RoboSense E1R Powers "Qinglong": The Millionth LiDAR Marks a New Era for Humanoid Robots

Shenzhen, China – February 21, 2025 – A historic milestone was achieved today at the Beta Smart Manufacturing Base in Nanshan, Shenzhen, as RoboSense delivered its one millionth high-channel-count LiDAR. This landmark unit, an E1R all-solid-state digital LiDAR, is destined for "Qinglong," the world's first full-size open-source general-purpose humanoid robot. This delivery signifies a pivotal moment, marking the first time the global high-channel-count LiDAR industry has surpassed one million units in mass production.

This seemingly ordinary event reflects the profound shifts of humanity's fourth industrial revolution. As the global AI market is projected to exceed \$400 billion by 2025, humanoid robots, embodying intelligence, are reshaping manufacturing, services, and society. With a compound annual growth rate of 23%, their demand for advanced perception technology is soaring.

RoboSense: A Pioneer in Mass-Producing High-Channel-Count LiDAR

The one millionth E1R unit, fresh off the production line, hails from RoboSense, the "first LiDAR stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange," which went public in January of last year. Just one year post-IPO, RoboSense has announced its ambitious AI robotics strategy, with the E1R at the core of its offerings for the robotics sector.

The RoboSense E1R is a state-of-the-art all-solid-state digital LiDAR. It integrates the world's first self-developed digital SPAD-SoC chip and 2D VCSEL chip, a revolutionary approach that ensures lossless echo data and high-fidelity point cloud outputs. This fully digital architecture, coupled with the absence of any moving parts, guarantees superior reliability and durability.

Key specifications and benefits of the E1R include:

• Ultra-wide Field of View (FOV): ${120}^{\circ }\times {90}^{\circ }$ (H x V) for comprehensive situational awareness.
• High-Density 144 Laser Channels: Captures rich 3D environmental data, enabling precise detection of object size, contour, and distance in real-time.
• Exceptional Accuracy: $\pm 3$ cm, ensuring dependable performance for critical robotic operations.
• Automotive-Grade Reliability: Engineered to withstand harsh industrial and outdoor conditions, including extreme temperatures ($-{40}^{\circ }C$ to $+{85}^{\circ }C$) and robust ingress protection (IP67 & IP6K9K).
• Compact & Lightweight Design: At just 69.5 x 95 x 43mm and 330g (w/o cable), it's highly adaptable for seamless integration into various robotic platforms, including humanoid robots.
• Low Power Consumption: Optimized for battery-powered systems, consuming less than 10W.

RoboSense anticipates the E1R will be a primary driver for its explosive growth in robotics LiDAR shipments throughout 2025, proving its potential to empower a new generation of embodied intelligent robots across industrial, commercial, and service domains, regardless of lighting conditions.

E1R Empowers "Qinglong": The Future of Humanoid Robots

The "Qinglong" robot, now equipped with the E1R, is the world's first full-size open-source general-purpose humanoid robot. Independently developed by the National and Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Humanoid Robots, "Qinglong" stands 185cm tall, weighs 80 kilograms, features 43 active degrees of freedom, and boasts significant computing power.

Xing Boyang, R&D Director at the Center, stated, "Our innovation center has adopted the E1R LiDAR for joint product creation on the 'Qinglong' general-purpose platform, accelerating the development and deployment of tasks across multiple scenarios."

In simulated nuclear power plant inspection training, "Qinglong," leveraging the E1R's capabilities, demonstrated centimeter-level environmental modeling, allowing it to autonomously navigate complex pipe systems and avoid obstacles. Shanghai Electric Nuclear Power Group has indicated that such robots are expected to replace 70% of high-risk operations and will be deployed in fourth-generation nuclear power plants by 2025. This real-world application underscores the E1R's ability to provide the precision and reliability crucial for critical industrial tasks.

RoboSense's Vision: A Comprehensive AI Robotics Platform

At the "Hello Robot" 2025 AI Robot Global Online Conference, RoboSense unveiled its strategy to become a "robotics technology platform company," providing incremental components and solutions for intelligent robots.

Beyond the E1R, RoboSense's growing product lineup for robotics includes the Airy LiDAR (for complex indoor environments), the Active Camera vision module, and the dexterous hand Papert 2.0. This comprehensive ecosystem positions RoboSense as a crucial partner in the burgeoning robotics industry.

Perception Demands of Humanoid Robots: Where E1R Shines

Humanoid robots require perception systems that can model complex dynamic scenes in real-time, achieve millimeter-level operational precision, and ensure safety in human-robot coexistence. Traditional vision solutions often fall short in challenging conditions like low-light, strong-light, or dynamic occlusion scenarios, making LiDAR an "essential need."

