Brunno Moretti is VP of Product at Cepton, a leading lidar innovator headquartered in Silicon Valley. Moretti oversees Cepton’s ongoing product development to drive business growth across automotive and smart infrastructure markets.
Prior to Cepton, he was the Director of Product Strategy and Business Development for ZF Friedrichshafen. He previously worked at General Motors in a variety of positions, and managed Uber’s self-driving business unit as a senior vehicle program manager. Moretti holds Master’s degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of Indiana in Energy Systems Engineering and Business Administration, respectively.
DVN: Cepton, founded in 2016, is now close to the start of production for their first customer. Tell us about your company and its history, will you?
Moretti: Cepton was founded by a group of lidar and automotive industry veterans in 2016 to drive the mass-market commercialization of lidar technology. With the vision of enabling safe and autonomous transportation for everyone, we focus on ensuring the safe deployment of next-generation ADAS technologies through the use of high-performance, reliable and cost-effective lidar sensors.
We developed a unique, patented lidar scanning method, called Micro Motion Technology (MMT®), to achieve the optimal balance between performance, reliability and cost. Cepton has been awarded a significant ADAS lidar series production award with Koito on the General Motors business; we are proud that our technology is part of GM’s sensor fusion approach to automated driving. Apart from GM, Cepton is also currently engaged with all other Top 10 global OEMs.
In addition to the automotive market, Cepton also has a strong presence across various smart infrastructure markets, including the largest lidar contract in the tolling industry with a leading U.S. tolling system operator. We have been working with over 100 customers and partners on integrating Cepton lidars into smart systems that transform city infrastructure, spaces and industrual applications.
DVN: What have been some of the most exciting developments in your technology and products lately?
Moretti: We keep innovating our technologies to drive continuous improvements of lidar performance while maintaining the optimal combination of size, power consumption, reliability and cost. This year, we announced Vista-X90 Plus and Vista-X120 Plus, featuring ultra-high resolution and a software definable region of interest, while reducing the sensor footprint by up to 58 per cent, and keeping the power consumption exceptionally low.
We have also expanded our leadership at the chip level with our announcement of dedicated back-end point cloud processor ASIC, named Komodo. We’ve also been using a dedicated front-end signal processor ASIC called Iguana. I believe Cepton is the only lidar company to have developed dedicated ASIC chips for optimized processing capabilities.
DVN: What are your thoughts and preferences on wavelengths and power? What about eye safety?
Moretti: Cepton uses the 905-nm wavelength, as the 905 nm laser technology is mature and already automotive grade. There have long been misconceptions about the eye safety of a lidar purely based on its wavelength choice. Lidar eye safety depends on many factors, including laser wavelength, exposure time, peak power, repetition rate, continuous power, divergence power and pulse width if it’s a pulse laser. Cepton lidar sensors are Class-1 eye safe, because in addition to the wavelength, we have also optimized the other aspects of the lidar design to ensure safety, quality and reliability.
Cepton lidars are known within the industry to be power efficient. Our long-range Vista-X90 lidar, which is expected to hit the mass market later this year, consumes under 13W; our near-range Nova lidar for blind spot detection consumes only under 8W.
We do expect to further reduce the power consumption of our lidars. In addition to continuously innovating our imaging technology, we’ve also focused on utilizing our ASIC chipset to achieve this goal. Compared to FGPAs and merchant silicon devices, ASICs are highly efficient, miniature and low-cost, optimizing signal processing while minimizing power consumption.
DVN: You can support a behind-windshield lidar integration—quite unique today. What are the benefits and constraints of this type of integration? Do you see this position becoming standard in the future?
Moretti: Having the lidar behind the windshield has several benefits, including:
- No need for expensive additional air and water cleaning solutions, as existing wiper systems will address the cleaning needs. Mobileye cameras, for example, have lived in that location for a very long time due to this benefit.
- The height of the mounting location in the vehicle. The higher the lidar is placed in the vehicle, the more it will be able to detect. Putting the lidar behind the windshield gives automakers basically the same height as a roof mount but without the addition of expensive cleaning systems.
- Seamless design. Integration behind the windshield will not disrupt the vehicle design. It is an elegant way to hide the sensor and not interfere with vehicle exterior features.
