ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - January 2023 - 4

Cover Story
Volvo's New
Sensor Sweet
by Lawrence Ulrich
A Luminar Iris lidar in the 2024 EX90 is engineered to enhance
both automated driving and safety.
Consumer skepticism over autonomous vehicles
is running rampant, thanks largely to Tesla's broken-record
promises to make " Full Self Driving " a reality
- along with high-profile accidents, fatalities and a
federal investigation of its Autopilot system. Tesla and
other automakers also continue a public spat over the
best technical or social solutions. And with everyone
from General Motors to Mercedes-Benz struggling to
leap beyond SAE-defined Level 2 driver-assistance,
Volvo has apparently had enough.
With safety as its brand-defining hallmark, the
Swedish OEM threw down a gauntlet at the Stockholm
unveiling of its electric EX90 SUV: In Volvo's contrarian
From any angle, the lidar blister above the
Volvo EX90's windshield is barely visible.
view, there is no need to pursue hands-free Level
2 systems such as GM's Super Cruise, which still
expect drivers to watch the road and retake control
at a moment's notice. To Volvo, driving will be either
supervised or unsupervised. The space in between is a
potentially unsafe limbo, at least for now.
To that end, Volvo executives said their flagship
EX90 will go on sale in 2024 with all the hardware
required for fully unsupervised (SAE Level 4) driving.
The system's linchpin is the first rooftop-mounted lidar
unit on an international-market passenger vehicle,
developed by the Florida-based Luminar. Known as
Iris, the full-stack system is considered semi-solidstate,
its scanning mode using larger " macro " scanning
mirrors rather than MEMS' micro mirrors. Iris's light
source is a 1550-nm fiber laser, the longer wavelength
(vs. more typical 905-nm shorter-wavelength lasers)
being harmless to the human eye. The lidar's receiver
uses indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) microchip
technology rather than silicon. Claimed resolution is
greater than 300 points per square degree.
The Iris uses pulsed, time of flight (ToF) target
illumination that Luminar engineers claim delivers
an exceptionally fast measurement rate, an immediate
understanding of reflectance, and no speed-dependent
range error. Iris scans a vehicle's surroundings
in real time, firing millions of laser pulses to create
a virtual 3D map, with no need for GPS or a cellular
connection. The lidar itself has a 120° field of view
(FoV) and a 26° dynamic vertical FoV. It's part of a
30-sensor array - including 16 ultrasonic sensors, five
4 January 2023
ADAS & AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
Volvo
ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - January 2023

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