On December 8, 2021, RoboSense was officially announced as a LiDAR provider for the L4 autonomous driving solution of the SAIC Mobility Robotaxi project. On the same day, SAIC Mobility Robotaxi announced its operation commencement in Jiading, Shanghai.
SAIC Motor Artificial Intelligent Laboratory and Momenta, a leading autonomous driving company, joined hands to provide "AI" empowered hardware and software integrated autonomous driving solutions for SAIC Mobility Robotaxi. RoboSense helped to build a LiDAR integrated 3D perception solution, providing highly accurate, safe and reliability redundant environment perception data for SAIC Mobility Robotaxi, fully supporting the sustained upgrading and evolution of autonomous driving technology.
SAIC Mobility Robotaxi project deployed its first 20 operating vehicles. The fleet size in Shanghai will grow to 40 within this year, and 20 operating vehicles will be launched in Suzhou,and SAIC plans to form a fleet of 200 vehicles next year - all powered by LiDAR solution of RoboSense. The solution includes a 128-beam LiDAR RS-Ruby and two new generation customized 32-beam LiDAR RS-Helios, which are integrated to form an omni-directional sensing area and provide accurate and comprehensive 3D driving environment sensor data.
Among them, the main LiDAR RS-Ruby reaches a maximum detection range of 250 meters with 0.1° vertical angular resolution, which means that RS-Ruby can detect a barricade barrel across two football fields. With a brand-new technical architecture, the blind spot LiDAR RS-Helios can eliminate the blind areas on two sides of the vehicle body with a 70°-downward vertical FoV, and accurately detect obstacles close to the lower end of the vehicle body.
Meanwhile, RS-Ruby and RS-Helios both feature rain, fog, snow and dust denoising function and shield against mutiple LiDARs interference. They can work at a wide temperature range of -30℃ to 60℃ and adapt to various extreme driving environments from steamy heat to severe icy cold weathers.
As a primary innovation and development strategic project of the "Electrification + Smart Networking + Sharing" plan of SAIC Motor, SAIC Mobility Robotaxi integrates advantageous industrial chain resources including SAIC Motor passenger cars, SAIC Motor Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Momenta and SAIC Mobility, and realizes industrial chain integration with the guidance of SAIC Motor Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. RoboSense has been making efforts to promote the large-scale commercial application of LiDAR in the field of shared autonomous driving, and has partnered with Pony.ai, IDRIVERPLUS, Zhidaohulian, DeepRoute.ai and many other enterprises.