Sensor Fusion Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, And Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

The Sensor Fusion Market was valued at USD 4.72 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach a value of USD 13.62 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 19.2% during the forecast period (2021 - 2026). The growing trend of autonomous vehicle and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are further integrating new radar, camera, lidar, and GNSS sensors into these vehicles. This rapid change requires flexible test systems to deploy products quickly and safely, hence driving the need for sensor fusion systems in the industry. Therefore, the growing functionality of autonomous vehicles is mainly driving the growth of sensor fusion in the autonomous vehicle sector over the forecast period.?

- Resolving contradictions between sensors, synchronizing sensors, predicting the future positions of objects, and achieving automated driving safety requirements are some of the primary objectives of sensor fusion in an autonomous vehicle application.
- According to the World Economic Forum, more than 12 million fully autonomous cars are expected to be sold per year by 2035, and autonomous vehicles will account for 25% of the global automotive market. According to Intel, a single autonomous vehicle can generate an average of 4 terabytes of data per day, and to utilize this massive data in real-time, sensor fusion solutions can play a significant role.?
- Collaboration between automotive and software companies is a common trend in the market. For instance, Dura Automotive Systems is collaborating with Green Hills Software to develop sensor fusion modules for automated driving.?
- Also, in April 2020, Israel-based innovator in automotive vision systems, Foresight Autonomous Holdings Ltd, collaborated with FLIR Systems Inc for the development, marketing, and distribution of Foresight’s sensor fusion-based QuadSight vision system, combined with FLIR Systems’ infrared cameras, to a wide range of prospective customers. Under the deal, Foresight will exclusively purchase its thermal cameras from FLIR for all systems to be commercialized worldwide.?
- Stringent government regulations, across the globe, are also fuelling the demand for the studied market products. For instance, in Europe, Euro NCAP (European New Car Assessment Program) mandates the deployment of at least one driver assistance system. Countries like Japan and the United States are also adopting similar criteria in their national NCAP rules.?
- Many of the automotive manufacturers are also initiating sensor fusion development programs, mainly to leverage competitive advantage. For instance, in May 2019, US-based startup Udacity, along with Mercedes-Benz’s North American R&D lab has developed a curriculum for a sensor fusion nanodegree to meet the high demand for skills related to autonomous vehicles. Product innovation is still a differentiating factor in the studied market.?
- For instance, Germany-based Continental AG is researching the use of AI in sensor fusion offering and bringing its broad knowledge of sensor technology and electronic control units to the development process. Founded in 2019, a robotics startup focused on autonomous vehicle (AV) development, Qcraft, raised over USD 24 million in seed funding and will utilize it for further development of their sensor fusion enabled large-scale intelligent simulation platform.
- However, the recent recession in the global automotive sector and the COVID-19 outbreak is expected to not only affect the demand in the studied market in the short run but will also affect the hardware segment growth. It is expected that only 7-8% of automotive sales are currently generated by MCUs involved in IoT connections in vehicles, hence offering a massive growth opportunity for the market vendors to expand over the forecast period significantly.?

Key Market Trends

Growing Technological Trends in Automotive Sector to Boost the Market Growth

- The growing development in ADAS and increasing utilization of the principle of GPS-IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) fusion is helping in solving accumulated errors of dead reckoning in intervals with absolute position readings. Tesla's Autopilot automated driving feature is an example of an ADAS, that can perform functions such as keeping the vehicle center in a highway lane by determining the vehicle's precise position from data collected from a forward-facing camera and controlling the steering.?
- Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB), and Forward Collision Warning (FCW) are some of the most targeted applications in the studied market.?For instance, in June 2019, BASELABS Gmbh launched BASELABS Create Embedded, that enables together with Vector platforms and help in accelerating the development of embedded sensor fusion systems for automated driving functions and application like Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Automated Emergency Braking (AEB), Forward Collision Warning (FCW) and object fusion for piloted driving.
- The rising adoption of 5G technology is further expanding the scope of sensor fusion towards heavy commercial vehicles and autonomous vehicles like drones and industrial robots. 5G will massively bring Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology in the automotive and transportation industry, which will increase the demand for sensor fusion due to growth in the markets like Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), smart bus, and robot taxi among others.?
- For instance, China-based Pony.ai is testing sensor fusion-enabled robotaxi in China and the US. In 2019, US-based GeoCue Group launched their new hardware as a service (HaaS) Evergreen Subscription for their True View UAV LiDAR/Imagery Fusion Sensors to the drone industry. According to the company, it is the industry's first integrated LIDAR/camera fusion platform designed from the ground up to generate high accuracy 3D colorized LIDAR point clouds.?

Asia Pacific Region is Expected to Witness Significant Growth Rate

- The Asia Pacific is one of the major regions for sensor fusion in autonomous applications, owing to the growing adoption of autonomous vehicles, stringent government regulation, and increasing dominance in the global semiconductor industry.?
- Also, the region's massive investment in 5G, along with promoting C-V2X, is further expanding the scope of automotive applications such as autonomous driving, Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X), and MaaS market. Chipmakers like Qualcomm is also working with over 30 Chinese automotive companies, including the China-based joint ventures, to demonstrate the commercial viability of C-V2X technology for autonomous and connected vehicles. ?
- South Korea-based, KT Corporation is developing a '5G as a Vehicle Platform’, a commercial self-driving platform using the innovative 5G technology. In July 2019, Tencent announced to develop a high-performance computing data center in China for German automotive company BMW. The facility will be used for the development of highly (Level 3) and fully (Level 4) automated self-driving vehicles. Taiwan-based Panjit International is stepping up the development of semiconductors for automotive and mass transportation.?
- The regional government is also playing a significant role in market development. For instance, the Union Minister for Road and Highway Transport India has announced that the country is planning to mandate ADAS in all cars by 2022.

Competitive Landscape

The sensor fusion market is a fragmented market. It is a highly competitive market with a number of players in the market, and there is no dominant player present. However, with innovation and developments, many of the companies are increasing their market presence by tapping new markets.

- April 2020 - US-based startup Phantom AI raised USD 22 million in Series A financing led by Celeres Investments and joined by Ford Motor and South Korean telecom giant KT Corporation. Phantom AI's PhantomFusion product is independent sensor fusion and object tracking system that fuses all of the raw data collected from various vehicle sensors. It can also fuse data from up to six cameras and six radars, 360 degrees around a vehicle. ?
- March 2020 - US-based CEVA Inc launched SensPro, a high-performance sensor hub DSP architecture designed to handle the broad range of sensor processing and sensor fusion workloads for devices. It consists of an advanced set of software and development tools to expedite system designing LLVM C/C++ compiler, Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE), OpenVX API, software libraries for OpenCL, CEVA deep neural network (CDNN) graph compiler including the CDNN-Invite API for the inclusion of custom AI engines, CEVA-CV imaging functions, CEVA-SLAM software development kit and vision libraries, ClearVox noise reduction, WhisPro speech recognition, MotionEngine sensor fusion, and the SenslinQ software framework.?

Reasons to Purchase this report:

- The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
- 3 months of analyst support