As for constraints, there is a very small percentage loss in performance in terms of range, but it can be compensated. We work with all of the top tier-1 glass suppliers in the industry to ensure the best transmissivity possible for lidars placed behind the windshield.
Yes, we see integration behind the windshield as a potential future standard due to all the benefits listed above and very few drawbacks. We have had tremendous interest from automakers who are aware that Cepton is the only lidar company going to production with a lidar behind the windshield through our flagship ADAS lidar program.
DVN: How does your lidar perform in bad weather conditions compared to a camera or a radar?
Moretti: Our lidar performs very well. We have proprietary methods to classify weather, be it snow, rain or fog, and allow our customers to decide if they want to filter those points out or flag them as weather points.
As many may know, water absorbs light at certain wavelengths, and 1550 nm happens to be closer to the absorption peak of water compared to 905 nm. Consequently, 905-nm lidars are advantageous when dealing with rain and wet surfaces. Therefore, our lidars are very well suited for use under bad weather conditions.
DVN : Tell us about your short-range lidars and their ADAS applications.
Moretti: We have a near-range lidar called Nova. It is a very small and capable sensor that can be used for several different ADAS use cases. It provides the capability to give 360-degree coverage around the vehicle without disrupting the vehicle design. Here are some examples:
- Autonomous L4 parking features
- Turning scenarios where the main lidar cannot cover the vehicle’s blind spots, for example, below the side windows or immediately in front of the vehicle
- Autonomous trailering capabilities for pickup trucks and semi-trucks, such as autonomous hitching, trailer sway detection, jackknife prevention and truck bed content security
- Near-range detection around a semi-truck’s cabin and cargo.
To be easily and seamlessly embedded around a vehicle and create a virtual ‘safety belt’, the near-range lidar must be extremely compact and power-efficient, while still maintaining high performance. Cepton’s Nova lidar has achieved a good balance between these factors and has been welcomed by many automotive customers since its introduction.
DVN: You’ve announced a win at GM. Can you tell us how that was achieved?
Moretti: Cepton’s journey to success began years before our public disclosure of the series production award from GM in 2021. In a highly competitive arena of 30-40 lidar companies, it took almost two years to validate and narrow down the top contenders. Cepton emerged as the winner due to our cutting-edge Micro Motion Technology, which combines what matters most to automakers: performance, cost and reliability.
From the initial design win to the development of A, B, and C samples, the entire process took approximately 2½ years. This journey highlights that winning a design competition is just the first step, and the path to bringing a product to market demands substantial time and commitment.
DVN: Will FMCW technology be coming soon? What would be its benefits?
Moretti: I believe that FMCW does have some benefits, such as instantaneous velocity, but that is something ToF lidar can also deliver in other ways. The main issue we see with FMCW is the complexity of signal processing: due to the continuous-wave nature of the sensor. Data processing and interpretation can be more challenging, requiring sophisticated algorithms and more compute power, which equates to higher cost. The requirement for coherent optical sources and complex modulation schemes can also add to the overall system cost.
DVN: Are lidar and imaging radar competing or complementary? And do you foresee the radar-lidar gap narrowing in term of performance and cost?
Moretti: I believe lidar and imaging radar are highly complementary technologies. Both have their distinct benefits and downsides, but in order to have the safest possible ADAS platform, it is essential for perception systems to integrate camera, lidar and imaging radar. However, considering the limitations imposed by physics as well as by the regulating bodies on which frequencies can be used, I don’t anticipate imaging radar catching up with lidar anytime soon in performance.
DVN: How is the automotive lidar market developing around the world? What’s driving it?
Moretti: We see strong demand in North America, Europe, and Japan. China’s market has been dominated by the Chinese lidar companies, and Cepton made a conscious choice to not engage there due to concerns over intellectual property.
I believe autonomous driving served as a catalyst for the inception of today’s lidar industry and landscape, encouraging the emergence of new companies and technologies. However, it will be ADAS (L2, L3) that will drive the most significant growth for lidar. Once more ADAS features like Ultra Cruise are deployed on the roads, autonomous driving companies will reap the benefits of cheaper economies of scale. We have already observed a shift from autonomous driving companies using spinner lidar to directional lidar, indicating their progress towards commercializing their technology.