LiDAR actively emits laser beams, providing centimeter-level ranging accuracy even in extreme environments such as darkness, rain, or fog. For instance, the Unitree H1 robot, famously featured on this year's Spring Festival Gala, utilized RoboSense's self-developed Helios LiDAR in its head to enable autonomous choreographies and real-time movement adjustments, showcasing the power of LiDAR in "perception-action" closed loops.

The Future of Humanoid Robot Perception: E1R's Role in Multi-Sensor Fusion & AI Integration

The inevitable direction for robotics is multi-sensor fusion, integrating LiDAR with Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and vision sensors.

• LiDAR (e.g., RoboSense E1R): Provides high-precision 3D geometric information, crucial for long-distance and complex obstacle detection, and environmental reconstruction. Its 144 lines and ${120}^{\circ }\times {90}^{\circ }$ FOV offer a dense and wide perception.
• Vision Sensors: Offer rich color and texture information for object recognition and classification.
• IMUs: Deliver rapid data on the robot's motion posture and acceleration.

By fusing these sensors, robots overcome individual sensor limitations, enhancing overall environmental perception. For natural human-robot interaction, multi-sensor fusion provides comprehensive data—combining vision and microphone arrays, for example, allows robots to interpret voice commands and facial expressions for more appropriate responses.

Furthermore, the introduction of large AI models significantly enhances LiDAR's capabilities. By optimizing algorithms, fusing multi-modal data, and generating high-quality training data, these models dramatically improve LiDAR performance. The synergy between advanced LiDAR like the E1R and AI models elevates the perceptual and intelligence levels of humanoid robots.

Industry experts predict several key directions for LiDAR evolution to meet the ultimate demands of humanoid robots, all of which align with E1R's strengths:

• All-Solid-State and Miniaturization: As exemplified by the RoboSense E1R, all-solid-state LiDAR will dominate due to its superior reliability, anti-interference capabilities, and compact size (69.5 x 95 x 43mm), facilitating seamless integration into humanoid robots.
• High Resolution and High Precision: Future LiDAR will continue to push for higher channel counts and greater resolution. While some systems are exploring even higher densities, the E1R's 144 lines already provide a significantly high-definition point cloud compared to many existing solutions, offering robust environmental understanding.
• Deep Fusion with Large AI Models: The E1R's digital architecture, which preserves lossless echo data, is ideally suited for integration with generative models (like LidarDM) and AI, enabling the training of optimized perception models and improving robot adaptability and decision-making.
• Multi-sensor Collaboration: The E1R's precise 3D data forms a critical backbone for multi-modal data fusion, enhancing overall environmental perception and semantic understanding through advanced AI algorithms.
  

Navigating the Robotics LiDAR Market: Beyond the "Price War" Mentality

While the automotive sector has seen dramatic LiDAR price reductions due to mass production and standardization, the humanoid robot market presents a different dynamic. Humanoid robots, with their high hardware costs (especially for joint modules, accounting for 40-50%), have unique demands.

Unlike the unified requirements of automotive OEMs, the humanoid robot market is fragmented, with diverse application scenarios—from homes to factories—leading to high customization needs. This makes a standardized, "price war"-driven cost reduction difficult. Moreover, LiDAR constitutes a smaller portion of a humanoid robot's total cost, limiting the impact of price cuts on overall expenses.

From a technological maturity standpoint, while automotive LiDAR is mature, humanoid robots require specialized features like extreme lightweighting and anti-interference capabilities. The RoboSense E1R, with its compact form factor (330g) and robust performance in challenging environments, directly addresses these needs. The industry is still in its early stages, suggesting that technological routes and product design, rather than sheer scale, will primarily drive cost structures.

Even if a "price war" emerges, it will likely be localized. High-end humanoid robots (hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan) prioritize stringent performance over price, making advanced LiDAR like the E1R indispensable. For mid-to-low-end "economy" humanoid robots, while cost-sensitive, the supply chain's current maturity limits aggressive price reductions without sacrificing essential performance.

In conclusion, the RoboSense E1R is not just a sensor; it's a foundational technology propelling the advancement of humanoid robots and the broader robotics industry. Its automotive-grade reliability, cutting-edge solid-state architecture, high-definition perception, and compact design make it an unparalleled choice for innovators seeking to unlock the full potential of embodied intelligence.

References

1. https://www.robosense.ai/en/IncrementalComponents/E1R
2. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/c2fRneG-2tYceyurg3Vk9A