Argo AI has introduced a lidar system that can detect difficult to see objects at long distances and with greater precision. The company says its new lidar system allows 360-degrees awareness day or night and enables vehicles to safely drive on busy city streets, suburban neighbourhoods, and at highway speeds.

The new technology will equip future Ford and VW autonomous vehicles.

The Argo Lidar has been made possible by the company’s 2017 acquisition of New Jersey based Princeton Lightwave Inc., a start-up which was developing a long range lidar. 

The result is a sensor that Argo says has the industry’s longest-distance sensing range capability of 400 metres, with dark-object detection for safe highway driving. Argo Lidar also offers ultra-high resolution perception, providing the photorealistic imaging required to identify small objects for safe operation on complex city streets.

Alongside custom-designed sensors and high-performance computing, Argo Lidar is the centrepiece of the Argo Self-Driving System (SDS). It is designed to handle complex aspects of human driving, such as:

• Seeing the darkest of black-painted vehicles—those that reflect less than 1% of light even at long range and in the pitch blackness of night
• Safely navigating left-hand turns onto roads with oncoming high-speed traffic by utilising a 360° field of view
• Managing instant transitions from darkness to bright light, such as when entering and leaving a tunnel, which often temporarily blind human drivers
• Distinguishing small, moving objects such as animals from vegetation and static objects

The innovation behind Argo Lidar is known as “Geiger-mode” sensing. Argo AI’s proprietary Geiger-mode lidar has the ability to detect the smallest particle of light—a single photon—and is key to sensing objects with low reflectivity. This, combined with higher-wavelength operation above 1400 nanometres, gives Argo Lidar its capabilities, including longer-range, higher-resolution, lower-reflectivity detection and full 360° field of view, from a single sensor.

The Argo AI Hardware Development team is working with a contract manufacturer for series production of the new lidar sensor. The first batch of Argo Lidar sensors is already supporting on-road testing of Argo’s self-driving test vehicle fleet. Soon, volume production will begin for Ford and Volkswagen Group vehicles.

“Argo Lidar takes us to a whole new level of self-driving technology, unlocking our ability to power both delivery and ride-hail services,” said Bryan Salesky, founder and CEO of Argo AI. “The Argo Self-Driving System delivers the safety, scale and service experience that businesses want and their customers demand, especially coming out of the pandemic.”

“We have unparalleled autonomous driving technology and operations capabilities,” said Salesky. “Proving out these abilities every day, across six cities from our nation’s capital to Miami to Silicon Valley, we are ready to enable the next phase of growth for delivery, retail, and ride-sharing partners.”