Cepton Introduces the World’s Smallest Wide Field of View Lidar Sensor for Near-Range Applications
Cepton Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of state-of-the-art, intelligent, lidar-based solutions, has announced its path-breaking miniature lidar sensor – the Nova - priced at less than $100 for high volume automotive applications.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210112005035/en/
With a lidar target size of 3.5 cm (W) x 3.5 cm (H) x 7.5 cm (D), and weighing less than 350 g, the Nova is extremely compact and easily embeddable for automotive applications. © 2021 Cepton Technologies.
The Nova is a wide angle near-range lidar sensor intended to address major gaps in proximity detection of objects with current sensor technologies. Featuring best-in-class, high resolution 3D imaging with a high field of view (FOV) of 90-120° (H) and 60-90° (V), depending on configuration, Nova sets a worldwide benchmark with its unprecedented combination of compactness, FOV coverage and affordability.
Powered by Cepton’s patented and proven Micro Motion Technology (MMT®), the non-rotational, mirrorless, and frictionless Nova lidar can be hidden all around a vehicle to provide a complete 360° view of its immediate surroundings. With a lidar target size of 3.5 cm (W) x 3.5 cm (H) x 7.5 cm (D), and weighing less than 350 g, the ultra-small Nova is an easily embeddable lidar sensor that not only enables optimal styling choices but demonstrates the scalability of MMT® to the smallest form factors.
Nova has an angular resolution of up to 0.3°, with a maximum range of up to 30 m and is therefore ideal for automotive Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle (AV) applications such as blind spot detection, small object detection, automated park assist and free space estimation around the vehicle. For vehicles, a multi-lidar architecture can be facilitated, thereby creating a virtual safety zone all around while minimizing disruption to vehicle design aesthetics.
Nova is ideally suited for accurate detection of objects in proximity, such as small children, on-road objects, road edges, stationary objects and more. With this level of capability and its ultra-compact design, Nova can not only support ADAS and AV applications but also autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) and smart industrial applications.
With lidar’s increasing presence in cars and trucks, Cepton has been innovating its technology to meet the stringent requirements from OEMs and Tier 1s while striving to advance lidar designs that enable easy integration in the next generation of automobiles. Nova is the latest representation of Cepton’s state-of-the-art lidar innovation, that encompasses the goal of automotive-grade reliability, low power (<3.5 W) and high performance, along with an elegant, minimalistic design that requires only small amounts of real estate in the vehicle body.
Nova’s modular design and easily accessible components make it highly manufacturable, with very low cost at high volume. Previously, Cepton was one of the first in the industry to announce a <$1,000 volume lidar price for high performance, long range lidar (Vista-X90). Consistent with that trend, Nova is the first high field of view, near-range lidar with a <$100 price point for high automotive volumes. This fulfils Cepton’s objective to bring to market scalable, mass-market lidar solutions that enable the automotive industry to substantially accelerate safety and autonomy innovations in the next generation of vehicles.
“The Nova is an industry-first, transformational lidar that fundamentally changes the game for near-field sensing,” said Cepton CEO Dr. Jun Pei. “Currently, consumer vehicles have been limited to technologies that cannot facilitate true Level 3 or Level 4 autonomy for the mass market. Radars, cameras and ultrasonic sensors suffer from high false positives and false negatives. Rotational lidars are not embeddable, making them impractical for consumer vehicles. Near-range flash lidars either lack the wide field of view or cannot match the power and size requirements to be discretely hidden all around the vehicle. The Nova represents path-breaking lidar innovation for the automotive industry in that it achieves a level of performance that is unmatched for such a small form factor.”
Nova is targeted for high volume production starting in 2023. Due to anticipated high demand for samples, Nova will only be available to select customers in 2021 through Cepton’s Early Access Program. If you would like to be part of this program or would like more details, please contact Mitch Hourtienne, Cepton Senior Director of Business Development at mitch.hourtienne@cepton.com.
To learn more about the Nova and Cepton’s automotive grade lidar capabilities, join Cepton at the upcoming digital CES 2021, from January 11th to 14th, via our virtual booth page (CES registration required). On Jan 12th, Cepton CMO, Dr. T. R. Ramachandran will join North American Lighting (NAL) for a virtual panel discussion on “Impact of Sensors on Mobility” at 11 a.m. (PST) and present at an online NAL-hosted webinar “Lidar, What’s the Future?” at 2 p.m. (PST). Watch the online sessions for free to learn more about how lidar is transforming the world and how Cepton’s smart lidar solutions are ideally suited for automotive and smart infrastructure applications.
About Cepton Technologies, Inc.
Cepton provides state-of-the-art, intelligent, lidar-based solutions for a range of markets such as automotive (ADAS/AV), smart cities, smart spaces and smart industrial applications. Cepton’s patented MMT®-based lidar technology enables reliable, scalable and cost-effective solutions that deliver long range, high resolution 3D perception for smart applications.
