In order to ensure the safety of both the people in an autonomous vehicle and the pedestrians, cyclists and other road users around it, detailed information about the surroundings must be obtained. Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) sensors actively scan the environment with a laser and create a precise 3D point cloud that allows for object detection and tracking. This and the complementarity to other sensor types make LiDAR sensors essential for highly automated driving.

Valeo’s SCALA® is the first LiDAR sensor that meets the strict quality and safety criteria of the automotive industry and is therefore suitable for series production. It features a high capacity of perception by combining a long detection range with a large horizontal field of view and scanning the vehicle environment 25 times per second. Additionally, the versatile SCALA® LiDAR sensor works under various lighting and weather conditions as well as for low and high vehicle speeds.

The high precision positioning on-board unit developed in the ACCURATE project combines raw GNSS signals, GNSS correction data, measurements from an IMU as well as information on the vehicle’s steering angle and wheel ticks on a first level of sensor fusion. However, the obtained absolute position is vulnerable to drift in environments with bad GNSS reception and the relative position between the vehicle and other road users/entities is required for safe automated driving. These problems are tackled by an additional fusion with a LiDAR-based localization within a dense point cloud map of the environment. SCALA® LiDAR sensors provided by Valeo will be used for tests and demonstrations of this functionality.

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