University of Colorado Boulder researchers, with colleagues at Boston University, have developed a new optical phased array concept—the serpentine OPA (SOPA)—that could support medium- to long-range lidar. An open-access paper on their work appears in the journal Optica. Optical phased arrays (OPAs) implemented in integrated photonic circuits could enable a... Read more →

Addressing the ongoing migration towards autonomous driving, Toshiba has introduced a high-resolution, long-range light-receiving technology for deployment in solid-state LiDAR systems. By removing the need for bulky mechanical components, the technology realizes cost and space savings and enhances operational reliability. At its heart is Toshiba’s proprietary compact, high-efficiency silicon photo-multiplier... Read more →

Cambridge Consultants, part of the Capgemini Group, has introduced EnfuseNet, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system for autonomous vehicles. EnfuseNet fuses data from low-cost sensors and cameras—hardware costing just tens of dollars—to generate high-resolution depth data, the ideal reference point for autonomous systems. The result is very low-cost, high-resolution depth data... Read more →

Using radar commonly deployed to track speeders and fastballs, researchers have developed an automated system that will allow cars to peer around corners and spot oncoming traffic and pedestrians. Researchers combined artificial intelligence and radar used to track speeders to develop a system that will allow vehicles to spot hazards... Read more →

Three UC Riverside engineers have received a $1.2-million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a new generation of energy-efficient, energy-elastic, and real-time-aware GPUs suitable for use in resource-constrained environments such as emerging embedded and autonomous systems, including aerial drones and autonomous vehicles. The three Marlan and Rosemary Bourns... Read more →

Strategy Analytics forecasts that automotive sensor market growth will be driven by an expected increase in demand for electric vehicles. The “Strategy Analytics Powertrain Body Chassis and Safety (PBCS) service report, “Global xEV Sensor Market 2018-2027” forecasts that the global market for current, position/speed and temperature sensors, will grow at... Read more →

A self-driving car must accurately track the movement of pedestrians, bicycles and other vehicles around it. Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed a new method for training those tracking systems. Generally speaking, the more road and traffic data available for training tracking systems, the better the results.... Read more →

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown that they can significantly improve the accuracy of autonomous vehicles’ detection of objects such as other cars or pedestrians by helping the vehicle also recognize what it doesn’t see. CMU research shows that what a self-driving car doesn’t see (in green) is as... Read more →

AEye, Inc. has introduced 4Sight, a new sensor family built on its (Intelligent Detection and Ranging (iDAR) platform. Countering previous assumptions that high-performing long-range 1550nm LiDAR could not achieve both solid state reliability and lower cost, 4Sight delivers performance, reliability and price. Current LiDAR sensors rely on an array of... Read more →

Toshiba Corporation has developed technology that can predict automobile and drone movement with high accuracy. Motion Estimation AI uses on-board cameras and inertial sensors that measure acceleration and angular velocity to deliver highly accurate estimates of the movement of a drone or a vehicle, while Motion Prediction AI predicts the... Read more →

Israeli startup TriEye, the developer of Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) sensing technology which enhances visibility in adverse weather and night time conditions, has officially revealed Sparrow, the first CMOS-based SWIR camera. InGaAs-based SWIR cameras have been around for decades, serving the science, aerospace, and defense industries, but have not been used... Read more →

ams, a leading worldwide supplier of high-performance sensor solutions, has introduced new position sensors that lower system cost and enhance electrification of safety-critical vehicle functions such as power steering, active damper control, and braking for safer, smarter, and greener cars. The two new position sensors bring new benefits and a... Read more →

FLIR Systems announced the availability of its first European thermal imaging regional dataset and the third in a series of thermal imaging datasets for machine vision testing. Designed to help researchers, developers and auto manufacturers enhance and accelerate work on safety, advanced driver assistance-systems (ADAS), automatic emergency braking (AEB) and... Read more →

Volvo Cars will equip its next-generation cars with Luminar LiDAR and perception technology. The partnership will deliver Volvo’s first fully self-driving technology for highways and paves the way for future active safety developments. Volvo Cars took a stake in Luminar in 2018 (earlier post). Volvo Cars’ next-generation SPA 2 modular... Read more →

As part of its global R&D networking in Korea, North America, Europe, China and India, Hyundai Mobis will expand its technical center in India, which develops and validates automotive software. Through this, the company aims to strengthen its R&D activities in India, particularly software development for autonomous vehicles. Hyundai Mobis... Read more →

Researchers at the University of South Australia (UniSA), in partnership with DragonFly, are working to deploy a drone to monitor and to detect remotely people with infectious respiratory conditions. The drone will be fitted with a specialized sensor and computer vision system that can monitor temperature, heart and respiratory rates,... Read more →

Munich-based LiDAR start-up Blickfeld has completed its Series A financing round. The new financing was led by the venture capital unit of Continental together with Wachstumsfonds Bayern, which is managed by Bayern Kapital, with participation of the existing investors Fluxunit – OSRAM Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds, TEV (Tengelmann Ventures) and Unternehmertum... Read more →

