Radar can be a relatively new technology in the automotive field. The laser pointer radar has been around for decades. Because laser radar has the potential of continuous high-precision 3D scanning and strong anti-interference ability, it is highly praised by car manufacturers. Lidar is mainly composed of two parts: laser detection and laser ranging, which is equivalent to the eyes of autonomous driving. In addition to the transmitter, the lidar system requires a highly sensitive receiver that measures the distance between stationary and moving objects and maintains a sharp sense of the outside world by receiving feedback in real time.
Conventional radars do not recognize object details, and the recognition efficiency of the camera is significantly reduced under dim or backlight conditions. Laser pointer radar 3D accurate scanning detection capabilities, you can easily break through these obstacles.
However, for the time being, due to the high cost and excessive volume of the laser radar, its application has been greatly limited. In order to reduce the cost of using laser radar and improve product reliability, the use of solid-state laser radar instead of traditional mechanical laser radar is the current mainstream method.
Although many people think that laser radar is the basis for automatic driving, there are many voices to question. Tesla CEO Musk thinks that autonomous driving does not have to use laser radar. It can also be used by a camera and radar to complete the automatic driving system. Most of the work.
The millimeter wave radar refers to a detection radar that operates in the millimeter wave band. Usually the millimeter wave refers to the frequency domain of 30 to 300 GHz. The millimeter wave seeker has the characteristics of small size, light weight and high spatial resolution. At present, millimeter wave radar is already quite mature in technology.
Millimeter wave radar technology is mostly used in the military. With the rise of autonomous driving, this technology has begun to show commercial value. Compared with optical seekers such as infrared, laser pointer and TV, the millimeter wave seeker has strong ability to penetrate fog, smoke and dust, and has excellent characteristics all-weather and all-day. In addition, the anti-interference ability and anti-stealth ability of the millimeter wave seeker are also outstanding. The millimeter wave radar can distinguish and identify small targets, and can recognize multiple targets at the same time; it has outstanding features such as imaging capability, small size and good maneuverability.
In addition, because the millimeter-wave radar has a relatively high technical maturity, its price is generally only in the early thousand yuan. Compared with the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of laser radars, it is obvious that the millimeter-wave radar has to be close to the people. However, in humid environments such as rain, fog and wet snow, the detection distance of millimeter waves is greatly affected. Compared with microwaves, the millimeter-wave tree penetration ability is also poor.
Summary: Although the current autonomous driving field is very hot, except for the cars that are tested on the road sections, the cars that can truly achieve reliable automatic driving have not really appeared. Millimeter wave radar has strong penetrating ability and laser radar has higher precision, but there are short plates that cannot be ignored. Whether it is laser radar or millimeter wave radar, they are only an important part of autonomous driving. There is still a long way to go to achieve automatic driving.