Who’s the LiDAR IP leader?

Article written by Junko Yoshida for EETIMES – Among the host of sensors nowadays loaded into autonomous vehicles, lidar (light detection and ranging) projects as both critical and lucrative. As the automotive industry girds for a wave of autonomous car rollouts, Pierre Cambou, activity leader for imaging and sensors at market-research firm Yole Développement (Lyon, France), said he can’t imagine a robotic vehicle without lidars. “You need a lidar,” he noted.

Yole forecasts that revenue generated by lidars will reach $1.6 billion in 2022 and will balloon to $31.5 billion by 2032.

However, the technologies that drive lidars are still in flux, with new developments still in he pipeline. As Akhilesh Kona, senior analyst for automotive electronics and semiconductors at IHS Markit, previously told EE Times, lidar technology suppliers continue to improve durability, size, and cost by developing a variety of beam-steering technologies that range from mechanical to MEMS and solid-state.

As the race for better lidar heats up, the inevitable question is: Who’s the lidar leader? One way to find out is to look at lidar-related patents filed.

Knowmade, one of Yole’s group companies that specializes in IP analysis and patent assessment, recently examined lidar devices and systems for automotive. Knowmade identified more than 6,480 lidar-related patent families for automotive… Full article

Source: www.eetimes.com