Automotive Engineering - December 2023 - 28

PROVIZIO
eyes safety
with radar,
not lidar
An example image using
data taken from Provizio's
" super-resolution " radar sensor.
Irish sensors are smiling
Provizio is headquartered in Limerick, Ireland and has offices in North
Ireland and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In late 2022, Provizio signed a
deal with micromobility company Voi to test 5D perception on Voi's
scooters. Alongside potential OEM and Tier 1 partnerships he couldn't
discuss, Mitrev said Provizio also has a partnership with Jaguar Land
Rover, supporting tests at a future mobility campus in Ireland.
These real-world tests involve collecting data from lidar to train the
new radar AI. Provizio synchronizes the lidar and radar sensors, then
extracts value from the lidar data at training time, embedding it into
the neural net and teaching the neural networks based on these data
streams. Imagine lidar as an old professor teaching a young radar
sensor a few things, but sooner or later, the student - Provizio's radar
- won't need the teacher anymore.
" We lean fully towards a lidar-less path, " he said. " Lidars should not
be involved, even in [SAE Level 5] vehicles. They're not necessary. "
The same is not true for cameras. To understand semantic information
such as traffic signs, Provizio's system uses cameras to augment
the radar data.
" Provizio is a perception company, first of all, " Mitrev said. " We are
not a radar company. We're not a car manufacturer. We're a perception
company, we have this radar and we have a perception platform
that fuses radars and cameras and provides this low-cost solution. "
Provizio was founded by Barry Lunn following the acquisition of
his company Arralis, which focused on millimeter-wave communication
technology for satellite communications and aerospace markets.
Provizio's radar technology grew out of radar work Lunn was familiar
with in the aerospace industry. Instead of a commercial, off-the-shelf
radar unit, Provizio is " redefining radars, " Mitrev said, by adding AI
neural networks to the radar GPUs so all critical decisions can be
made on the radar itself with less than five milliseconds latency to
make those decisions. He said Provizio's goal for its 5D radar is to see
up to 600 m (1969 feet) in 360 degrees in all weather conditions.
" Once we have this 5D perception, there is literally no reason to
build any other system that will do ADAS or autonomy, " he said, add28
December 2023
Dane Mitrev, machine learning engineer at Provizio.
ing that accident prevention is " something tangible
that we can solve in the next one, three-to-five, years. "
At CES 2023, Provizio said it planned to deliver the
first of its 5D Perception platforms by 2025. Provizio's
commercial strategy relies on licensing its technology
to Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs. Once better sensors are
in more vehicles that accurately understand the world
around them, that's when we can start letting vehicles
drive themselves, Mitrev said.
" The end goal is mass adoption, to have our 5D perception
on all vehicles or a lot of vehicles worldwide,
then we bring down the road deaths, " he said. " We
believe that this is the right path. The industry has taken
this the other way around. [Starting by building a
self-driving car] is just too complex, let alone with
only cameras, as some companies claim. "
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
FROM TOP: PROVIZIO; SEBASTIAN BLANCO
Automotive Engineering - December 2023

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