Aeva Technologies Inc is claiming an industry first for its 4D lidar, which it says now delivers ‘beyond 500m’ detection range, having significantly enhanced the system’s previous performance through software improvements on existing hardware.
The latest breakthrough enables instant detection and identification of pedestrians beyond 350m, and dark objects, including vehicles, beyond 500m of range. The company says such long-range sensing has the potential to provide crucial safety enhancements for automated driving, especially in applications where sufficient braking distance is safety-critical, such as highway driving. Importantly, Aeva 4D lidar’s ultra-long-range performance also identifies the ground driveable regions beyond 200m.
Such detection range is made possible through Aeva’s unique frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) 4D lidar architecture that has superior sensitivity to detect a single photon, without being sensitive to sunlight or other interference. By leveraging continuous measurements and raw instant velocity per pixel information, Aeva’s technology measures an object at long distances with higher confidence than a legacy, time-of-flight (ToF) lidar – enabling instant identification of dynamic objects with reflectivities below 10% at long distances.
“Our team continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible toward creating the best perception solution that is built on Aeva’s breakthrough FMCW 4D lidar on-chip technology, as we aim to offer a combination of performance and scalability that we believe to be unmatched in the industry,” said Mina Rezk, co-founder and CTO of Aeva. “This is all accomplished using Aeva’s current 4D lidar hardware, providing a glimpse of the continuous improvements we aim to deliver to our customers through our proprietary FMCW technology and over-the-air software updates.”
Founded in 2017 by Rezk and fellow former Apple engineer Soroush Salehian, and led by a multidisciplinary team of engineers and operators experienced in the field of sensing and perception, California-based Aeva is backed by Porsche SE, Adage Capital, Lux Capital and Canaan Partners, among others.
