Vayyar says that its 4D point cloud applications will greatly benefit the automotive and sensor industries by addressing the company’s primary goal: increasing safety for drivers and passengers in vehicles.
While automotive companies in the industry today deploy a variety of different sensors to increase safety and navigation for drivers, there has yet to be a single sensor that can create a holistic solution for both passengers in the vehicle, and drivers and pedestrians outside.
Now, with the imaging company's single radar chip, cars can be equipped to display the dimension, shape, location and movement of people and objects inside and outside the car in real time, regardless of lighting or weather conditions.
Vayyar claims that its technology is lower cost and higher performing than existing 3D point cloud solutions available from LiDAR sensors or cameras. Moreover, it doesn’t collect any optic data so privacy is always protected.
Additionally, Vayyar says that its point cloud sensor is cost-effective and more powerful than other sensors, enabling all vehicles to deploy the most sophisticated sensors on the market without taking away from other capabilities.
The in-cabin and exterior radar capabilities should increase safety not only for passengers inside the vehicle, but also for pedestrians and other drivers around them. For example, with Vayyar, a single sensor can be used to provide accurate notifications for every seat and remind passengers to wear a seatbelt. Today, each seat in a vehicle requires a seatbelt sensor that is dependent on weight. The sensor can also detect if an infant is accidentally left in a vehicle, even if hidden by a blanket or car seat, and sound an alarm to alert the driver.
Vayyar’s sensor generates high-resolution images based on advanced radio frequency (RF) technology. It integrates an "unprecedented number" of transceivers with an advanced digital signal processor (DSP) to produce highly accurate images with high-resolution contour.
As a result the chip sends out tens of thousands of signals per second and analyses the signals’ reflections to construct 3D images. Receiving all of this information in real-time enables the sensors to construct in real-time a highly accurate 4D point cloud image of the environment.
“The main challenge during development was crafting a chip that could hold this large amount of antennae and develop complex algorithms that could rapidly analyse all of the incoming signals and carefully differentiate reflections to understand and identify people and their positions and movement, as well as cancel out any noise," the team said.
Vayyar’s RF chip for automotive covers imaging and radar bands from 77-81GHz, with 48 transmitters and 48 receivers in a single System on Chip (SoC). Enhanced by an integrated, high-performance DSP with large internal memory, the Vayyar sensor requires no external processing power to execute complex imaging algorithms and applications.
Vayyar's SoC can output post-processed data as well as raw 3D image or point cloud format.
The company believe its sensors will open new, exciting capabilities in various markets including: smart home, security, automotive, retail and elderly care to name a few.
