Hesai launches Kosmo lidar spatial camera and cloud platform for 3D capture

Hesai Group launched Kosmo in Shanghai on 14 October 2026. It is a 3D data system pairing the handheld Kosmo One camera with the Kosmo World cloud platform. Kosmo One combines lidar, a one-inch image sensor and an inertial measurement unit, and uses 3D Gaussian Splatting reconstruction. Hesai claims millimetre-level geometric accuracy and says one operator can scan about 100 square metres indoors in roughly 15 minutes. Maximum capture is 8K, with exports limited to 6K.

Kosmo World outputs Gaussian splat, mesh and depth data, and works with NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Unreal Engine and Houdini. Hesai says a Dairy Queen store in Shanghai was scanned in 15 minutes, against about 300 hours of manual modelling, and a Sharpa robot reached 99% task success. Partners include Galbot, Dexmal and Amap, which has put reconstructed venues into its "Flying Street View" feature.

Why it matters: Lidar makers are moving into fast, low-effort reality capture. For surveyors and mappers, handheld lidar-plus-splatting workflows could reduce indoor scanning and modelling effort, though the performance claims are the vendor's own and no African availability has been announced.