Cepton, Inc. announced the unveiling of its proprietary lidar simulation platform, StudioViz?. Developed by Cepton?s in-house software teams, StudioViz aims to streamline lidar adoption processes from productization to deployment, helping automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) expedite lidar-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle (AV) development at minimized implementation costs. StudioViz also offers a powerful tool to facilitate a broad spectrum of cutting-edge R&D initiatives in ADAS and AV by researchers and universities.

StudioViz is designed and built to offer an array of functionalities, including: Virtual environment creation: StudioViz enables the creation of customized virtual elements to simulate real-world scenarios for testing lidar-based ADAS and AV use cases across urban and highway environments. High-fidelity lidar data visualization: The platform simulates data from Cepton?s comprehensive portfolio of lidar sensor models, including the long-range Ultra, medium-range Vista-X series and near-range Nova, to generate realistic 3D point clouds, facilitating insights into sensor behavior and system performance under various conditions. Placement optimization: Utilizing StudioViz, OEMs will be able to explore different placement options of Cepton?s lidar hardware, virtually integrating a single or multiple lidar sensors into different locations around a vehicle, supported by physics-based studies modeling sensor behavior at these locations.

Sensor fusion assessment: Simulated lidar data from StudioViz can be integrated with other sensor simulations (such as camera) to evaluate sensor fusion results and assess the effectiveness of perception algorithms such as object detection, labeling and localization. Perception solution development: StudioViz generates accurate lidar data that can be annotated with ground truth information, such as object type and bounding boxes, to train, validate and refine perception algorithms for accurate vehicle and pedestrian detection, tracking and classification, lane and curb detection, path planning and ego-motion estimation. Manufacturing validation and scaling: StudioViz can utilize real-world sensor modeling, taking data from sensors at critical stages of manufacturing and calibration processes to enable comprehensive validation of sensor performance before reaching the customer, furthering Cepton's commitment to sustainable and scalable manufacturing for mass-market adoption.Utilizing StudioViz?s powerful simulation tools, OEMs and research entities will be able to accurately gauge the suitability of Cepton?s lidar solutions for their needs, custom integration plans and develop perception capabilities without substantial investments in hardware, installation and data acquisition, while reducing the need to build real-life testing scenarios that are sometimes challenging to reproduce due to constraints such as road infrastructure and weather conditions.