Automakers continue to make investments in autonomous vehicle technology, and Korean automaker Hyundai is no exception.
Hyundai CRADLE, Hyundai Motor Company’s corporate venturing and open innovation business, has announced an investment in Metawave Corporation to build intelligent radars for autonomous vehicles. Metawave is leveraging adaptive metamaterials (conventional materials using engineered structures with unique electromagnetic properties not found in nature) and artificial intelligence (AI) to create smart radars.
Hyundai is closely evaluating new technologies, such as Metawave’s high-performance radar capable of 3-D imaging, for future autonomous platforms.
“Next-generation radar technology can use advanced algorithms for object detection and classification,” said John Suh, vice president of Hyundai CRADLE, in a statement. “A new radar system that can increase resolution and accuracy with an AI engine will be a disruptive technology.”
Radar is one of three key components for autonomous vehicles, the others being the camera and LiDAR. Radar, by its nature, operates at a lower frequency and “sees” objects at long ranges faster and in all weather and driving conditions. Today’s radar cannot cover wide angles at long ranges and lacks the resolution to differentiate between objects. It needs a large number of antennae and expensive chips to run the complex digital signals.
Metawave’s advanced radar platform, WARLORD uses just one antenna and pushes the complexity of the analog space, using ultra-fast and precise responses. With WARLORD, the antenna itself shapes and steers the beam in all directions using pencil beams, deep learning engines and AI algorithms to recognize objects quickly and send 4-D point cloud to the sensor fusion.
“The investment by Hyundai represents another key company milestone and further proof of our rapid momentum as we bring WARLORD long-range radar with imaging and AI capabilities to autonomous vehicles,” said Metawave CEO Maha Achour, PhD, in a statement. “With our talented team of mm-wave and metamaterial experts, we were the first to demonstrate Electronically Scanned Metamaterial Array for Autonomous Driving at 77GHz. This technology will be an enabling factor for Hyundai and other auto leaders who are striving to improve the vehicle experience.”
Hyundai’s investment in Metawave marks the company’s latest foray into autonomous vehicles. In January, Hyundai Motor Company and Aurora, a leader in autonomous vehicle technology, announced a strategic partnership to bring self-driving Hyundai vehicles to market by 2021. Hyundai followed up a month with the announcement that a fleet of Hyundai NEXO fuel cell electric SUVs successfully completed a self-driven 190-kilometer journey from Seoul to Pyeongchang. The NEXOs were equipped with level 4 self-driving technology, as defined by SAE international standards, and 5G network technology.
