This is the latest product released by DJI's lidar company Livox, a "pearl in the palm of your hand":
The weight of 265g, 65×65×60mm in length, width and height, can be held directly in the palm of your hand.
The horizontal field of view has been expanded to 360°, and it is said to be the smallest 3D lidar on the market.
And just a few days after the release, the official website showed that it was out of stock, so it may not be possible to buy it for 3999 yuan.
Unlike in the past, this time the release is still extremely low-key, still during CES but only announced through the official public account, in sharp contrast to the excitement of lidar peers at CES.
But if combined with the direction of this new product - specifically focusing on low-speed scenarios, facing the industrial and unmanned logistics fields, it may also be able to perceive the reasons for low-key actions.
At present, when the automotive mass production lidar market is in full swing, DJI is no longer competing for the largest market with new products.
This status quo also seems to confirm the previous rumors: the mass production of DJI Lanwo's automotive-grade lidar is not progressing smoothly, the first fixed-point cooperative car manufacturer Xpeng P5 is affected, and the G9 has completely replaced the lidar supplier.
And since the Xpeng P5, DJI Lanwo has indeed not made more progress in the supply of production cars.
Could it be that DJI, which has always been stable and steady, can't gnaw the hard bone of vehicle-level lidar?
3999, what kind of lidar can you buy?
Livox, incubated from DJI's lidar subsidiary.
This new product, which belongs to hybrid solid-state lidar, is the latest product released by DJI after the automotive-grade lidar "Haojie HAP".
The new product follows the tradition of the previous in naming, and because the horizontal field of view is 360°, it is named Mid-360.
Mid-360 belongs to industrial grade lidar, mainly used in logistics robots, industrial robots, smart cities and other fields, supporting mapping, positioning, identification, obstacle avoidance and other functions.
It can be installed on unmanned forklifts, AMRs (autonomous mobile robots), unmanned logistics delivery vehicles, and service robots.
In terms of performance parameters, one of the highlights is the large field of view.
Mid-360 field of view FOV is 360°×59°, laser wavelength is 905nm, the detection distance is 40m at 10% reflectivity, the longest detection distance can reach 70m (reflectance is 80%), the near blind zone is 0.1m, and the point frequency is 200,000 points / second.
Compared with 2D single-line lidar, Mid-360 has upgraded to 3D at the perception level, which is said to be more convenient for mobile robots to collect more comprehensive and three-dimensional environmental feature point clouds in the vertical direction.
The official reason why "small sees the big" is also because the Mid-360 has a small volume when the field of view is large enough.
With a length×65×60mm in length, width and height respectively, the volume is only the size of a tennis ball, and the weight is 265g, which is nearly 60% smaller than the previous product in the Mido-70 series.
When the Mid-360 is attached, most of its volume can be hidden recessed, and the hemispherical window that needs to be exposed is 4.5 cm in diameter and 2.5 cm in height.
In addition, Mid-360 is not constrained by ambient light, whether indoor or outdoor, Mid-360 can output point cloud information to help mobile robots navigate, avoid obstacles, and even detect classification.
For example, a robot using Mid-360 shuttles through a restaurant:
Pedestrian identification in bright outdoor environments:
In terms of technology, several previous lidar products usually emphasize self-developed non-repetitive scanning technology, and the Mid-360 released this time officially claims that it can quickly switch between non-repetitive scanning technology and repetitive scanning technology.
In non-repetitive scan mode, the Mid-360 has high field of view coverage, and as the integration time increases, the field of view coverage also increases, allowing more detail in the field of view.
In repetitive scan mode, the Mid-360 scans in full every 0.1 seconds, providing uniform and stable point cloud output:
Moreover, this lidar also has certain advantages in cost, the price is directly reduced to 3999 yuan, and it is on the shelves for sale as soon as it is released.
However, the problems and hidden worries of this product are not in the product details themselves, but in the reasons behind the product positioning.
Lidar is competing for mass production, but DJI is very low-key
In the current boom in the mass production of LiDAR, DJI is unusually low-key and quiet.
On the one hand, it is much more low-key than its peers during CES.
NIO supplier Tudatong exhibited a complete combination of high-performance main-view and side-looking radar at CES 2023:
Among them, the main long-range radar is used for high-speed navigation assistance, the side-view medium-range radar is used for urban area assisted driving and high-speed lane change, and the short-range radar is used for short-range blinding in some special scenes.
Xpeng G9 supplier Sagitar Juchuang not only brought a number of M series products at CES, but also exhibited the latest automotive-grade lidar E1:
With a field of view of 120°×90°, E1 supports refresh frame rates in excess of 25Hz, has a detection range of 30m@10%, and can be mounted on fenders, doors or heads.
Sagitar is also a replacement for DJI on the customer of Xpeng.
Beixing took out a new generation of 512-line automotive-grade lidar AD2:
And high-profile official announcement with Jabil to accelerate the mass production of automotive lidar pre-installation, and also disclosed that AD2 has won 180,000 fixed points.
Hesai Technology exhibited the FT120 pure solid-state lidar this time:
Officially, there are no moving parts inside, and the laser transmission and reception are completely completed through chips, which is designed for large-scale production of automotive regulations.
Moreover, Hesai officially disclosed that FT120 has obtained a total of more than 1 million fixed points from multiple OEMs.
At this CES exhibition, Leishen Intelligent brought the 1550nm optical fiber automotive lidar LS series:
It can detect up to 500m, and the range measurement is 250m at 10% reflectivity, and the official comprehensive performance has reached the Everest level of automotive lidar.
Their common feature is that they aim at vehicle-level lidar, compete to announce the number of fixed points and partners, and the momentum is huge.
It is not surprising that according to Yole's forecast, the global ADAS lidar market size will increase from $38 million in 2021 to $2 billion in 2027, and will become the largest application field in the lidar industry in the future.
But this kind of excitement, the person who initially detonated was DJI.
At CES in early 2020, DJI released two lidars, Horizion and Tele-15:
At that time, Lanwo also officially announced that it had reached a cooperation with Xidi Smart Drive to help it realize the commercial mass production of smart heavy trucks... A year later, it was announced that it would cooperate with Xpeng to provide automotive-grade lidar - Haojie HAP for the P5.
With the entry of DJI, mass production has not only been mentioned as an unprecedented heat, but also the beginning of the complete defeat of US lidar in the Chinese market, and many domestic lidar have become the mainstream.
However, what was once a tipping point and spoiler is now in a certain predicament.
The products just released by DJI Lanwo not only avoid the largest automotive track in the market, but also have no new progress in mass production, and even the original partner Xiaopeng has changed suppliers...
The above phenomena also seem to confirm the rumors that have been circulating for a long time, since the end of 2021:
"The mass production of automotive-grade lidar is not progressing smoothly", "the applause is not calling", and "the delivery cannot keep up".
For these rumors and questions, DJI has not responded to the outside world, including after this release, we also specifically asked the official for verification, but did not receive a reply as of press time.
The doubts surrounding DJI are still unsolved.
The doubts surrounding the mass production of DJI's automotive lidar are still unsolved.
Coincidentally, Huawei, which once entered lidar with a high profile, has also made slow progress in this field, and even "branded" cooperative models began to choose other players' lidar to promote mass production and delivery.
So is the automotive-grade lidar too difficult, and even DJI and Huawei are not smooth? Or is there something else?
And for DJI's new in-vehicle lidar product, do you think it has enough cost performance and competitiveness?
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