Outsight has unveiled its 3D semantic camera that takes the perception and understanding of the world to new levels for autonomous driving and other industries.
Outsight founders Raul Bravo, co-founder and CEO of the former company Dibotics, and Cedric Hutchings, co-founder of Withings and former vice president of Nokia Technologies, have joined forces to create a new company that aims to combine Dibotics' software assets with a revolutionary new 3D sensor technology.
Together with Dibotics' other co-founder, Oliver Garcia, and Scott Buchter, co-founder of Lasersec, they have assembled a global team of talent.
“Mobility is evolving rapidly, with new ways of traveling emerging every day. In the United States alone, approximately 4 million people are seriously injured in traffic accidents each year. At Outsight, we believe in building safer mobility by making vehicles much smarter. We are excited to introduce our 3D semantic camera, which provides an unprecedented solution for a vehicle to detect hazards on the road and prevent accidents,” said Cedric Hutchings, CEO and co-founder of Outsight.
Outsight's 3D semantic camera will not only be able to provide complete situational awareness and new levels of safety/reliability for currently human-controlled machines such as Level 1-3 ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), construction/mining equipment, helicopters, etc., but will also accelerate the emergence of fully automated intelligent machines such as Level 4-5 autonomous cars, robots, drones, autonomous flying taxis, etc.
This technology is the first of its kind designed to provide comprehensive situational awareness in a single device. It is a mass-produced, "all-in-one solution" capable of simultaneously perceiving and understanding the environment from hundreds of meters away, including the key chemical composition of objects (skin, cotton, ice, snow, plastic, metal, wood, etc.).
This is made possible in part by the development of a low-power, long-range, eye-safe broadband laser that enables material composition to be identified through active hyperspectral analysis. Combined with its 3D SLAM on Chip® (simultaneous localization and mapping) capability, Outsight's technology can reveal the complete reality of the world in real time.
Outsight's 3D semantic camera is capable of providing actionable information and object classification through its integrated SoC (system on a chip) without relying on machine learning, resulting in lower power consumption and bandwidth requirements.
Being able to determine an object's material adds a new level of confidence in ascertaining what the camera is actually seeing.
Not only can it see and measure, but it can also understand the world, as it provides the position, size, and full speed of all moving objects in its environment, providing valuable information for route planning and decision making.
The 3D semantic camera can provide important information about road conditions and can, for example, identify ice and other hazardous road hazards. This feature is vital for safety in ADAS systems, for instance. The system can also quickly identify pedestrians and cyclists through its material identification capabilities.
Outsight has already begun joint development programs with key OEMs and Tier1 suppliers in the Automotive, Aerospace and Security Surveillance markets, and will progressively open the technology to other partners in Q1-2020.
