September 21, 2018—The investment arms of BMW and the Chinese search technology giant, Baidu, along with a large original equipment manufacturer for the auto industry and a slew of technology investors, have all come together to back Lunewave, a startup developing new sensor technologies for autonomous vehicles, reported TechCrunch.
The $5 million seed round, which the company just closed, will serve as a launching pad to get to market its novel radar technology, based on the concept of a Luneburg antenna, according to the report.
First developed in the 1940s, Lunewave’s spin on the antenna technology involves leveraging 3D printing to create new architectures that enable more powerful antennas with greater range and accuracy than the sensing technologies currently on the market, according to the company’s chief executive John Xin.
Lunewave is focused on the eyes of the vehicle, according to TechCrunch. Currently, autonomous technologies rely on a few different sensing systems. There are LiDAR technologies, which use lasers to illuminate a target and measure the reflected pulses with a sensor; camera technologies; and radar, which uses electromagnetic waves to detect objects.
The Lunewave technology can detect more objects in a wider field of view and at greater distances than existing Lidar technologies because of the distance constraints on laser technologies.
