Intel's semiconductor expertise, especially in the area of silicon photonics, plays an important role in this. Mobileye plans to integrate active and passive laser elements on a silicon chip. Shashua has high hopes for this lidar SoC, which should be ready for series production from around 2025. "We call this a photonic integrated circuit. It has a total of 184 vertical lines that are moved by optics. This development is something very special and gives Intel a significant advantage in making these lidar systems," the Mobileye top manager said.
Mobileye's mapping technology also plays an important role: cars equipped with the company's technology also act as land surveyors by feeding their position and environment data into a cloud database. In this way, they record eight million kilometres of road - per day. In total, the Mobileye cars are said to have recorded almost one billion road kilometres by now. The technology is currently installed in just under one million vehicles. In contrast to other approaches such as Google or Here, semantic data is also taken into account, the company says. This is of particular importance for autonomous driving, as it allows the environment to be understood and put into context.
To prove the scalability of mapping for autonomous driving, Mobileye plans to launch test drives with autonomous vehicles in four other countries. The company will provide local teams with the vehicles they need. It is not necessary to send specialised engineers; after appropriate safety training, the vehicles are already ready for use. This approach was used in 2020 to put autonomous vehicles on the road in Munich and Detroit in just a few days.
More information: www.mobileye.com
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