Cepton has secured a multi-million-dollar contract from the United States Highway Tolling System Operator to use its Sora series lidar sensors. The sensors will be deployed on several major tollways in the tri-state area in Northern California.
The Sora lidars provide detailed and accurate 3D profiling of vehicles passing at highway speeds. The lidar sensors have been used to modernize global tolling infrastructure by facilitating electronic toll collection, reducing traffic congestion and toll leakage.
Image: Screenshot of video from Cepton
“In addition to superior performance, our Sora lidars were designed using the same auto-grade building blocks that have been validated by OEMs through our flagship automotive lidar program, and are reliable, embeddable, scalable and energy efficient, which are key advantages for tolling applications,” said Jun Pei, co-founder and CEO of Cepton.
The contract is expected to be the largest commercial lidar deployment in the tolling sector, with potential to scale outside the United States in the future.
Cepton, a Silicon Valley-based lidar solutions company, and ALP.Lab GmbH, an Austrian-based provider of autonomous vehicle testing solutions and TE Connectivity, which produces sensors and connectors, have completed a proof-of-concept project called Periscope. Periscope is a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) solution, which extends a driver’s field of view using lidar sensors installed at intersections to warn of road hazards ahead before they are in view.
The companies created Periscope in response to the global issue of traffic accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists. The V2X solution communicates information about road conditions in real time, providing more time to react, preventing accidents and enhancing overall safety.
For the proof-of-concept project, Cepton provided its Helius Smart Lidar System, which combines lidar sensors with edge computing and perception software to provide real-time, 3D object detection and tracking. TE Connectivity contributed its V2X hardware components in the vehicle used for testing and for the surrounding infrastructure, as well as provided technology for an on-board display of the vehicle’s location and road hazards. ALP.Lab supervised the system integration and testing, while also providing the testing area and infrastructure.
Cepton, ALP.Lab and TE Connectivity are planning to collaborate on further testing this year to confirm Periscope’s initial findings.
Cepton Inc. is working with LidarSwiss Solutions GmbH to deploy its lidar technology in a drone-based mapping and analytics solution for infrastructure management and engineering design applications.
Cepton is a Silicon Valley innovator of high-performance lidar solutions. LidarSwiss is a Switzerland-based provider of high-performance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lidar solutions.
Utilizing Cepton’s Sora lidar sensor, the LidarSwiss Nano P60 system provides high-fidelity mapping and real-time processing on the fly to serve engineers, forestry managers and urban planners across the globe. To date, Nano P60 has been used to map and analyze powerlines, areas for site development, flood plains and highways in more than 20 cities in Asia, Europe and Australia.
Nano P60 packages Cepton’s Sora lidar, a 42-mp camera, an Applanix IMU/GNSS and a LidarSwiss controller. (Photo: LidarSwiss)
Nano P60 integrates Cepton’s Sora sensor with a high-precision IMU/GNSS unit from Applanix and high-resolution camera system. Its intelligent controller with LidarSwiss proprietary software automatically combines all raw data to generate high-density, high-precision RGB attributed 3D laser point clouds during flight.
With a total weight of 2.1 kg, this compact system can be mounted on small UAVs to produce mapping products such as digital orthophotos, digital elevation models and 3D models, or to interface with a third-party software to enable easy, seamless solutions for all kinds of industry applications, such as digital twins, smart cities and building information modeling (BIM).
“The prominent features of the Nano P60 are its high stability, point density and intelligence,” said Robert Kletzli, LidarSwiss founder and CTO. “This lidar-enabled system addresses the critical gap of 3D accuracy with traditional camera and stereo imaging technologies. Now, instead of needing two images to see a single point and detect its elevation, Nano P60 utilizes lidar’s intrinsic 3D imaging capabilities to achieve maximized efficiency, making real-time processing and analytics possible. Cepton’s Sora lidar is among the most compact, lightweight lidar sensors that we have tested and offers an unparalleled combination of high resolution, longer range in the same category and cost efficiency. Its unique lidar architecture allows seamless integration, making Nano P60 a true plug-and-play system with solid-state reliability.”
Nano P60 combines lidar point clouds with RGB imagery to generate high-density, high-precision 3D imaging with color by elevation features. (Image: LidarSwiss)
“We are proud to be supporting LidarSwiss and its customers with our lidar technology to unlock applications such as 3D modeling for BIM, historical site mapping, terrain modeling for heavy vegetation areas, volumetric calculations for mining, power line inspection and forestry mapping,” said Klaus Wagner, director of Product Management and Marketing at Cepton. “Our Sora lidar is a one-of-a-kind line scanner that combines high frame rate and long range. Powered by Cepton’s proprietary lidar technologies, it is compact, lightweight and rotation-free, making it ideal for small UAV applications.”
Cepton, a provider of automotive lidar solutions, will showcase its automotive-grade, long-range Vista-X90 lidar device at two upcoming tradeshows in Europe: IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany (September 7-12) and AutoSens in Brussels, Belgium (September 15t-16).
Photo: Ception
Vista-X90 combines high performance, auto-grade reliability and low cost to meet the critical requirements for mass-market automotive applications. During both events, Cepton representatives will be available to talk about Cepton’s lidar offering for a range of smart mobility applications, including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous vehicles (AV) and smart infrastructure.
