Aeva partners with Audi’s AID on next generation Autonomous Driving Tech

Aeva, the company building the next-generation sensing system for autonomous vehicles, announced a partnership with AID-Autonomous Intelligent Driving GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Audi AG and the “centre of excellence” for Volkswagen Group’s autonomous driving system, to bring groundbreaking 4D LiDAR to its autonomous vehicle programme.

Aeva will develop and equip its 4D LiDAR technology as a part of AID’s new Audi e-tron development fleet vehicles in Munich, with the plan to bring autonomous driving to urban mobility services within the next few years.

“Aeva represents another important step in our goal to drive fully autonomously across urban areas within the next few years. Aeva’s 4D LiDAR technology is a clear top choice for perception with its unique combination of long range, instantaneous velocity measurements at cm/s precision and robustness to interferences in a single package,” said Alexandre Haag, AID´s CTO.

“From early on, it was crucial for us to work closely with a seasoned strategic partner that could help us showcase the impact of our 4D LiDAR’s differentiating features in unblocking the limitations of current perception solutions. Over the past year we’ve worked closely with AID & VW group engineering teams through a comprehensive validation process toward meeting the requirements of the next urban autonomous driving system,” said Mina Rezk, Aeva Co-Founder.

Unlike most conventional time-of-flight LiDAR technology – where high-power pulses of light are used and the flight time for each pulse is measured to create a 3D map of the environment – Aeva’s unique sensing technology uses continuous low-power laser to sense instant velocity of every point per frame, at ranges up to 300m. This produces a 4D map of the environment where the instant velocity information drastically enhances the detection and classification of all critical objects such as pedestrians, bicycles & vehicles at distance.

Aeva’s technology is also free from interference from other sensors or sunlight. Together, these features strengthen AID’s proprietary perception capabilities and fundamentally improve the safety of autonomous driving vehicles.

“Audi’s AID is an excellent strategic partner for Aeva. Its position as the center of excellence for autonomous driving within the world’s largest OEM has provided us with invaluable feedback to continue developing our product for mass scale. We are excited to work alongside AID toward realising a truly differentiated autonomous mobility system that is safe, simple & scalable in the next couple of years,” said Soroush Salehian, Aeva Co-Founder.