Valeo has revealed its third-generation scanning LiDAR set to make its market debut in 2024. The new technology is said to offer significantly enhanced performance to make autonomous mobility a reality—or at least provide previously unseen levels of road safety.

“Valeo’s third-generation LiDAR is a major technological advance toward the autonomous vehicle,” said Geoffrey Bouquot, Valeo’s Senior Vice-President, R&D and Strategy. “This upgrade strengthens Valeo’s technological and industrial leadership in the field when it was already the only supplier on the market currently series producing an automotive-grade LiDAR scanner. Our number one goal with this device remains the same—to save lives on the road.”

The supplier showed its SCALA technology in the Valet Park4U automated valet parking prototype at the 2013 IAA in Frankfurt and as part of the highly automated Drive4U solution during a demonstration in real traffic conditions at the 2015 CES in Las Vegas. The company says it was the first and remains the only company to produce a scanning LiDAR on an industrial scale. It has produced over 150,000 units. The 2018 Audi A8 was the first production car to use LiDAR, which was supplied by Valeo.

Valeo says that up to 30% of premium new vehicles are set to reach Level 3 automation by 2030 and to do so will need to be equipped with LiDAR technology. The company is expecting that cars, autonomous shuttles, robotaxis, delivery droids, autonomous trucks, as well as the agriculture, mining, and infrastructure sectors will need to be equipped with one or more LiDARs. It says the LiDAR market to represent more than $50 billion by 2030, and it wants its third-generation LiDAR to be a key contributor to the change in scale.

The new LiDAR is said to deliver unrivaled performance in terms of range, resolution, and frame rate. It reconstructs a 3D real-time image of the vehicle’s surroundings at a rate of 4.5 million pixels and 25 frames per second. Compared to the previous generation, it has 12 times better resolution, 3 times better range, and 2.5 times better viewing angle.

Thanks to its unique perception capabilities, the new LiDAR is said to be able to “see” things that humans, cameras, and radars cannot. This means that driving can be delegated to the vehicle in many situations, for Level 2 automation and above, including on the highway at speeds of up to 130 km/h (80 mph). Even in such situations, a vehicle fitted with the LiDAR can manage emergency situations autonomously.

The scanning LiDAR detects, recognizes, and classifies all objects located around the car. If the objects are moving, it can measure their speed and direction. The LiDAR can adapt to all light conditions, from dazzlingly bright to pitch black.

It can measure the density of raindrops to calculate the right braking distance. It tracks nearby vehicles, even when they are no longer in the driver’s line of sight, and uses algorithms to anticipate their trajectories and trigger the necessary safety maneuvers. Via the Cloud, the LiDAR can alert other vehicles of road hazards so that the “community” benefits.

Valeo designs and manufactures the entire system, including the hardware, the software, and the associated artificial intelligence that combines collected data and enables the vehicle to make the right decision. Its software automatically adapts to the environment and improves its performance over time through regular updates.

The company’s LiDARs are produced at its Wemding plant in Bavaria, Germany, where components are assembled with a micron level of precision. The plant’s production lines draw on Valeo’s expertise in optics, mechanics, and photonics. The company has 300 engineers dedicated solely to this technology, for which over 500 patents have already been filed.