Cepton Sets New Industry Benchmark with Next-Generation Flagship Automotive Lidar, Ultra
- Ultra showcases groundbreaking MagnoSteer™ technology for maximized field of view efficiency.
- The lidar's compactness and power efficiency break the performance bottleneck of 905 nm lidars, offering top-notch performance and scalability for the automotive industry.
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Insights
The introduction of Cepton's Ultra lidar technology, featuring the proprietary MagnoSteer™ and ASIC chipset, represents a significant advancement in the automotive lidar market. The product's specifications, such as a 300 m range at 10% reflectivity and a 0.05° resolution, surpass current industry standards. This technology could potentially disrupt the existing market by setting new benchmarks for performance and compactness. The ability to integrate seamlessly into vehicles without additional cooling systems indicates a strategic move towards reducing production complexities and costs.
Furthermore, the emphasis on power efficiency, with a typical consumption of 12 W, aligns with the automotive industry's shift towards sustainability and could influence OEM preferences. The potential reduction in development time and cost, as mentioned by the CEO, may accelerate adoption and could be a catalyst for growth in the stock value, as investors often look favorably upon innovations that promise to increase market share and reduce time to market.
The Ultra lidar's adaptive perception capabilities, enabled by software definable fields of view and ROIs, are critical for the advancement of ADAS and automated driving technologies. These features allow for dynamic focusing on high-priority objects, enhancing safety and efficiency. The mention of MagnoSteer's frictionless, infinite mechanical life is noteworthy, suggesting high durability and reliability, which are paramount in automotive applications. The absence of fiber laser components, which are typically expensive and less reliable, indicates a strategic design choice that could improve the product's market competitiveness.
The integration of advanced ASICs for signal and point cloud processing is a testament to Cepton's commitment to innovation and could lead to superior lidar image quality. This technological leap could have a ripple effect on the industry, pushing competitors to innovate or risk obsolescence, potentially influencing stock performance not only for Cepton but for other players in the sector.
Cepton's unveiling of the Ultra lidar system could have a significant financial impact on the company's valuation. The promise of a volume price point significantly lower than current lidar prices may increase market penetration and drive revenue growth. The company's stock could see positive movement as Cepton targets economies of scale and mass-market readiness, which are attractive to investors. However, it is crucial to monitor the execution of their go-to-market strategy and the subsequent market adoption rate, as these will be the true tests of the technology's financial viability.
Investors should also consider the R&D expenditure associated with developing such advanced technologies and the potential impact on the company's short-term profitability. Long-term, if Cepton can deliver on its promises, it could establish itself as a leader in the lidar space, which would likely be reflected in its market capitalization.
World’s slimmest lidar packs Cepton’s groundbreaking MagnoSteer™ technology and proprietary ASIC chipset, enabling an unprecedented combination of 300 m range and 0.05° resolution at 12 W power consumption
Ultra is the world’s slimmest adaptive, long-range lidar, designed based on real OEM requirements for next-generation consumer vehicle ADAS and automated driving capabilities. © Cepton, Inc.
Ultra is the world’s slimmest adaptive, long-range lidar, designed based on real OEM requirements for next-generation consumer vehicle ADAS and automated driving capabilities. It boasts Cepton’s latest innovation – MagnoSteer™ – to enable an unmatched combination of performance, power efficiency, and compactness:
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Maximum detection range: 300 m at
10% reflectivity - Angular resolution: 0.05° x 0.05° within regions of interest (ROI)
- Field of view: 120° (H) x 25° (V) maximum, software definable
- Typical Power consumption: 12 W
- Data rate: up to 3.8 million points per second
- Size: 150 (W) x 24 (H) x 90 (D) mm
“With the introduction of Ultra, we are proud to reveal MagnoSteer, our next generation of lidar imaging technology,” said Brunno Moretti, Senior Vice President of Product and Commercial Operations at Cepton. “MagnoSteer is a revolutionary beam steering mechanism with maximized field of view efficiency. This means that it minimizes the time, space and energy wasted within the architecture as it generates extremely dense point clouds, resulting in impressive data rate from an extremely small package. It is frictionless, automotive-grade and has an infinite mechanical life. It consumes less than half the power of typical scanning systems that deliver comparable performance, while taking up as little as one-fourth of the space.
“Powered by MagnoSteer, Ultra breaks the performance bottleneck of 905 nm lidars while taking advantage of a mature, mass-market-ready laser technology. With a 300 m detection range at
Ultra is by far the smallest, slimmest high-performance automotive lidar on the market today. Similar performing lidar systems are typically triple the volume and double the height. With its extremely compact form factor and power efficiency, Ultra is designed for seamless integration into various locations on a vehicle without the need for an additional cooling system. It can be embedded behind the windshield and into the roofline, the headlamps and the fascia, enabling high-precision perception for various automotive use cases.
Ultra’s software definable field of view and ROIs enable adaptive perception capabilities to help the vehicle stay focused on high-priority objects. The ROIs are dynamically tunable, creating real-time zones around key objects, such as vehicles and pedestrians, making them stand out against background objects that do not require as many data points. This increases the overall energy efficiency of the automotive perception system without compromising precision. The MagnoSteer architecture also enables more advanced perception capabilities within a single-sensor architecture in the future.
Ultra is enabled by Cepton’s proprietary ASIC chipset, which the company has invested in developing since 2019. Integrating advanced ASICs for both front-end signal processing and back-end point cloud processing, the chipset enhances the technical advantages of MagnoSteer to optimize lidar image quality while minimizing sensor footprint, power consumption and cost.
Dr. Jun Pei, CEO and Co-founder of Cepton, says: “Ultra stands as the epitome of innovation in automotive lidar, with an unprecedented combination of industry-leading performance, low power consumption and unrivaled compactness. By utilizing our experience in industrializing lidar for mass-market applications, we expect to reduce Ultra’s development time by a third as compared to the past, thereby shortening time to market. Targeting a volume price point significantly lower than today’s lidar prices, Ultra is poised to enhance vehicle safety across all levels of automation.”
Cepton will be showcasing Ultra during CES 2024, held from January 9th to 12th in
About Cepton
Cepton is a Silicon Valley innovator of lidar-based solutions for automotive (ADAS/AV), smart cities, smart spaces and smart industrial applications. With its patented lidar technology, Cepton aims to take lidar mainstream and achieve a balanced approach to performance, cost and reliability, while enabling scalable and intelligent 3D perception solutions across industries.
Founded in 2016 and led by industry veterans with decades of collective experience across a wide range of advanced lidar and imaging technologies, Cepton is focused on the mass market commercialization of high performance, high quality lidar solutions. Cepton is headquartered in
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240108365365/en/
Media: Faithy Li, media@cepton.com
Source: Cepton, Inc.
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