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Hyundai Mobis announced recently that it has made a strategic investment in Zendar, a Silicon Valley-based startup with global competitiveness in high-resolution radar called “imaging radar”. Hyundai Mobis is the first company to invest shares in Zendar at the corporate level.

Imaging radar is regarded as differentiated, next-generation radar. 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 the conventional radar, imaging radar uses the data generated from multiple radar sensors, which can significantly increase recognition accuracy. The technology is expected to support the dissemination of autonomous driving on the basis of radar sensors with reasonable prices and high performance comparable to that of lidar sensors.

Zendar is a startup that was founded in 2017 by engineers who had graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, specialising 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.

Sunil Thomas, Chief Business Officer at 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”.

Hyundai Mobis plans to apply its competencies in hardware design and integrated software development to Zendar’s fusion radar technology.

“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”, said Young-bin Kim, Vice President and Head of the Planning Division at Hyundai Mobis.

Hyundai Mobis has autonomous driving sensor technologies, such as cameras, radars and lidars and is collaborating with Velodyne and Motional (joint venture with Aptiv) to enhance related technologies.

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