Hyundai Mobis on Thursday announced that it has made a strategic investment in Zendar, a Silicon Valley based startup with global competitiveness in high-resolution radar, called 'imaging radar.'
According to Hyundai Mobis, it is the first company to invest shares in Zendar at the corporate level.
Hyundai Mobis plans to apply its competencies in hardware design and integrated software development to Zendar's fusion radar technology.
Zendar is a start-up that was founded in 2017 by engineers who had graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in the development of imaging radars. The company is considered as having differentiated technological skills in imaging radars based on its own fusion radar algorithms.
Imaging radar is considered differentiated, next-generation radar. The data obtained from radars located in the front, back and corners of a vehicle are turned into integrated signals at the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) to create high-resolution images.
Unlike conventional radar, imaging radar uses the data generated from multiple radar sensors, significantly increasing recognition accuracy. The technology is expected to support the dissemination of autonomous driving based on radar sensors with reasonable prices and high performance comparable to that of Lidar sensors.
Sunil Thomas, Chief Business Officer, Zendar said, 'Improving automotive radar systems with the conventional approach of adding more and more antenna channels is not very practical. This new investment from Hyundai Mobis strengthens our conviction that Zendar's distributed aperture approach is the future of automotive radar, offering substantially higher performance than conventional radar systems without additional hardware cost.'
Young-bin Kim, Vice President and Head of the Planning Division, Hyundai Mobis, said, 'In addition to developing our own technologies, we're going to collaborate with global companies that have various original technologies, thereby enhancing our status as a leader of the mobility platform combining software and hardware.'
NB: Photo is representational.