Hesai Reaches Strategic Cooperation with KargoBot, Empowering the Mass Production of Autonomous Trucks

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Hesai Technology reached strategic cooperation with autonomous truck company, KargoBot. They will jointly promote the application of automotive-grade, hybrid solid-state lidar AT128 for L4 autonomous trucks, working together to implement safer, more intelligent commercial logistics applications.

Lidar is one of the core sensors for advanced autonomous driving solutions, providing high-precision 3D sensing for autonomous vehicles. Hesai's AT128 is a long-range and automotive-grade hybrid solid-state lidar integrated with 128 lasers, and an ultra-high-point frequency of 1.53 million points per second. 

Since the start of mass production and delivery in 2022, AT128 has empowered the launch of various passenger car models. Last year, Hesai delivered over 60,000 units of AT128 lidar to OEM customers such as Li Auto. Backed by excellent performance, high cost-efficiency, and strong mass-production and delivery capability, AT128 is fully-qualified to empower L4 autonomous trucks.

As a company incubated by Didi Autonomous Driving, KargoBot focuses on the R&D of L4 autonomous driving technology and its commercial operation, with full-stack development capability.

KargoBot has innovatively developed a hybrid-autonomous solution. It includes a pilot ADAS vehicle with a human driver, and multiple L4 self-driving trucks, which greatly improves the capability to deal with various long-tail scenarios and complex interactions during commercial opeartions. Currently, KargoBot has more than 100 autonomous trucks. As of March this year, KargoBot's cumulative revenue has exceeded 100 million yuan.

KargoBot's autonomous trucks are the first L4 commercial trucks to use automotive-grade, hybrid solid-state lidar in China. In early 2022, KargoBot successfully integrated 5 AT128 into its autonomous truck, achieving 360 degree FOV coverage, significantly reducing vertical blindspots. After operating in harsh conditions including sand, rain, snow, and unpaved roads for nearly two years, the AT128 lidars are still functioning at zero failure.

Hesai's AT128 sensor achieves a complete, unstitched field of view and a uniformly distributed structured point cloud, making it algorithm friendly. KargoBot uses image-like data representations and modern computer vision methods to develop AT128's efficient multi-tasking perception algorithms.

Unlike conventional point cloud algorithms, the perception algorithm organizes AT128's point cloud data directly into a dense image data format, achieving superior results in real-scenario road testing.

Hesai AT128 has excellent performance, high reliability and high cost-efficiency, which can effectively help KargoBot to develop an autonomous driving system that meets automotive-grade and mass production standards. In the future, Hesai will continue to empower KargoBot to iterate its autonomous driving technology solutions, and promote the large-scale implementation of autonomous logistics.