Velodyne Lidar executives spoke on how our lidar sensors and software are shaping autonomous solutions in a wide range of markets during a virtual CES 2022 press conference.

Velodyne CEO Dr. Ted Tewksbury shared his vision for the future of lidar and what customers can expect from the company in 2022 and beyond. Ted was joined by Chief Commercial Officer Sinclair Vass and Laura Wrisley, Vice President of Sales, North America.

Click here to watch the press conference.

In his opening remarks of the event, Sinclair discussed the lidar market opportunity, saying:

“I truly believe that the adoption of lidar will expand rapidly over the next few years, and Velodyne is exceptionally well positioned to help drive that growth. While always staying true to our core mission of enabling a more safe, sustainable and efficient world.”  

Velodyne’s Four Pillars

Ted spoke next on Velodyne plans to make lidar ubiquitous by making it more affordable and easier to use by anyone, for any application. We plan to achieve these goals by focusing on four pillars:

• Expand lidar applications beyond automotive into industrial and robotics, autonomous vehicles, intelligent infrastructure and other new markets.
• Develop high performance sensors at a price point to accelerate mass adoption.
• Extend our software solutions to make it easier for customers to deploy our products and obtain actionable perception information to guide safe autonomous decision making.
• Support our customers’ volume ramps with the industry’s highest quality, reliability and customer satisfaction.

During the press conference, Ted said:

“The demand for lidar is growing exponentially, driven by autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems, industrial and robotics, intelligent infrastructure and smart cities. In all of these applications, safety is paramount. Lidar must be part of any autonomous mobility system to ensure safety regardless of lighting, weather and other conditions.”

Major Market Trends

Laura discussed the market trends we are seeing in each of our four major market segments and discussed some of the customers we are working with in each market. The segments are:

Industrial and Robotics, which is the closest to large scale commercial deployments. This segment is being driven by the proliferation of intelligent automation in factories, warehouses, ports and other applications. These trends have been catalyzed by recent events such as the global pandemic and the supply chain crunch.

Intelligent Infrastructure and Smart Cities, where our Intelligent Infrastructure Solution uses lidar to create a real-time 3D map of roads and intersections to provide precise traffic monitoring and analytics. The solution helps municipalities predict and diagnose safety issues, analyze near misses, and take preventive action before accidents happen.

The Autonomous Vehicle segment, where lidar is an essential technology. Autonomous shuttles like Beep by Navya, May Mobility, and leading robotaxi innovators like Motional are integrating our lidar in their systems to provide the highest levels of performance and safety.

The Automotive segment, where the high, functional-safety levels required for Level 2+ and Level 3 ADAS can only be solved with lidar. Our H800 solid-state sensor is being evaluated by a number of automotive customers and, in conjunction with our Vella software, can dramatically improve safety.