With a compact and embeddable design, Vista-X90 is optimized for ease of vehicle integration, offering multiple placement options, such as in the headlamp, in the fascia, behind the windshield, or on the roof. Featuring Cepton’s next-generation ASIC technology, the Vista-X90 supports AUTOSAR and over-the-air (OTA) functionality, with advanced capabilities for functional safety, cybersecurity, and extrinsic calibration.
Visitors to the Cepton booth at IAA and AutoSens will also be able to learn about Cepton’s award-winning lidar solutions portfolio that extends beyond automotive and supports smart infrastructure applications such as smart roads and rail, electronic tolling, and more.
Cepton provides intelligent, lidar-based solutions for a range of markets such as automotive (ADAS/AV), smart cities, smart spaces, and smart industrial applications. Cepton’s patented MMT-based lidar technology enables reliable, scalable and cost-effective solutions that deliver long-range, high-resolution 3D perception for smart applications.
Founded in 2016 and led by industry veterans with more than two decades of collective experience across a wide range of advanced lidar and imaging technologies, Cepton is focused on the mass market commercialization of high performance, high quality lidar solutions. Cepton is headquartered in San Jose, California, USA, with a presence in North America, Germany, Japan, India, and China, to serve a fast-growing global customer base.
First commercial deployment to be installed on a major turnpike used by tens of millions of vehicles every year
An electronic tolling system that uses high-performance lidar sensors from Cepton and a vehicle identification solution from Red Fox ID is expected to be deployed on a major highway turnpike crossing multiple states in the United States.
The turnpike project is expected to provide fast, accurate, real-time tolling to enable smooth traffic flows. Specifics of the project — including states involved and the timeframe of installation — were not disclosed.
Photo: Cepton
Based on an extended collaboration with leading lidar solution provider Cepton, Red Fox ID — a designer and developer of vehicle identification and classification solutions — has developed a multi-lane, free-flow tolling system called Quantum, which is able to accurately detect, track and classify vehicles of any size or type at highway speeds.
Quantum uses Cepton’s Micro Motion Technology (MMT)-based Sora-P60 or Sora-P90 lidar sensors for high-resolution vehicle profiling, to enable integrators and road operators to achieve highly accurate customer billing in real time, with free flow, barrier-free tolling.
For tolls to be charged correctly based on vehicle class, traditional tolling systems often use tollbooths for manual processing or depend on vehicle speed-reduction infrastructure to allow for time to capture vehicle information. That can cause congestion, increased emissions and frustration among customers.
Advanced systems that aim to enable faster tolling are often subject to significant errors, such as missed vehicles or wrong vehicle classification, because of limitations of the sensors being used, such as cameras and weight-based ground sensors. Vehicle-classification errors can have significant operating cost consequences for tolling operators, while leakage leads to lower revenues. With tollways processing tens of millions of vehicles a year, the cumulative impact of inaccuracies and errors creates significant administrative costs, losses and customer dissatisfaction.
Red Fox ID’s Quantum solution adds an extra layer of accuracy to the tolling system by integrating Cepton’s lidar technology. A gantry-mounted system using Quantum is able to accurately detect and track vehicles even as they switch lanes. Quantum captures and extracts high-quality information, such as vehicle velocity, size and class. All of that information is used as input to a separate billing system to compute and apply the appropriate tolling charge.
Quantum can also direct camera-based systems on the gantry to capture a vehicle’s front and rear plates in the event that a transponder cannot be detected. Through these innovations, Quantum has demonstrated a vehicle-detection accuracy in all traffic conditions of 99.96%, an axle-classification accuracy in all traffic conditions of 99.9% and a vehicle-length accuracy of +/-5%. The system uses Cepton’s Sora-P sensor family which has been tested and proven during extended trials, including in various weather and light conditions.
The recently released Sora-P90 lidar features a 380-Hz frame rate to deliver 1140 line scans per second, providing high-fidelity profiling of vehicles passing at highway speeds. Powered by Cepton’s patented, rotation-free, frictionless and mirrorless MMT, the Sora-P90 is rugged, reliable and scalable, making it suited for automated tolling applications.With a 90° horizontal field of view, the lidar can be set up using one gantry instead of two separate sensors and gantries, making overall deployment more cost effective.
Red Fox ID has been working with Cepton on multiple trials and proof of concept projects across the globe since 2019. This has allowed both partners to expand the application of advanced lidar intelligence for high-accuracy tolling on highways and roadways in a growing list of countries, across North America, Europe, the Middle Eas, Africa and Asia.
“Our industry’s drive for overhead tolling solutions has failed to materialize in the mainstream due, primarily, to a lack of sensors capable of achieving the high levels of accuracy required for a modern tolling product,” said Steve Bird, CEO of Red Fox ID. “The technical innovations enabled by Cepton offer us new design options. Improvements in the resolution of the data, the ability to deal with the full range of weather-related conditions, and the development of a sensor with an in-service lifespan suitable for tolling make it possible, for the first time, for us to develop an accurate, overhead free flow system. Our partnership with Cepton will be a game-changer in revolutionizing the tolling market.”
“It is very clear that lidar’s uses extend far beyond just serving as the ‘eyes’ of autonomous vehicles,” said Jun Pei, CEO of Cepton. “Our lidar technology has a huge part to play in making our transport infrastructure smarter, safer, greener and more efficient, as we can see here following Quantum’s highly successful real-world testing. The key to success for toll operators and providers is minimal error and maximum yield, and we are excited to be partnering with Red Fox ID to help our mutual customers achieve this goal with our market-leading lidar technology. We look forward to working with them to expand our partnership worldwide.”
