Lidar, with its high-precision environmental perception capability, has become a key factor driving the development of autonomous driving technology and is ushering in a new era of autonomous driving. This is reflected in the following aspects:

Providing high-precision environmental perception: Lidar can accurately measure the distance between the target and the sensor by emitting laser pulses to the target and receiving reflected signals, constructing a high-density three-dimensional point cloud. These point clouds can accurately restore the three-dimensional shape of roads, pedestrians, vehicles and various facilities, with millimeter level ranging accuracy and wide detection range, so that the auto drive system can intuitively and carefully "see" the surrounding environment, providing a solid foundation for path planning and obstacle avoidance.

Improving adaptability to complex scenarios: In highway scenes, the long-range detection advantage of LiDAR is obvious, which can capture incoming vehicles, obstacles, and road potholes from hundreds of meters away, leaving enough time for braking or lane changing. In nighttime or low light environments, it does not rely on natural light and can maintain stable ranging performance. In complex urban road scenes, it can help algorithms accurately segment ground points and non ground points, recognize pedestrian and vehicle contours, and can also be combined with high-precision maps to achieve centimeter level accuracy in vehicle positioning.

Assisting the landing of advanced autonomous driving: With the development of autonomous driving towards L3 and higher levels, the accuracy and reliability requirements for environmental perception have greatly increased, and LiDAR is regarded as the "safety airbag" of autonomous driving. The number of vehicles equipped with LiDAR has also increased from 1-2 in the past to 4-5. Beijing's implementation of L3 level regulations has provided policy support for the outbreak of advanced intelligent driving, highlighting the importance of LiDAR.

Promote the development of sensor fusion: Lidar can complement other sensors such as cameras and millimeter wave radar to build a multi-level perception system. The camera can obtain rich color and texture information, and fusion with LiDAR point cloud can improve scene semantic understanding and obstacle classification accuracy; Millimeter wave radar can detect metal targets reliably in bad weather, and can complement laser radar effectively to provide auto drive system with more comprehensive and accurate environmental cognition.

Promoting technological and market development: Lidar technology is constantly advancing, transitioning from traditional analog LiDAR to digital LiDAR, while also moving towards solid-state technology, making it smaller in size, lower in cost, and more reliable, which is conducive to large-scale production and commercial deployment. With the reduction of costs, LiDAR has gradually penetrated into the mainstream market from high-end models, and the market size continues to expand, promoting autonomous driving technology to reach the public faster.