Vehicle autonomy company Oxbotica and radar specialist Navtech have announced their joint development of a radar-based navigation and perception system to be launched in 2020.
The product is said to represent the latest advancement in radar-based technology. The partnership between the two companies, both based around Oxford, UK, is a milestone in Oxbotica’s plans to take its software from development toward commercial deployment.
The multi-module localization system (radar, vision and laser) enables customers 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. As such, the Oxbotica and Navtech product will not be reliant on any external infrastructure. It can 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 says that it has already successfully tested its proprietary algorithms in a variety of environments and conditions as part of its Localization module development and wider full-stack autonomy solution.
Ozgur Tohumcu, Oxbotica CEO, added, “Navtech is a fantastic partner with an unbeatable track record of producing autonomy sensors and powering off-road autonomy around the world for nearly two decades. Incoming demand from customers and our own market research proves that there will be wide applications of this product, addressing both on-road and off-road deployments.”
Phil Avery, CEO of Navtech, said, “Navtech is delighted to be working with Oxbotica on this project. Despite the potential of radar, very few companies have successfully developed the necessary algorithms to use it properly. Oxbotica is a world leader in this area and together with our high-performance radar sensors, we believe that the resulting system will deliver a step change in the performance available for all-weather, all-environment localization and perception. This is crucial for automation in more challenging environments such as mines and ports.”