Researchers at TU Wien (Vienna) have developed an ultra-fast image sensor with a built-in neural network; the sensor can be trained to recognize certain objects. They describe their work on ultrafast machine vision in a paper in Nature. Machine vision technology has taken huge leaps in recent years, and is... Read more →

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has developed a compact light-detection and ranging (LiDAR) solution incorporating a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) that achieves an extra-wide horizontal scanning angle to accurately detect the shapes and distances of objects ahead in autonomous driving systems. The new LiDAR solution irradiates objects by laser and uses a dual-axis... Read more →

With a $2.3-million award from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), an interdisciplinary team of Virginia Tech researchers led by Masoud Agah, the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is developing an intelligent wearable analyzer for vapor exposure, called iWAVE,... Read more →

Innoviz Technologies, a leading provider of high-performance, solid-state lidar sensors and perception software, announced cooperation with Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile Co. in Xi’an, China to deploy autonomous trucks for an upcoming project in one of the biggest ports in China. Shaanxi Heavy Duty Automobile Co. Ltd., better known as Shacman... Read more →

The European PRoPART (Precise and Robust Positioning for Automated Road Transports) project, funded by the European Global Navigation Satellite System Agency (GSA), recently successfully demonstrated its highly accurate positioning system in a recreated motorway situation at the AstaZero test area in Sweden, with a connected autonomous truck and two unconnected... Read more →

Hitachi Automotive Systems Americas, Inc. and TomTom (TOM2), the location technology specialist, are collaborating on a proof-of-concept for the development of a new real-time hazard service for navigation and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Through the collaboration, the companies will combine technological strengths to deliver real-time updates on the location... Read more →

Oxbotica, a developer of autonomous vehicle software, and Navtech, a global radar solution company, are developing a radar-based navigation and perception system to be launched this year. The product represents the latest advancement in radar-based technology and the partnership marks an important milestone in Oxbotica’s plans to take its software... Read more →

At CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Hyundai; Hexagon’s Positioning Intelligence Division; Valeo; and a major mobile network operator are presenting a new technology capable of pinpointing a vehicle’s exact location while on the road. Using proprietary centimeter-level precision called High-Precision Positioning (HPP), the system can further enhance a vehicle’s advanced... Read more →

Velodyne Lidar, Inc. introduced Velabit, Velodyne’s smallest sensor, at CES 2020. The Velabit leverages Velodyne’s lidar technology and manufacturing partnerships for cost optimization and high-volume production. The Velabit is engineered to be an optimal automotive-grade lidar solution for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles. It enables robust perception... Read more →

Bosch is adding a new long-range lidar to its sensor portfolio for automated driving. The new Bosch sensor will cover both long and close ranges on highways and in the city. By exploiting economies of scale, Bosch wants to reduce the price for the sophisticated technology and render it suitable... Read more →

Oculii, a company developing high resolution imaging radars to enable the next generation of autonomous systems, and Infineon are collaborating on radar software solutions that scale performance for cost-effective single chip solutions tailored for Level 1 ADAS, all the way to multi-chip high performance solutions tailored for Level 4 Autonomous... Read more →

Continental will premier its new Contact Sensor System (CoSSy) at CES 2020 next month in Las Vegas, Nevada. CoSSy closes a gap in the industry’s automotive sensor portfolio by enabling the detection of low-speed contact between a vehicle and a person or object. At CES 2020, Continental will demonstrate how... Read more →

Since June 2019, Mercedes-Benz Trucks has been supplying the new heavy-duty Actros truck with MirrorCam—side-mounted digital rear-view mirrors—as a standard feature. The digital rear-view mirror not only looks futuristic but can also do much more than conventional main and wide-angle mirrors. Its performance far exceeds the legal requirements. The MirrorCam... Read more →

Aeva, a company building next-generation sensing for autonomous vehicles (earlier post), announced the development of Aeries, Aeva’s next-generation Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) lidar system that integrates all the key elements of a lidar sensor into a miniaturized photonics chip. Essentially, unlike conventional time-of-flight (ToF) lidar systems that send out... Read more →

Velodyne Lidar, Inc. introduced Alpha Prime, the next-generation lidar sensor utilizing Velodyne’s patented surround view technology to deliver the combined highest performance specifications for the autonomous mobility industry in one sensor. Offering a new level of power efficiency, the Alpha Prime is available now for orders and delivery. The Alpha... Read more →

Hyundai Mobis has developed a new rear-autonomous emergency braking (R-AEB) technology that uses ultra short-range radar (USRR) for the first time. The new technology is expected to contribute greatly to prevent unexpected backover crashes since it responds faster and has a wider detection range than conventional ultrasound sensors used in... Read more →

