Cepton’s LiDAR Technology Enables Self-Driving Fleets to Navigate on Public Roads

Cepton
2 min readNov 1, 2018

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By Mitch Hourtienne, Director, Business Development at Cepton Technologies, Inc.

LiDAR sensors are ushering in the next generation of transportation, bringing us the promise of a driverless future. Around the world there are a number of exciting pilot programs taking place, testing how autonomous cars react in real-world conditions. The number one goal of these tests is to make autonomous driving as safe as possible. LiDAR sensors, which help autonomous vehicles sense what’s around them to navigate cities and highways, are a critical piece of this puzzle to making self-driving cars safe and reliable. These sensors are helping May Mobility’s self-driving vehicle fleets navigate their way on the streets of downtown Detroit, MI, today.

From business districts to educational campuses to residential areas, May Mobility provides fully-managed, self-driving vehicle services that make transportation safer and more personal, allowing people to drive less and live more. Cepton and May Mobility both share the vision that autonomous vehicles can have an immediate impact in communities and cities with the right technology and teams.

May Mobility selected Cepton’s LiDAR solutions due to the combination of our advanced technology, rapid pace of innovation, and culture of customer success. Cepton’s patented micro-motion technology (MMTTM) produces high-resolution imaging of a vehicle’s surroundings to detect objects at a distance of up to 300 meters away. Our LiDAR solutions are built to be extremely power-efficient and compact, enabling May Mobility to integrate our sensors into the design of their vehicles without adding extra bulk.

May Mobility’s CTO and Founder Steve Vozar commended Cepton’s unique technology, saying “the field of view is perfect for our application and gives us a density where we want it and doesn’t make us throw away beams where we don’t need it.” He explained that Cepton’s technology provides the company with “rich data about what’s happening right in front of us, including a view of pedestrians at crosswalks crossing the road, other vehicles, bicyclists, even horses in Detroit’s busy streets.”

With the integration of Cepton’s LiDAR technology, May Mobility launched the country’s first commercial deployment in downtown Detroit and will be expanding its fleets to several other cities including Columbus, Ohio and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

We are proud to partner with companies like May Mobility to help accelerate the time-to-market for autonomous vehicles. Cepton’s affordable LiDAR solutions are poised to play a pivotal role in bringing autonomous technology to mainstream consumers, providing cost effective, high performance and high resolution sensors at scale. To learn more about Cepton’s partnership with May Mobility, check out LiDAR Magazine’s in-depth article.

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Cepton

Intelligent lidar solutions revolutionizing autonomous vehicles, robots and smart, privacy-sensitive perception systems worldwide.