Pittsburgh, PA-based Argo AI has developed a new LiDAR technology that the self-driving company says overcomes the limitations preventing most competitors from commercializing autonomous delivery and ride-hailing services. By detecting the most difficult-to-see objects from farther away and with more precision, the Argo SDS (Self-Driving System) is capable of 360-degree awareness day or night and can safely drive on busy city streets, in suburban neighborhoods, and most importantly now at highway speeds.
“Argo Lidar takes us to a whole new level of self-driving technology, unlocking our ability to power both delivery and ride-hail services,” said Bryan Salesky, Founder and CEO of Argo AI. “The Argo Self-Driving System delivers the safety, scale and service experience that businesses want and their customers demand, especially coming out of the pandemic.”
This breakthrough in autonomous vehicle technology was enabled by Argo’s 2017 acquisition of Princeton Lightwave, a company that pioneered an innovative form of long-range Geiger-mode LiDAR. The result is a sensor believed to be the industry’s longest-distance sensing range capability of 400 m (1310 ft), with dark-object detection for safe highway driving. Argo Lidar offers ultra-high-resolution perception, providing the photorealistic imaging required to identify small objects for safe operation on complex city streets.
Argo says that the SDS capabilities, combined with the company’s fleet dispatch infrastructure and operations experience, translate into clear advantages when it comes to commercialization. Safe operations in cities, suburbs, and on highways enables connections from warehouses to urban and suburban routes for middle- and last-mile delivery, or service to the most in-demand ride-hailing routes to and from airports. Scaled operations are based on extensive testing and development in six U.S. cities, with additional cities coming online this year as well as expansion into Europe. Its service experience, including address-to-address routing within urban and suburban areas of operation, maximizes effectiveness for deliveries or commuters.
Through deep collaboration with automotive partners Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen Group in the technology integration and development of commercial-grade self-driving vehicles, Argo believes it can meet the durability requirements for maximizing commercial fleet uptime and improving operations and customer satisfaction.
“We have unparalleled autonomous driving technology and operations capabilities,” added Salesky. “Proving out these abilities every day, across six cities from our nation’s capital to Miami to Silicon Valley, we are ready to enable the next phase of growth for delivery, retail, and ride-sharing partners.”
Helping Salesky lead that next phase at Argo AI is Peter Rander, Ph.D., Co-Founder and President; Brett Browning, Ph.D., Executive Vice President of Product Development and Chief Technology Officer; Summer Craze Fowler, Chief Information Officer; Cynthia Kwon, Vice President, Strategy and Business Development; Wesley Ford, Vice President, Systems Engineering; Kate Kozlowski, General Counsel; and Reinhard Stolle, Ph.D., Vice President, Argo Munich.
Argo Lidar is the centerpiece of the Argo SDS combined with other custom sensors and high-performance computing. It is designed to handle the most complex aspects of human driving. Those include seeing the darkest of black-painted vehicles—those that reflect less than 1% of light even at long range and in the pitch blackness of night. The system can safely navigate left-hand turns onto roads with oncoming high-speed traffic by using a 360° field-of-view. It can manage quick transitions from darkness to bright light, such as when entering and leaving a tunnel, which often temporarily blind human drivers. The SDS can also distinguish small moving objects such as animals from static objects like vegetation.
Argo AI latest innovation is its proprietary Geiger-mode LiDAR, which can detect the smallest particle of light—down to a single photon, which is key to sensing objects with low reflectivity. Combined with higher-wavelength operation above 1400 nm, this gives Argo Lidar its unique capabilities, including longer-range, higher-resolution, lower-reflectivity detection, and full 360° field of view—all from a single sensor.
In January, Browning provided some details of the latest fourth-generation SDS fleet of Ford Escape Hybrid self-driving test vehicles on the company’s Ground Truth blog. He says that they comprise “product intent” components, which means that they have the functional performance needed to be manufactured affordably and offer automotive-grade ruggedness, reliability, and durability.
In addition to the new LiDAR, he said another big advancement is in radar. The company’s new radars nearly double their range of detection, and when coupled with the expanded detection capabilities of the long-range LiDAR, allows its vehicles to travel safely at higher speeds.
The new SDS incorporates a number of high-resolution far- and near-field cameras with new custom image sensors that offer more advanced pixel technology. This improved vision capability is crucial in high dynamic range scenes, for instance when a vehicle is emerging out of a dark tunnel and into bright sunlight.
The addition of three microphones allows the SDS to listen for emergency responder vehicles and react even when those vehicles are not visible to the cameras, LiDAR, or radar.
The SDS has two independent/redundant computing systems to maximize safety. The main computer, called the AVS (Autonomous Vehicle System), controls all of the self-driving software. The CAVS (Complementary Autonomous Vehicle System) runs in parallel with the AVS and is designed to perform collision-mitigation functions if required as a backup in case of the main system failure.
Argo AI’s hardware development team is working with a contract manufacturer for series production of the new LiDAR sensor. The first batch of Argo Lidar sensors is already supporting on-road testing of Argo’s self-driving test vehicle fleet. The company says that volume production plans with Ford and Volkswagen will soon lead to the widespread commercialization of autonomous delivery and ride-hailing services.
