USE Network launch I UAV Works VALAQ l Cable harnesses l USVs insight l Xponential 2020 update l MARIN AUV l Suter Industries TOA 288 l Vitirover l AI systems l Vtrus ABI

7 Platform one Volvo Cars has designed a Lidar sensor from Luminar into its next-generation driverless car, which will soon be ready for production (writes Nick Flaherty). The partnership between the two companies is key to the development of Volvo’s first fully self-driving Level 3 technology for motorways, and paves the way for future active safety developments. The SPA 2 modular vehicle architecture will be available as hardware-ready for autonomous driving when production starts in 2022. The Luminar Lidar will be integrated into the roof. Cars based on SPA 2 will be updated with software over the air (OTA) for full autonomous highway driving. “Over time, updates over the air will expand the areas in which the car can drive itself,” said Henrik Green, chief technology officer of Volvo Cars. “For us, a safe introduction of autonomy is a gradual introduction.” Engineers at Stanford University in the US have taken a wireless charging system for UAVs and ground vehicles out of the lab and adapted it for real-world applications (writes Nick Flaherty). The new design can deliver power of up to 10 W with a transfer efficiency of 92% over a variable distance of up to 62 cm. This would allow a UAV to hover over a charging point on a rooftop, for example, to recharge. Stanford researcher Shanhui Fan said, “We would have to scale up the power to recharge a moving car, but I don’t think that’s a serious issue. For recharging robots, we’re already within the range of practical usefulness.” To enable Volvo’s Highway Pilot car package, Luminar’s perception technology will be combined with autonomous drive software and the cameras, radars and back-up systems for functions such as steering and braking.  The Iris Lidar system intended for production uses a 905 nm light source with a two-axis scanning mirror that provides a field of view of 120 x 30 º . Its Transmission takes only a few milliseconds. The only limiting factor will be how fast a car’s batteries, or supercapacitor, can absorb the power. The design uses a switch-mode amplifier with current-sensing feedback using a technique from quantum InGaAs detector is paired with a custom mixed single chip designed by Luminar for lower cost. Luminar has also launched Hydra, a subscription Lidar system for Levels 3 and 4 driverless cars from 2022. It combines a perception computing unit reference design based on Nvida’s Xavier system- on-chip that is already being embedded into production vehicles. mechanics called parity-time symmetric circuit. The parity-time symmetry guarantees that the effective load impedance on the amplifier remains constant, which allows the amplifier to maintain high efficiency despite the variation in the transfer distance. Lidar paves way for Volvo Wireless charger leaves lab Driverless cars Power systems Unmanned Systems Technology | June/July 2020 The Lidar from Luminar will be integrated into Volvo’s SPA 2 production autonomous vehicles The new design can transfer up to 10 W of power at 92% efficiency and a distance of 62 cm