LiDAR is the foundation for the autonomous vehicle and robotics industries, and while it has become an industry standard, the technology does have its drawbacks, the biggest of which is its high cost.
Anand Gopalan, former CTO and CEO of LiDAR leader Velodyne, is well aware of the technology's pros and cons, so it's significant that the executive's latest endeavor has chosen to forego the technology altogether — in fact, Vayu Robotics is positioning LiDAR-free navigation as one of its biggest selling points.
Vayu Robotics, which Gopalan co-founded in 2022, two years after taking Velodyne public through a SPAC, aims to make delivery robots cheaper and more scalable. Ditching LiDAR is one piece of the puzzle. The company has instead embraced foundational models, the machine learning technique at the heart of the recent explosion in generative AI.
“The traditional mobile robotics approach involves attaching multiple sensors to a robot (often very costly) and writing software in the form of modules built to perform one task at a time,” Gopalan wrote in a press release. “This leads to very expensive sensors and computing, combined with very brittle software that cannot deal with uncertainty or new situations.
“Instead, we have taken an approach that employs a transformer-based mobility foundation model combined with a new type of powerful passive sensor that eliminates the need for lidar, especially in low-speed applications.”
Delivery robots are just the first step for Vayu, which is a big and growing industry that has encountered many pitfalls along the way. The company has attracted interest from investors, including Khosla Ventures, and has raised $12.7 million to date.
But more importantly, the company has “signed a major commercial contract with a major e-commerce company to deploy 2,500 robots to enable lightning-fast product delivery, with more commercial customers in the pipeline.” The company hasn't yet revealed details of the contract, but the big number suggests the company is moving beyond the pilot phase.
Another differentiator is Vayu's approach to curbside delivery, which differs from the standard, slow-moving sidewalk robots that companies have deployed to date: The company says its system can move 100-pound loads at speeds of up to 20 mph.
“At Vayu, we have developed a unique technology that allows us to solve problems that have plagued delivery robots for the last decade, finally creating a solution that can be deployed at scale in real life to transport goods anywhere, at low cost,” Gopalan said.