Baraja and Tier IV collaborate to create the future of autonomous vehicle sensing

New sensor suite combines best-in-class HDR cameras and LiDAR to enable the future of autonomous vehicles

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Feb 02, 2022, 08:00 ET

DETROIT, Feb. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Baraja, creator of the breakthrough Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology for autonomous vehicles, and Tier IV, an open-source autonomous driving leader, have announced a new collaboration to research and develop a new software-defined sensor suite combining best-in-class LiDAR and HDR cameras to enable the future of autonomous vehicles.

Joining forces in the development of this new system for the first time, the suite will bring together Baraja's leading Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology with Tier IV's sensor fusion software and HDR cameras, creating a perception solution designed to provide optimal performance in the widest possible range of situations and environments for autonomous vehicles. The two companies will collaborate on building a reference unit that will form the basis of future commercial product opportunities with automotive OEMs.

The automotive-grade HDR cameras — which provide high dynamic range, LED flicker mitigation, and on-board lens distortion correction — provide a high-quality, 2D representation of the scene, while Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR provides a high-definition, 3D pointcloud that enables greater density of data. Together with Tier IV's sensor fusion software, the resulting data will provide a rich, accurate representation of the physical world for automotive perception algorithms that will enable autonomous vehicles to make better decisions, faster in real-time.

Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR is the same technology platform underpinning Spectrum HD, Baraja's new breakthrough LiDAR platform. With Spectrum-Scan™ Tier IV will be able to access unrivaled LiDAR technology to ensure its sensor fusion suite will not only be able to adapt to different driving environment scenarios, but also provide previously unseen benefits in assisting hardware integration into vehicles. This includes the ability to foveate reliably, detect and focus on objects in the field of view, and dynamically change point density on the fly.

"We are excited to work with Tier IV as we embark on this journey to enable true autonomous vehicle technology for consumers," said Federico Collarte, Founder and CEO of Baraja." With this combined solution, we'll be able to provide a dynamic and configurable feature system that can be adopted by a broader range of vehicles as they move to Level 2+ autonomy and beyond."

Baraja and Tier IV are committed to enabling the future of autonomous driving for consumers and this agreement will help move that future closer. The features and benefits of this next-generation offering will provide enhanced perception ability and enable greater reliability for long-range detection and object classification while handling edge cases, especially under more extreme environments such as heavy rain and fog.

"Baraja's Spectrum-Scan™ technology with our powerful sensor fusion software will create the perfect combination of high-definition sensors needed to make autonomous driving a reality for more people." said Shinpei Kato, Founder and CTO of Tier IV, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Autoware Foundation. "We are looking forward to providing an enhanced Autoware-based reference design solution to the industry through this work."

A full press kit can be viewed here.

About Baraja
Baraja is building the future of LiDAR to enable the autonomous future. With its revolutionary Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology, Baraja gives leading automotive companies a solid-state system in the fast axis that sets a new benchmark in precision and reliability.

Baraja was founded in 2016 by engineers Federico Collarte and Cibby Pulikkaseril, who discovered a way to use the telecommunications industry's proven photonics technology to solve the problems faced by legacy LiDAR. Baraja is backed by Sequoia, Blackbird Ventures, Hitachi Construction Machinery and Main Sequence.

About Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR
Baraja's revolutionary Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR completely rethinks the way autonomous vehicles see the world around them. Built on proven optical and photonics technologies from the telecommunications industry, Spectrum-Scan™ precisely steers infrared lasers through prism-like optics in the sensor, rapidly switching the laser's wavelength to send each color of light in a different direction — the same way optic fiber technology works. The resulting pointclouds are extremely high-resolution and immune to interference from other light sources and LiDAR systems. Baraja Spectrum-Scan™ operates on the 1550 nm infrared spectrum, making it safe for human eyes, and creates crystal-clear pointclouds with a high-resolution 2000-channel vertical axis and responsive focus to effectively detect objects at ranges of more than 250 meters.

About Tier IV
Tier IV, a deep-tech startup based in Japan, is the creator of Autoware, the world's first open-source software for autonomous driving, and provides full-stack solutions for the commercialization of intelligent vehicles based on the Autoware-defined Autonomous Driving Kit (ADK) running on multiple platforms.

As a founding member of the Autoware Foundation, Tier IV is dedicated to sharing technology with ecosystem partners for safe intelligent vehicles that will benefit all of society. Our aim is to empower individuals and organizations to overcome barriers of time and space to collectively make autonomous vehicles a reality. Learn more at https://tier4.jp/en/ and follow us @tier_iv_japan.

SOURCE Baraja