Outsight Develops 3D LiDAR-Spectrometer-on-Wheels for Automotive Applications

BusinessWire: Outsight launches its 3D Semantic Camera for autonomous driving and other industries. Outsight founders, Raul Bravo, co-founder and CEO of former company Dibotics and Cedric Hutchings, co-founder of Withings and former VP of Nokia Technologies, joined forces to create a new entity that aims to combine the software assets of Dibotics with 3D sensor technology. Together with Dibotics’ other co-founder Oliver Garcia and Scott Buchter, co-founder of Lasersec, the four have assembled a global team of top talent in San Francisco, Paris, and Helsinki to turn their vision into reality.

“We are excited to unveil our 3D Semantic Camera that brings an unprecedented solution for a vehicle to detect road hazards and prevent accidents.” - Cedric Hutchings, CEO and Co-founder of Outsight.

Outsight's 3D Semantic Camera is said to be able to bring Full Situation Awareness and new levels of safety/reliability for currently man-controlled machines like Level 1- 3 ADAS, Construction/Mining equipment, Helicopters, etc, but also accelerate the emergence of fully automated Smart Machines like Level 4- 5 Self Driving Cars, Robots, Drones, Autonomous flying taxis etc.

"Our 3D Semantic Camera is not only able to tackle current driving safety problems , but bring driving safety to new levels. With being able to unveil the full reality of the world by providing information that was previously invisible, we at Outsight are convinced that a whole new world of applications will be unleashed. This is just the beginning." - Raul Bravo, President and Co-founder of Outsight.

The technology is the very first of its kind to be intended to provide Full Situation Awareness in a single device. It’s a mass-producible, “all in one solution” technology with the ability to simultaneously perceive and comprehend the environment from hundreds of meters, including the key chemical composition of objects (Skin, Cotton, Ice, Snow, Plastic, Metal, Wood...).

This is partly made possible through the development of a low powered, long range and eye-safe broadband laser that allows for material composition to be identified through active hyperspectral analysis. Combined with its 3D SLAM on Chip capability (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), Outsight's technology is able to unveil the Full Reality of the world in real-time. Outsight's 3D Semantic Camera is capable of providing actionable information and object classification through the onboard SoC that does not rely on “Machine Learning”, resulting in lower power consumption and bandwidth needed. This new approach eliminates the need for massive data sets for training and the guesswork is eliminated through actually “measuring” the objects. Being able to determine the material of an object adds a new level of confidence to determine what the camera is actually seeing.

It’s able to not only see and measure, but comprehend the world, as it provides the position, the size and the full velocity of all moving objects in its surroundings, providing valuable information for path planning and decision making. The 3D Semantic Camera can provide important information regarding road conditions and can, for example, identify black ice and other hazardous road conditions. This feature is vital for safety in ADAS systems for example. The system can also quickly identify pedestrians and bicyclists through its material identification capabilities.

Outsight has already started joint development programs with key OEMs and Tier1 providers in Automotive, Aeronautics and Security-Surveillance markets and will progressively open the technology to other partners in Q1-2020.

Thanks to JB for the info!