Founded in 2016 and led by industry veterans with over two decades of collective experience across a wide range of advanced lidar and imaging technologies, Cepton is focused on the mass market commercialization of high performance, high quality lidar solutions. Cepton is headquartered in San Jose, California, USA, with a presence in Germany, Canada, Japan and India, to serve a fast-growing global customer base. For more information, visit www.cepton.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210112005035/en/
Contact information
Faithy Li, Cepton Technologies, media@cepton.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Brands Poised for Growth: NIQ Identifies the Strategies Behind 2025’s Top Performing Innovations9.12.2025 13:00:00 EET | Press release
NielsenIQ (NYSE: NIQ), a global leader in consumer intelligence, today released its 4th Annual Innovation Vitality Report, revealing the strategies that are helping brands achieve multi-year growth from their innovation pipelines. Drawing on data from over 70,000 manufacturers across 130 categories, the report highlights the practices that double a company’s likelihood of expanding overall sales through top performing innovation. As retailers accelerate shelf refresh cycles and private label competition intensifies, brands are under increasing pressure to design innovations with staying power. NIQ’s findings show that top performing innovators consistently follow a repeatable formula, rooted in strong consumer-led ideas, early performance signals, and cross functional alignment, to build products that deliver long-term, incremental growth across global markets. Key Findings from the 2025 Innovation Vitality Report Winning Innovation Starts Before Launch Brands that invest in true innov
Klarna Now Available on Apple Pay to Customers in France and Italy9.12.2025 12:49:00 EET | Press release
Klarna, the global digital bank and flexible payments provider, has made its flexible payment products available when checking out on Apple Pay in France and Italy. Millions of eligible shoppers can now choose Klarna at checkout online and in-app using their iPhone and iPad, or in-store using their iPhone, and this innovative capability delivers even more convenience, control, and transparency to even more customers. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251209410835/en/ The continued expansion follows strong consumer adoption and momentum in Denmark, Spain, Sweden, the U.S., UK and Canada, where Klarna’s flexible payment options have become a popular way to pay with Apple Pay. With today’s launch, consumers across eight major markets can now choose to shop with Klarna through Apple Pay’s simple and secure experience, and consumers have more choice and flexibility in how they can pay. “We’ve seen incredible exciteme
DNP Achieves 10nm Line Pattern Resolution on Nanoimprint Template for Cutting-Edge Semiconductors9.12.2025 12:12:00 EET | Press release
Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP, TOKYO:7912) today announced the development of a nanoimprint lithography (NIL) template featuring a circuit line width of 10 nanometers (nm: 10-9 meter). The new template enables patterning for logic semiconductors equivalent to the 1.4nm generation and meets the miniaturization needs of cutting-edge logic semiconductors. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251208175160/en/ Template for nanoimprint Background and Aims In line with the shift to more sophisticated devices seen in recent years, demands have emerged for even greater miniaturization in cutting-edge semiconductors, leading to advances in Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) lithography-based production. EUV lithography, however, requires substantial capital investment, energy consumption, and operating costs in building production lines and the exposure process. Since 2003, DNP has been developing NIL templates and has successf
Reply Achieves the AWS Agentic AI Specialization and Is Named an Implementation Partner for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore9.12.2025 11:47:00 EET | Press release
Reply [EXM, STAR: REY] announced that it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Agentic AI Specialization, a new category within the AWS AI Competency. This recognition positions Reply and its companies specialized in AWS technologies - Data Reply and Storm Reply - among the AWS Partners able to help customers deploy smart, self-operating AI systems that can think, plan, and act autonomously to execute complex business processes. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251209601808/en/ Through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, organizations can simplify and secure the development of intelligent agents at scale, interact with enterprise systems, analyze data in real time, and automate complex processes. The specialization further strengthens Reply’s long-standing expertise in AWS technologies and its ability to deliver production-ready autonomous AI systems based on Amazon Bedrock Agents and AWS-native frameworks, enabling
LabelVie Advances AI-Driven Grocery Retail Transformation Through Long-Standing Collaboration with SymphonyAI9.12.2025 11:00:00 EET | Press release
For more than two decades, LabelVie Group has relied on SymphonyAI, a global leader in Vertical AI product platforms, to power its grocery retail transformation. Now, that partnership is entering a new phase — one defined by connected intelligence, predictive precision, and measurable impact across LabelVie’s 270-plus stores in Morocco and Ivory Coast. As one of North Africa’s largest and fastest-growing grocery retail and wholesale operators, LabelVie is advancing its digital modernization through SymphonyAI’s end-to-end retail solutions, which support greater visibility, accuracy, and operational coordination across its growing network. The continued collaboration reinforces a long-term commitment to improving supply-chain processes and store operations as LabelVie expands into new markets and grocery retail formats. “SymphonyAI has been a trusted technology partner for more than two decades,” said Naoual Benamar, General Manager, LabelVie. “Their deep retail expertise and proven AI
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom