Aeva has announced a broad strategic collaboration with LG Innotek, which includes a planned investment of up to approximately $50m by LG Innotek.
The multifaceted collaboration is to assist Aeva in accelerating the commercialization of its Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) perception platform across a wide range of industries, as well as various applications, including automotive, industrial automation, robotics and consumer devices.
“The ultimate goal of this partnership is for LG Innotek and Aeva to grow together as key players leading the next-generation lidar market through a long-term technology partnership that goes beyond the supply of products,” said Hyuksoo Moon, CEO of LG Innotek. He added, “Starting with this collaboration with Aeva, LG Innotek will continue to expand its lidar product line-up, which delivers differentiated customer value, and further solidify its position in the global market as a total mobility solution provider for the future.”
Accelerating FMCW perception into physical AI
The collaboration will support the adoption of Aeva’s FMCW-based perception platform in applications involving Physical AI. Physical AI is a system that uses sensors, processing hardware and AI software to interact with the physical world in real time. The platform includes an FMCW lidar-on-chip sensor, a custom system-on-chip (SoC) and perception software. By combining this technology with LG Innotek’s global manufacturing capabilities and industry presence, the companies plan to develop new sensing and perception solutions, with an initial focus on the automotive sector.
The collaboration will start in the automotive sector, where LG Innotek will manufacture Aeva’s Atlas Ultra 4D lidar sensor. This includes Aeva’s development program with a top 10 global passenger OEM for multiple vehicle models across the OEM’s global production platform.
“LG Innotek is a global leader in cutting-edge technology components and their decision to collaborate with Aeva underscores the growing recognition of FMCW as the future of sensing and perception technology,” said Soroush Salehian, co-founder and CEO at Aeva. “Together, we see a tremendous opportunity to bring Aeva’s perception platform to a wide range of applications – wherever machines need to perceive and understand their surroundings. By leveraging the unique capabilities of FMCW sensing and proprietary software, we can help machines see with greater precision and enable faster, safer and more intelligent decision-making across industries.”
In related news, Tier IV, which supplies open-source software for autonomous driving, recently developed an end-to-end architecture for Level 4+ autonomy, where no human intervention is present – even in previously unencountered scenarios