With the rapid evolution of autonomous driving, advanced sensing technologies are coming on board much faster than expected. As an “upgraded” version of the traditional in-vehicle millimeter wave radar, 4D imaging radar is rapidly catching up with LIDAR and becoming another important direction used by the industry to optimize intelligent driving perception systems.
Pioneering layout: five years of imaging radar technology and data accumulation
When the global radar technology is focused on 4D imaging radar, as early as 2017, Mignon Technology has invested in research and development, becoming the earliest practitioner to enter 4D imaging radar, and successfully promoted the commercialization of 4D imaging radar. 2019, Mignon released the world’s first 4D imaging radar O-79 4D, and reached a fixed cooperation and bulk supply with Bobcat, the world’s number one compact mechanical vehicle manufacturer, to achieve a breakthrough in smart driving in the construction vehicle industry through high-performance radar sensing technology. ) reached a fixed point of cooperation and bulk supply, through high-performance radar perception technology, to achieve a smart driving breakthrough in the construction vehicle industry.
Facing the difficult intelligent driving needs of special vehicles with an accident rate of more than 80%, Wooden Cow has optimized the multi-objective and highly accurate point cloud imaging recognition capability under the very complex environment of construction and low-speed operation of vehicles, from improving the main processor performance and algorithm capability to optimizing the antenna performance, quantity and array arrangement, reducing the accident rate to nearly zero and completing the 4D radar-based We have completed the full-stack integration and application of intelligent driving based on 4D radar, from point cloud imaging to environment perception.
Based on the product cooperation and technology foundation, Doosan Bobcat completed its strategic investment in Wooden Cow Technology in 2020, which is the first and only foreign investment by Bobcat in more than 70 years of company history, and Wooden Cow has become its only global radar supplier with the strategic significance of high performance millimeter wave radar to the whole intelligent driving industry.
Breakthrough again: the fifth dimension of imaging radar “micro-motion”
In five years of 4D imaging radar market layout and development, Mignon not only accumulated a large amount of scene data, but also gave full play to the radar as a sensor scene recognition and perception capabilities, in the 4D dimension of distance, speed, orientation and angle detection, and added the “micro-doppler” dimension of measurement The micro-doppler information can be used to enhance the data quality, imaging effect and scene recognition capability of the radar by strengthening the performance of target recognition and AI algorithm.
Micro-Doppler refers to the dynamics of an object that has micro-motion in addition to overall motion, which is characterized by the vibration of moving or additional moving parts. For example, the radar echo reflected by the torso movement during human walking contains Doppler information in the traditional sense, while the radar echo of leg and arm swing contains micro-Doppler information.
Since the micro-Doppler information is unique between different targets, the detection of such tiny movements becomes a powerful feature for target classification, which is the key to 5D radar technology empowering millimeter wave radar.
Emerging: 5D radar technology in golf sports
Wooden Cow’s use of 5D radar technology has become quite sophisticated, as can be seen from the application in the golf field. With the micro-motion dimension of 5D radar technology, for such a small target as a golf ball, the radar can also achieve long-distance dynamic tracking of more than 300 yards, for the three different motion states of the ball being hit, to the air flight trajectory, and then to the landing and rolling, it can accurately sense 16 swing and ball striking data: club head speed, ball striking efficiency, swing path, club face angle, club face to path, angle of attack, height, takeoff angle, horizontal angle, distance of flight, total distance, backspin, spin axis, ball speed, distance off-side of landing point and distance off-side of stopping point.
It is because of such detailed data feedback that Full Swing KIT golf radar has been used by many international sports stars such as Tiger Woods and Joan Ram since its introduction in 2021, and has even been favored by golf courses, driving ranges, golf tournament organizers and coaches worldwide.
A further chapter: the value of 5D radar technology applications in the automotive field
The technology is always the same, but the difference is the product and the scene. Especially in the field of in-vehicle radar, in order to solve the safety problems such as unnecessary ghost brakes and false alarms with cost-effective solutions, Wooden Cow Technology has applied 5D radar technology to L2 to L3+ in-vehicle radar products, and has been designated by domestic new energy vehicle projects.
In the direction of high performance radar technology, Wooden Cow’s third generation imaging radar I-79 4D adopts new array technology and Flash Radar, which can realize synchronous real-time information sending, ensure high resolution and high density point cloud information at both short and medium distance and 350m long distance, as well as stronger robustness than LIDAR.
Wooden Cow’s corner radar T79 and front radar K77 can also provide high-precision feedback information by detecting subtle changes in the surrounding targets, and have more outstanding performance in target tracking and target classification, such as vehicle identification and classification for wheel speed, determining whether it is a slow vehicle or a stationary vehicle, and judging whether it is a pedestrian swing arm to determine whether it is crossing, etc., which significantly reduces the false alarm rate and missed alarm rate, allowing drivers to be more This allows drivers to enjoy the fun of intelligent driving in a safer and more relaxed manner.
In order to promote the development of the smart driving industry, in 2019 Wooden Cow Technology announced that it had open-sourced the radar test code based on the ROS platform, which was developed and completed by its team independently on Github. It is now cited by a large number of radar and smart driving companies and has become an industry standard.
Since its establishment in 2015, the Chinese and American team of Wooden Cow Technology has been continuously innovating and breaking through the ceiling of millimeter wave radar technology and applications, leading the global civil radar trend all the way from 3D sensing, 4D imaging and then to today’s 5D radar technology, not only proving the sensing capability of radar as a high-performance sensor, but also successfully applying the technology to multiple scenarios and advancing the commercialization of various industries to the ground. Step into the millimeter wave radar 3.0 era and open up more commercial value for the application field of civil radar!
