Delphi acquires Ottomatika and invests in Quanergy to boost automated driving and ADAS capabilities
31 July 2015
To enhance its leading active safety and automated driving capabilities, Delphi has acquired software company Ottomatika, and has made a strategic investment in 3D LiDAR sensing leader, Quanergy. These strategic moves strengthen Delphi’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) applications and could help speed the adoption of automated vehicles.
Ottomatika, Inc. is a spinout from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) led by Dr. Raj Rajkumar which provides advanced automated driving software; Delphi has been partnering with the company since November 2014. (Earlier post.) Quanergy is a privately-held, Silicon-Valley-based technology company developing 3D time-of-flight LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors for real-time 3D mapping and object detection, tracking, and classification.
Ottomatika. Delphi originally entered a joint development agreement with Ottomatika to integrate the company’s automated driving software with Delphi’s active safety technologies. The result was a system capable of making human-like decisions to safely pilot an automated vehicle through a variety of real-world highway or urban driving scenarios.
The two companies displayed an automonomous vehicle resulting from their partnership at CES in January 2015; this was followed by the demonstration of a comprehensive Ottomatika-powered technology suite in a Delphi vehicle in a cross-country autonomous drive across the US in March.
Quanergy. Quanergy’s designed its 3D time-of-flight (the round-trip travel time for a laser pulse reflected off obstacles) LiDAR sensors from the ground up to meet mass commercial deployment criteria in various markets. Quanergy’s technical innovations are covered by 8 patent applications. The technology roadmap covers multiple classes of high-performance LiDARs, with one class being based on mechanical, and other classes being solid state. The cost, performance, size and reliability metrics exceed those of existing state-of-the-art solutions by one to two orders of magnitude, according to the company.
Quanergy and Delphi will collaborate to bring a range of low-cost, high-performance solid state LiDAR products to the automotive market to provide a complete vehicle perception solution for Level 3 (Conditional) and 4 (High) automation applications. The prospect of a lower-cost ADAS solution could bring widespread adoption of the life-saving active safety technology.
Resources
Today’s LiDARs and GPUs Enable Ultra-accurate GPS-free Navigation with Affordable SLAM (Quanergy presentation)
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