Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2022 - 21

Sensors
even when faced with RGB infrared. The chip is capable
of higher resolution processing of up to 5 megapixels
and features integrated cybersecurity.
Regarding cyber, Fowler highlighted concerns
including fake and/or counterfeit sensors or ASIC chips
installed in vehicles by hackers, and RFI jamming.
" Everybody wants cybersecurity but nobody wants to
pay for the computing, " he stated.
Woodside's Burger feast
No automotive tech conference is complete without
insights from market analysts. In the case of AutoSens
2022, the analyst was Rudy Burger from Woodside
Capital. His compelling presentation included the
following nuggets:
* As of May 2022, there were 238 companies
operating, or claiming to operate, in the automotive
perception space
* " Expectations of the corporate investors that are
OEM-affiliated [i.e., GM Ventures] are rising
steadily each year. They want to see pre-production
units " before investing in new startup
tech companies, Burger noted. And the VCs
also are getting tougher to raise capital in the
sensor space
*
" There are about 100 lidar 'companies' now. But
consolidation is underway and I expect that
total to be reduced to about five companies
* " It is now very difficult to get a new lidar
company funded unless they've got really
special technology, " he said; 2016 was the
peak year for lidar startups (14), declining to
4 startups in 2018 and only one in 2021
* The top four best-funded automotive perception
companies are Chinese
* " I see very little correlation between the amount
of capital a company raises and their eventual
commercial success "
Bright Way shares its 'Visdom'
Israel-based Bright Way Vision was founded in 2011
as a spinoff from Elbit Systems, a key defense-tech
company. At AutoSens, Bright Way co-founder and
executive VP Eyal Levi, and the company's head of
business development Meny Benady, shared their
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
AutoSens co-founder Eyal Levi (left) and biz-dev boss Meny Benadi shared
their 'Visdom' at AutoSens.
" Visdom " with SAE Media about what they claim is the
world's first automotive night and all-weather camera
system (called Visdom).
" We've spent a lot of time with the biggest global
OEMs, all of whom tell us that low-vision and extreme
weather driving scenarios are the greatest challenges
in developing their automated-driving systems, " Levi
said. " They must have camera systems that deliver
outstanding performance day, night, and in all
weather conditions, along with sensor redundancy.
And it must be low cost. "
The Visdom product is a CMOS-based all-weather
vision system powered by Bright Way's patented
GatedVision technology. Visdom uses Class-1 (invisible
to the naked eye) near-infrared (NIR) illumination
pulses to generate 'slices' of the space ahead of
the camera lens, while thousands of synchronized
micro-exposures of the gated camera build a complete,
continuous, illuminated image of the road ahead.
The compact Visdom sensor unit can be mounted
behind the windshield or integrated into headlamp
assemblies. It is available in three configurations for
passenger vehicles, trucks, light trains, buses and
robotaxis. Levi noted that Visdom delivers a uniform
illuminated range of up to 300 m (984 ft.), horizontal
FoV from 16 to 60 degrees, and resolution up to 2M
pixels. The high resolution of the images created by
GatedVision sets Visdom apart from typical automotive
cameras that struggle to collect images in poor
visibility conditions, Levi said. Visdom is currently in
serial production, he said. ■
July 2022 21
Lindsay Brooke
Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2022

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