Hyundai Motor Company’s corporate venturing and open innovation business Hyundai CRADLE has decided to invest Metawave to facilitate the development of intelligent radars for autonomous vehicles.

Metawave utilises adaptive metamaterials and artificial intelligence (AI) to create these smart radars.

Hyundai is also currently assessing the feasibility of deploying Metawave’s high-performance radar capable of 3D imaging for future autonomous platforms.

Hyundai CRADLE vice-president John Suh said: “Next-generation radar technology can use advanced algorithms for object detection and classification.

“A new radar system that can increase resolution and accuracy with an AI engine will be a disruptive technology.”

An autonomous car utilises three types of sensors- camera, LiDAR and radar as its perception system. The camera can see objects within 50m, while the LiDAR can indentify objects even from a distance of 150m.

“Next-generation radar technology can use advanced algorithms for object detection and classification.”

However, the effectiveness of these two sensors is affected on dirty roads and bad weather conditions.

The third sensor, radar, is capable of operating at a lower frequency and can identify objects at larger ranges in all weather and driving conditions.

The company intends to address the limited effectiveness of conventional radars that cannot handle wide angles at long ranges, as well as require several antennas to send complex digital signals.

Metawave’s advanced radar platform, WARLORD, is equipped with one antenna and is equipped to run the complex digital signals.

The antenna shapes and steers the beam in all directions, while the solution’s deep learning engines and AI algorithms can detect and recognise objects swiftly sending a 4D point cloud to the sensor fusion.

Metawave CEO Maha Achour said: “The investment by Hyundai represents another key company milestone and further proof of our rapid momentum as we bring WARLORD long-range radar with imaging and AI capabilities to autonomous vehicles.”