Former Apple Engineers Working on New Eyes for Driverless Cars
- 7 years ago
Former Apple Engineers Working on New Eyes for Driverless Cars
“It’s measuring different velocities.”
Messrs. Salehian and Rezk are the founders of a new Silicon Valley start-up called Aeva,
and their small black device is designed for self-driving cars.
Today’s driverless cars under development at companies like General Motors, Toyota, Uber
and the Google spinoff Waymo track their surroundings using a wide variety of sensors, including cameras, radar, GPS antennas and lidar (short for “light detection and ranging”) devices that measure distances using pulses of light.
“It’s a whole different animal.”
Founded in January and funded by the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Lux Capital, among others, Aeva joins a widespread effort to build more effective sensors for autonomous vehicles, a trend
that extends from start-ups like Luminar, Echodyne and Metawave to established hardware makers like the German multinational Robert Bosch.
But despite this wide array of hardware — which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per vehicle — even
the best autonomous vehicles still have trouble in so many situations that humans can navigate with ease.
Mr. Rezk is an engineer who designed optical hardware for Nikon,
and presumably, he was among those who handled optical sensors for Apple’s driverless car project, though he and Mr. Salehian declined to say which “special project” they worked on at the company.
Aeva’s prototype — a breed of lidar that measures distances more accurately and also captures speed — aims to fill several of these sizable holes.
“It’s measuring different velocities.”
Messrs. Salehian and Rezk are the founders of a new Silicon Valley start-up called Aeva,
and their small black device is designed for self-driving cars.
Today’s driverless cars under development at companies like General Motors, Toyota, Uber
and the Google spinoff Waymo track their surroundings using a wide variety of sensors, including cameras, radar, GPS antennas and lidar (short for “light detection and ranging”) devices that measure distances using pulses of light.
“It’s a whole different animal.”
Founded in January and funded by the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Lux Capital, among others, Aeva joins a widespread effort to build more effective sensors for autonomous vehicles, a trend
that extends from start-ups like Luminar, Echodyne and Metawave to established hardware makers like the German multinational Robert Bosch.
But despite this wide array of hardware — which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per vehicle — even
the best autonomous vehicles still have trouble in so many situations that humans can navigate with ease.
Mr. Rezk is an engineer who designed optical hardware for Nikon,
and presumably, he was among those who handled optical sensors for Apple’s driverless car project, though he and Mr. Salehian declined to say which “special project” they worked on at the company.
Aeva’s prototype — a breed of lidar that measures distances more accurately and also captures speed — aims to fill several of these sizable holes.