INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
It not enough for an autonomous vehicle to see the world around it
These vehicles need to understand in real time what they&re seeing.
That understanding piece is critical, and it requires being able to
identify objects in real time and in any environmental condition
It can mean the difference between an autonomous vehicle that appropriately notices and ignores a plastic bag floating by and one that slams
on its brakes.
Tel Aviv-based startup Arbe has developed a high-resolution radar chipset that it says is a game changer for the automotive
Now, with a fresh injection of $32 million in capital, it pushing to bring it into production and into the hands of Tier 1 suppliers.
Arbe
said Monday that it has raised $32 million in a Series B funding round from a number of new investors, including BAIC Capital, Catalyst CEL,
MissionBlue Capital and AI Alliance, a joint venture fund that includes Hyundai, SK Telecom and Hanwha Asset Management
Existing investorsCanaan Partners Israel, iAngels, 360 Capital Partners, O.G
Tech Ventures and OurCrowd also participated.
Arbe will use the capital to hire more employees
But its big focus in the coming year is to bring its radar systems into full production.
With the funds raised, Arbe will continue to deploy
to the market a real breakthrough in radar technology that empowers Tier 1 automakers and OEMs to finally replace their legacy chipsets with
one that truly meets the safety requirements of NCAP and ADAS for years ahead,& CEO Kobi Marenko said in a statement.
Arbe already has five
Tier 1 customers — two in China and three in Europe, Marenko told TechCrunch
Marenko wouldn''t name the suppliers.
Arbe developed a high-resolution radar chipset designed to help autonomous vehicles, and even
passenger vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems, detect and identify objects.The technology can separate, identify and
track hundreds of objects in high horizontal and vertical resolution to a long range in a wide field of view
Arbe says its radar chipset generates an image 100 times more detailed than any other solution on the market today
The system is then able to take those images and simultaneously localize and map the environment.
The high-resolution radar chipset resolves
a number of issues found in legacy chipsets, Marenko said, including eliminating false alarms
Arbe chipsets also can in real time process massive amounts of information generated by 4D imaging, and mitigate mutual radar interference
A radar system that has high-resolution object separation in azimuth and elevation will theoretically lead to more accurate decision
making.
Arbe is so confident in its radar chipset that Marenko says it will enable Level 3 automation in passenger vehicles without
requiring lidar, or light detection and ranging radar
Level 3 is a designation by SAE that means conditional automation in which a driver must still be prepared to intervene.