Porsche is intensifying its collaboration with Israeli technology company Tactile Mobility with a minority investment. The Haifa-based company is one of the leaders in the field of “tactile data” and is based in Haifa. In addition to Porsche, Union Tech Ventures and existing investors are participating in the current investment... Read more →

To improve the safety of autonomous systems, MIT engineers have developed a system that can sense tiny changes in shadows on the ground to determine if there’s a moving object coming around the corner. Autonomous cars could one day use the system to quickly avoid a potential collision with another... Read more →

Hyundai CRADLE, Hyundai Motor Company’s corporate venturing and open innovation business, is investing in Netradyne, a US-based intelligent technology company specializing in fleet safety management software. The partnership supports further development of Level 3+ Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (L3+ ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AD) features that may launch over the... Read more →

RoboSense (Suteng Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.) announced a partnership with China-based FAW and showcased the first batch of its solid-state Smart LiDAR Sensor RS-LiDAR-M1. FAW will include the RS-LiDAR-M1 as a core component in its proprietary next-generation autonomous driving system development, therefore accelerating the serial production of the first automotive-grade... Read more →

Porsche has acquired a minority stake in the Israeli start-up, TriEye. The newly established company has developed a sensor technology for short-wave infrared (SWIR). It enhances safety in vehicles fitted with assistance systems or autonomous driving functions by improving the ability to see in weather conditions where visibility is poor,... Read more →

Continental technologies such as ABS, radar and redundant brake system are being used in series production for robo-taxis for first time. This year, Continental’s technology for driverless vehicles will be in production for the first time in French company EasyMile’s EZ10 autonomous shuttle. Continental has held a stake in this... Read more →

Recogni Inc., the designers of a vision-oriented artificial intelligence platform for autonomous vehicles, announced $25 million in Series A financing led by GreatPoint Ventures with participation from Toyota AI Ventures, BMW i Ventures, Faurecia, Fluxunit (VC arm of lighting and photonics company OSRAM), and DNS Capital. As the automotive industry... Read more →

Velodyne Lidar, Inc. has acquired mapping and localization software as well as intellectual property assets from Mapper.ai. Mapper technology will enable Velodyne to accelerate development of Vella, software that establishes its directional view Velarray lidar sensor. The Velarray is the first solid-state Velodyne lidar sensor that is embeddable and fits... Read more →

Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, will collaborate with Mobileye, an Intel Company and a leading provider of advanced driver-assistance systems software, to bring the advanced data collection capabilities of Mobileye into Esri’s platform as native services. This collaboration will provide Esri customers with the ability to visualize and... Read more →

Innovusion Inc., a designer and developer of hybrid Solid State LiDAR systems for vehicle safety applications, announced the availability of its Cheetah system. Based on a rotating polygon optical architecture, Innovusion has melded together proprietary detector electronics, advanced optics and sophisticated software algorithms to offer a long-distance, high-resolution LiDAR vehicle... Read more →

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a small, optical nano-sensor for pollution detection which can be mounted onto an ordinary streetlight. The technology is already in use in western Sweden, and researchers and other interested parties hope that the sensor could soon be used in many broad... Read more →

ZF has developed the Dual-cam two-lens camera specifically designed for the commercial truck market and to be used in concert with other ZF ADAS technologies. The camera features ZF’s longitudinal and lateral vehicle control expertise combined with Mobileye’s advanced EyeQ4 processor. Part of ZF’s S-Cam4 family of automotive-grade cameras, the... Read more →

Side impact collisions are among the most dangerous type of road traffic accidents, accounting for nearly 700 deaths per year and nearly a third of all occupant fatalities on German roads. A new pre-crash safety system prototype developed by ZF uses an external side airbag deployed milliseconds before a collision.... Read more →

Bosch is working on sensor technology for air taxis. The Boston Consulting Group predicts that people around the world will take 1 billion flights in air taxis in 2030, once sharing services have also established a presence on fixed routes above the ground; most of those air taxis will be... Read more →

A new review by an interdisciplinary research team from New York University (NYU) of studies on levels of urban exposure to airborne pollutants and their effects on human health suggests that advanced instrumentation and information technology will soon allow researchers and policymakers to gauge the health risks of air pollution... Read more →

Cornell researchers have shown that using two inexpensive cameras on either side of a vehicle’s windshield can detect objects with nearly LiDAR’s accuracy and at a fraction of the cost. The LiDAR sensors currently used to detect 3D objects in the paths of autonomous cars are bulky, ugly, expensive, energy-inefficient—and... Read more →

RoboSense has teamed up with partners Horizon Robotics, Cainiao Network, Sensible 4, and AutoX to launch the Smart Sensor System (SSS) designed for four key smart transportation vehicle applications: autonomous passenger cars; low-speed autonomous vehicles; high-speed RoboTaxis; and V2R (Vehicle to Road infrastructure). The RoboSense Smart Sensor System combines new... Read more →