Valeo SCALA™ 3 LiDAR (Light Detection & Ranging) receives prestigious CES 2024 Innovation Award

As the industry recognises the key role of LiDAR technology in the development of autonomous mobility, this award acknowledges once again Valeo’s leading role as a pioneer in bringing this technology to the automotive industry and in producing it at scale.

SCALA™ 3, Valeo’s 3^rd generation LiDAR perception system, offers an automotive-grade high resolution LiDAR (Light Detection & Ranging) sensor, allowing advanced perception in all conditions meeting the highest automotive industry quality and safety standards. SCALA™ 3 high-density point cloud and associated AI-based perception software enables high-speed autonomous driving on highways in a wider range of conditions, dramatically increasing the end-user value of Level 3 systems through a large extension of their domain of operation and the scalability of Level 4 robotaxi fleet.

Valeo’s capability to deliver on its promises is recognised by clients around the world. Valeo LiDAR equips the only Level 3 passenger cars authorized in Europe, and we have announced in March 2023 orders over the past 18 months worth more than 1 billion euros for Valeo SCALA™ 3. Valeo, the global leader in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), was the first, and remains the leading company, in the production of automotive LiDAR sensors and perception software on an industrial scale for Level 3 autonomous driving.

At CES 2024 from Jan. 8 to 12, Valeo will present at its booth its awards winning SCALA™ 3 LiDAR and, for the first time, will give visitors the opportunity to experience and learn more about our AI-based perception software and how it helps classify objects identified by the LiDAR in the Point Cloud.

Marc Vrecko, President of Valeo Comfort and Driving Assistance explains “Valeo has been among the first actors of the automotive industry to believe in LiDAR’s role as the keystone of autonomous mobility. We are honored to receive a CES 2024 Innovation Award that recognises our vision and technological leadership. Today, as most automakers work on bringing Level 3 autonomy to the market, we are ready to support them with our best-in-class technology. After more than 10 years of development and more than five years of production, our LiDAR is already in use on vehicles around the world, contributing significantly to the enhanced safety of road users as well as to offering a great step forward in the development of automated mobility. Valeo is a partner in the innovation being deployed worldwide and is today the only company able to offer both a LiDAR technology with outstanding performance and a unique capability to produce automotive grade LiDAR systems at scale.“

Valeo SCALA™ 1 and 2 made conditional autonomous driving in traffic jams a reality. SCALA™ 3 dramatically increases the domain of operation – and therefore the customer value – of private vehicles thanks to a wider scope of use and higher speed support. Valeo is also positioned as a leader in robotaxi equipment as SCALA™ 3 enables our clients to make robotaxis a reality at scale, using a proven, best-in-class technology in mass production.

Thanks to its laser-based system, Valeo SCALA™ 3 generates a 3D image of the vehicle’s surroundings delivering a point cloud of a yet unparalleled resolution for an automotive system. Boasting more than 12 million pixels per second (x48 compared with the SCALA™ 2) and a detection range of 200 meters for low reflectivity objects and 300 meters for high reflectivity objects, it sees objects that are invisible to the human eye.

In addition to its hardware capabilities, Valeo SCALA™ 3 comes with a suite of software modules, including perception and artificial intelligence based algorithms. Its LiDAR functions guarantee unparalleled safety and reliability through blockage detection, rain and spray detection, online calibration or misalignment detection. It will be able to identify objects, such as a tire, left on an unlit black asphalt road more than 150 meters ahead with unique detection performance compared to cameras and radars. It also identifies, classifies and tracks objects, giving the car fusion system the full 3D mapping around the car, and finally making autonomous driving possible. These software modules can easily be embedded on major SoC platforms, and run on dedicated ECUs or domain controllers.

Valeo SCALA™ 3 LiDAR is also a PACE Award 2023 finalist with final results to be announced in early 2024. Valeo’s LiDAR technology had already received the SAFETYBEST Award 2023 and the ICA Summit Award 2023 in the category “Automotive Sensor Hardware Solution of the Year” in May 2023, as well as the Pace Award in 2018 and the Frost & Sullivan market leadership Award in 2022.