New progress of Intel's driverless car company Mobileye's new radar technology

Lithium Grid News: At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2021, Mobileye, a self-driving car company under Intel Corp, detailed its latest technological developments, including showing its newly developed silicon photonic lidar chips. Lidar sensors produced by this technology will be put into use in 2025.

According to media reports, the head of Mobileye said on Tuesday (January 12) that he hopes to switch to self-developed radar technology by 2025 and reduce the number of lidar sensors used in each vehicle to one. Reduce the cost of autonomous driving. Unlike many competitors in the field of autonomous driving, Mobileye uses a camera-based system to help cars perform adaptive cruise control and lane change assistance. These systems are currently in use and are collecting data to help Mobileye map new urban roads.

In terms of more advanced systems, the company plans to add radar sensors and lidar. Radar sensors use radio waves to detect the distance to objects, while lidar is a laser-based system that can help self-driving cars get a three-dimensional view of the road. For the planned 'robot taxi' fleet, the company is using sensors from Luminar Technologies Inc., a US lidar manufacturer.

At the CES show on Tuesday, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua (Amnon Shashua) said that the company’s robotic taxis will use multiple Luminar devices that use radar, lidar, and cameras. 360-degree coverage of the entire body. Shashua said in a subsequent Qu0026A session that the robotic taxi service will be deployed in at least 8 cities starting from 2022, and each car will be equipped with 4 Luminar devices. At the same time, Mobileye is also developing its own lidar sensor and plans to begin applying it to consumer-oriented cars in 2025.

At this CES conference, Mobileye demonstrated its latest LiDAR system integrated chip developed in cooperation with Intel. According to reports, this technology belongs to frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) lidar, which will enable Mobileye to have independent lidar sensor technology and the ability to customize lidar software, thereby further reducing manufacturing costs.

This 2025 consumer-oriented system will only install a lidar device directly in front of the vehicle, while the camera-based system and the updated radar system that Mobileye is developing will cover the entire vehicle. Shashua said that Mobileye is developing a new method of using software to process radar data to make the radar more powerful.

Radar sensors are cheaper than lidar, but the images provided are not detailed enough. Shashua said that in terms of cost, no matter how people say how to reduce the cost of lidar, the cost of radar sensors is only one-tenth of that of lidar. Compared with cameras, lidar has great advantages in target contour measurement, angle measurement, light stability, and general obstacle detection.

There have been rumors that Mobileye's self-developed radar technology will mean that it will 'break up' with its long-term partner Luminar. In this regard, Mobileye said in a statement that after launching its own lidar sensor, the company will still use Luminar lidar 'as much as possible.' Mobileye plans to provide its autonomous driving technology as a separate component to automakers, which means that automakers can use Luminar's sensors as lidar devices while choosing the Mobileye system.