Shift Magazine - March 2021 - S18

Velodyne can add lidar to
drones for mobile mapping,
delivery, surveying and more.

Lidar moves beyond
vehicles to underpin a
reimagined logistics chain

LASER FOCUS

BY PETE BIGELOW

rom shipyards to sidewalks, rising
demand for consumer goods has
compelled logistics operators to
rethink the way products travel across
the world and to customers' doorsteps.
Increasingly, they're automating those
movements from point A to point B.
Those automated systems are relying
upon lidar, the laser sensors that can help
robots determine their exact position in
the world and detect obstacles in their
paths.
Lidar is perhaps best known for its use
in self-driving taxis, but the uses for lidar
are branching beyond passenger vehicles
into just about anything that moves. Lidar
sensors are now used in warehouses,
for shipping and last-mile delivery, and at
ports and elsewhere.
" When you look at the huge volume
drivers for the business in the next two to
three years, we see the robotics segment
as being one of the big volume drivers
in the near term, " said Anand Gopalan,
CEO of Velodyne Lidar, a San Jose, Calif.,
technology company that pioneered lidar
for automotive purposes and increasingly
supplies it for other applications.
Velodyne has more than 300 customers. More than half the company's revenue now comes from beyond the automotive sector, Gopalan said.
Instead of automated vehicles, industrial and smart-city applications are now
leading the first wave of mass lidar
adoption.
18

shift * march 2021

Velodyne and Idriverplus partnered on sensors for self-driving street sweepers.

Ouster, another lidar company, has
seen similar growth trajectories. The
company has 800 customers, according to financial filings. Angus Pacala,
the company's CEO, says only about 30
percent of its revenue is derived from
automotive.
That's a far cry from only a few years
ago, when lidar suppliers banked on the

sensors proliferating in autonomous vehicles. As timelines for the arrival of those
vehicles were delayed, lidar companies developed less-expensive sensors
intended for use in certain driver-assist
systems. Now those systems, which cost
less than $1,000 per unit, are being tailored for industrial uses.
Amid the e-commerce boom that's

Shift Magazine - March 2021

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