Deal Will Put Lidar to Use in AVs at Chinese Shipping ports

Innoviz Technologies has confirmed a major deal that will see its lidar sensing tech deployed at ports in China.

The Tel Aviv firm has worked with strategic partner HiRain Technologies – a leading Beijing-based supplier to the Chinese automotive market – on the project.

The pair have produced a combined solution that uses InnovizOne Lidar and HiRain’s Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and will be employed on autonomous trucks and autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), and for Vehicle to Everything (V2X) applications.

The first deployment is at RiZhao port in Shandong Province on the Yellow Sea, and it’s hoped the sensing system will be swiftly rolled out at other ports across the country. 

The tech is fully integrated into the HiRain vehicles and claimed to be highly durable and precise, offering the ability to detect vehicles, pedestrians and typical port infrastructure. Benefits include improved operational efficiency and enhanced worker safety.

HiRain has also used the lidar to develop its own roadside V2X solution. This is in the form of a sensor unit that can monitor traffic from a bird’s-eye view, collecting data and sending it in real time to a high-performance computer, which then broadcasts the data to all surrounding trucks to avoid collisions.

Omer Keilaf, co-founder and CEO of Innoviz, claimed the introduction of the tech was timely. 

“The global supply chain crisis is being made worse by labor shortages and higher levels of congestion at ports in China and around the world,” he said. “The deployment of HiRain’s autonomous vehicle and V2X systems using InnovizOne Lidar comes at an especially opportune time, as it will greatly improve efficiencies and enable 24/7 operations.” 

“Lidar is one of the most critical technologies of our time and will play an outsized role in the development of not just autonomous vehicles, but also the infrastructure they require to communicate with one another,” added Dr. Chengjian Fan, CTO and Deputy GM of HiRain Technologies. “We look forward to developing additional products using Innoviz’s solutions.”

The companies have worked together since 2018 and HiRain is now looking at ways to incorporate Innoviz’s next-generation Lidar sensor, InnovizTwo, into its platforms, to make port operations even safer and more efficient.

The agreement is another significant milestone for Innoviz, coming hot on the heels of the announcement in August of its $4 billion deal to supply the Volkswagen Group with lidar sensors and perception software for self-driving vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems.