Echodyne steers its high-tech radar beam on autonomous cars with EchoDrive
Echodyne set the radar industry on its ear when it debuted its pocket-sized yet hyper-capable radar unit for drones and aircraft. But these days all the action is in autonomous vehicles — so they reinvented their technology to make a unique sensor that doesn’t just see things but can communicate intelligently with the AI behind the wheel.
EchoDrive, the company’s new product, is aimed squarely at AVs, looking to complement lidar and cameras with automotive radar that’s as smart as you need it to be.
The chief innovation at Echodyne is the use of metamaterials, or highly engineered surfaces, to create a radar unit that can direct its beam quickly and efficiently anywhere in its field of view. That means that it can scan the whole horizon quickly, or repeatedly play the beam over a single object to collect more detail, or anything in between, or all three at once for that matter, with no moving parts and little power.