Ouster and Qcraft have launched another fleet of robobuses outfitted with Ouster LiDAR sensors in Wuhan, China.

Ouster’s high-performance digital LiDAR sensors are used in three locations on the bus and help the bus eliminate blind spots with their wide field of view and high resolution. This deployment is the result of a multi-year strategic customer agreement entered into in August 2020.

QCraft is automating the world’s largest municipal busing market, having launched China’s first regularly operated 5G robobus project in Suzhou, followed by Shenzhen last year. QCraft plans to have at least 100 autonomous buses on open roads in China by the end of this year, with significant growth anticipated in the years ahead.

“QCraft is a pioneer in the autonomous public transportation market for shuttle buses, and we are all excited to watch their growth and progress in deploying their vehicles safely on public roads. Aided by the high performance and reliability of our digital lidar sensors, QCraft has a tremendous opportunity in front of it,” said Ouster’s Asia Pacific region GM Clement Kong.

QCraft is taking a unique approach to making self-driving cars fully autonomous by leveraging its large-scale intelligent simulation system and self-learning framework for vehicle decision-making and planning, which enables it to reduce test costs, significantly improve development efficiency, and guarantee solution scalability. Qcraft also announced a new round of financing that will be used to build an “automated production super factory” for autonomous vehicles.

“Ouster’s digital approach to LiDAR provides us with the high performance we need to deploy on public roads safely, as well as a clear path to reduce sensor costs, which is consistent with our goal of achieving large-scale commercial deployment,” said YU Qian, co-founder and CEO of QCraft.

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