Aeva and Sick have announced a strategic multi-year collaboration to bring Aeva’s FMCW 4D lidar to a variety of industrial applications including long-range sensing.
“We are pleased to partner with Aeva and work closely together to bring its FMCW technology to high performance industrial sensing applications,” said Dr. Niels Syassen, Member of the Executive Board responsible for Technology and Digitization at Sick. “We are convinced that their unique approach to FMCW technology, which includes instant velocity detection and long-range performance, will provide new opportunities for us and our customers in a variety of industrial sensing applications where traditional time of flight lidar technologies are challenged”.
Aeva says their FMCW 4D lidar provides unique perception advantages over the likes of cameras and legacy 3D lidar sensors—better dynamic range performance to perceive low and high reflectivity targets within the same measurement without edge effects, for example, allowing automated machinery to transition easily from indoor to outdoor operation. They say their 4D lidar is immune to blooming and ghosting from retroreflectors, so equipped machines will have clear perception when highly reflective objects such as safety vests; cones, and tape are in the field of view of the sensor, so low- and high-reflectance objects can both be easily detected.
Aeva CEO and cofounder Soroush Salehian says “Sick is one of the foremost leaders in industrial sensing solutions and today’s partnership is a major step forward for the advancement of high performance and reliable FMCW-based sensing across a broad set of industrial applications. This strategic collaboration is a testament to the industry-leading performance and versatility of our unique 4D lidar technology for scaled deployment in industrial applications”.
DVN comment
Through this collaboration with Sick, Aeva will take advantage of many industrial sensing applications still deployed by their new partner. Until now lidar technologies operated by Sick are mainly based on legacy pulsed lidars. The adoption of FMCW technology will create a new scope for Sick’s applications and in parallel expand the market of Aeva’s products. Although in general industrial applications do not involve big volumes, this cooperation can be a stepstone to gather production and field experience for their FMCW lidar. A solid data base of production records and reliability data for FMCW technology in the industrial field can help to pave the way to automotive series applications.