multiple new products will be announced during CES."

Since the beginning of this year, the competitive landscape of the new energy vehicle market has become increasingly fierce, with price wars among downstream auto companies transferring cost pressures to upstream component manufacturers. In this context, Lidar manufacturers have also been unable to escape, facing severe challenges with product price pressures. This year, in response to market changes, many Lidar manufacturers have successively lowered product prices.

Relevant sources told Star Daily that the prices of mechanical Radar products for the much-watched L4 autonomous driving are also rapidly declining, dropping from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands.

In the field of robots, the company has maintained a gross margin level of 35% to 50%. A person from Suoteng Ju Chuang told reporters, "Based on the research and development results in the chipization and digitalization of automotive Lidar, combined with automated production and scale efficiency, the company is confident about the future gross margin in the robot field. Due to the support of software algorithms, AI solutions have consistently maintained a gross margin level of about 55%." The earnings report shows that as of the end of the third quarter, the gross margin for Lidar products used in ADAS applications was 14.1%.

In the opinion of Wang Xianbin, vice president of the Gaishi Automotive Research Institute, the market scale and demand for humanoid robots will grow rapidly in the future. "At the same time, as there is no need for automotive-grade certification, the product development costs of robotic Lidar will relatively decline. In addition, relevant companies can fully utilize the know-how in the onboard field, making cost reduction for product platform development very evident."

Different manufacturers have different focuses in their research and development.

However, for automotive Lidar manufacturers, entering the field of robots is not an easy task. There are significant differences in application scenarios and technical requirements between the two, which undoubtedly constitutes a certain technical barrier. Overcoming these challenges to successfully apply automotive Lidar technology in the field of robots has become an important issue for these manufacturers.

Wang Xianbin, Vice President of the GAISE Automotive Research Institute, stated in an interview with the Star Daily reporter that the R&D of Robot Lidar and Onboard Lidar differs due to inconsistent application scenarios, with related performance indicators such as navigation, obstacle avoidance, distance measurement, and the perception of environmental angles varying. The research focus will be different. "Both Robot Lidar and Onboard Lidar are relatively challenging, mainly requiring rapid and accurate object recognition through environmental perception, completing point cloud mapping and efficient operation in complex indoor and outdoor scenes."

Specifically, Wang Xianbin further supplemented: "Regarding measurement accuracy, both require very dense point clouds for real-time environmental object recognition, but Robot Lidar has relatively larger measurement accuracy levels and vertical FOV; concerning detection distance, Onboard Lidar is generally over 200m, while humanoid robots are mostly within 40m; real-time requirements are relatively high." A representative from Hesai Technology also told the Star Daily reporter that robots require a larger FOV, with higher demands for blind spot coverage and detection accuracy.

Zhang Xiang, Secretary-General of the International Intelligent Transportation Technology Association, told the Star Daily reporter that the principles of Robot Lidar and Onboard Lidar are the same, but the working environment for Onboard Lidar is relatively harsh, with interference factors such as vibrations and noise, and higher requirements for temperature and humidity ranges. Therefore, overall, the R&D difficulty for Robot Lidar is relatively lower, but it has higher specific performance requirements for special scenario Robot Lidar. "Onboard Lidar, being installed on mass-produced Passenger Vehicles, often faces stricter requirements regarding quality, lifespan, reliability, and cost," a relevant person from Hesai Technology also told the Star Daily reporter.

Representatives from Sutedeng Ju Chuang mentioned in an interview that robots need to operate in various environments such as indoors, outdoors, and industrial facilities. This requires Lidar to have a larger field of view and higher near-range accuracy to accurately identify road surfaces, lawns, platforms, and other terrains, as well as to navigate through narrow scenes.

In the current context of rapid development of Intelligent Driving Autos and Robots, aside from the differences in Lidar mounted on both, a significant trend is that neither Intelligent Driving Autos nor Robots rely solely on a single Lidar for environmental perception. Therefore, the integration of Lidar and pure visual technology is gradually becoming one of the market's focal points.

According to Zhang Xiang, Secretary-General of the International Intelligent Transportation Technology Association, the information obtained by the robot's visual camera differs from that of Lidar; the two can complement each other, providing redundancy of information to ensure accuracy.

Regarding integration technology, Wang Xianbin, Vice President of the GAISE Automotive Research Institute, told the Star Daily reporter, "Lidar can provide precise environmental information and continuous measurement data, which is crucial for humanoid robot navigation, obstacle avoidance, and understanding human user intentions and behaviors. However, under the condition of high Lidar costs, cameras need to supplement core scene perception capabilities; simultaneously, in special environmental interference backgrounds such as strong light or backlight, it is necessary to integrate technologies like millimeter-wave Radar to fully leverage the advantages of full-scene recognition."

Editor/Rocky