Read full article on telematicnews.info Highways offer autonomous vehicles a predictable environment in which to learn and operate, the more difficult task is having them navigate through congested inner-city areas. Between all the potential variables such as bikes, pedestrians, and tight streets, some new tech showcased this year at CES could bring us closer to seeing self-driving vehicles ?become a reality.
Metawave is one company in the self-driving space showcasing its innovative radar at CES 2020. Their Beamsteering Radar SPEKTRA, is a long-range radar platform with the capabilities to identify vehicles over 300 meters away and pedestrians over 200 meters away. These long-range sensing technologies are critical to achieving automated driving by allowing the vehicle to identify, anticipate, and react to obstacles or obstructions before it is too late. The radar platform is able to operate in tough driving environments such as thick fog, heavy rain, even sandstorms, all without losing range.
SBD Insight: Redundancy is vital to ensure the safe operation of autonomous vehicles. We are seeing vehicles outfitted with multiple sensor types, each of these becoming more and more capable. The cost to implement such redundancies is still prohibitively high for mass production vehicles. The benefits of such sensor advancements, as seen with Metawave, will likely be first realized in ADAS applications and small-scale testing/trials.