Oxbotica and Navtech
announce joint product
RADAR-BASED NAVIGATION AND PERCEPTION SYSTEM TO BE LAUNCHED
IN 2020. NEIL TYLER REPORTS
Oxbotica, a specialist in vehicle autonomy,
and Navtech, a radar solutions company,
have announced the joint product
development of a radar-based navigation
and perception system to be launched in
2020.
The product and the partnership
marks an important milestone in
Oxbotica’s plans to take its software
from development towards commercial
deployment.
The multi-module localisation system (radar, vision and laser) will
NEWS RADAR-BASED
NAVIGATION
allow users to deploy autonomy in both on-road and off-road locations, whether in mines, ports
or airports and whatever the weather conditions where standard GPS or lidar is not possible.
The product will not be reliant on any external infrastructure and will be able to operate on
its own or be fused with other location services driven by GPS, lidar or laser vision as part of
Oxbotica’s modular and integrated approach.
Oxbotica has already successfully tested its proprietary algorithms in a variety of
environments and conditions as part of its Localisation module development and wider full-stack
autonomy solution. This will be twinned with Navtech’s expertise in autonomy sensors bringing
that technology to market around the world.
Commenting Ozgur Tohumcu, Oxbotica CEO, said: “This collaboration with Navtech is a key
milestone in bringing autonomy especially to off-road domains such as mines, ports, or airports
where existing lidar or GPS may not function effectively due to weather or operating conditions
such as dust, rain, or snow.”
“Despite the potential of radar very few companies have successfully developed the
necessary algorithms to use it properly. Oxbotica are leaders in this area and together with our
high-performance radars sensors we believe the resulting system will deliver a step change in
the performance available for all weather all environment localisation and perception,” said Phil
Avery, CEO of Navtech.
imec spin-off to develop next-gen AR glasses
MICLEDI Microdisplays, an imec spin-out,
has raised 4,5m euro in seed capital to
develop microLED displays for next generation
Augmented Reality (AR) glasses.
MICLEDI is looking to enable AR for
everyday personal use - smart glasses that
are small, lightweight, with long battery life,
and at reasonable cost. To make this happen,
MICLEDI is developing, what it says, is the
world smallest and brightest displays. The
key innovation behind MICLEDI is the new
integration technology for microLED on 300mm
wafers developed in collaboration with imec.
MICLEDI Microdisplays was founded by Dr.
Soeren Steudel and Dr. Alexander Mityashin,
both researchers from imec and they have
been joined by Sean Lord, an experienced
executive in the semiconductor industry, as
CEO.
“AR glasses may replace our smartphones
in the future and display technology is a key
enabler for such a transition. Today’s display
technologies cannot ful l the speci cations
needed for next generation AR glasses. At
MICLEDI we are tackling this challenge and
have developed displays that are 100x brighter
than commercial alternatives,” said Dr.
Steudel.
Voice codec capability
available to Raspberry
Pi users
CML Microcircuits has unveiled the
EV6550DHAT, a Raspberry Pi Hardware
Attached on Top (HAT) compatible evaluation
and development board that makes its
CMX655D ultra-low power voice codec
available to hobbyists, developers and product
manufacturers.
The Raspberry Pi single board computer
has become a key platform for rapid
hardware and software development and
the EV6550DHAT brings the features of the
CMX655D voice codec to the Raspberry Pi
community. It has been developed for digital
voice and sensor applications and integrates
the entire signal chain, from dual matched
digital MEMS microphone interfaces to a
1W Class D speaker driver, incorporating
decimation, ltering, signal processing and
digital gain, supported by an I2S/PCM audio
interface and SPI control interface.
CML has created the EV6550DHAT to
make evaluating and developing with the
CMX655D as accessible as possible. The
HAT is compatible with any Raspberry Pi with
a 40-pin extended GPIO connector and can
be completely powered by the Raspberry Pi,
however it also supports an external power
source if other HATs or peripherals are being
used and limiting the total power available
from the host USB interface.
“The Raspberry Pi is the perfect
platform to demonstrate the features and
capabilities of the CMX655D with little or
no development effort,” commented David
Brooke, Product Manager, CML Microcircuits.
“The EV6550DHAT is our rst HAT and the
entire team has been excited by the prospect
of bringing advanced voice codec capability to
the Pi.”
The EV6550DHAT’s open source software
is accessible via many third-party apps and
projects including GTK3+. GEANIE and GLADE.
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020 9
/www.newelectronics.co.uk