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Decisive Battle City NOA: Low Cost and High Performance, Try 4D Millimeter Wave Radar Muniu Technology muniutech Muniu Technology muniutech WeChat ID muniutech Function Introduction Muniu Technology is a global provider of millimeter wave radar and intelligent sensing solutions, founded in 2015, with the concurrent establishment of the US subsidiary Ainstein. Headquartered in Beijing with R&D or production bases in Qingdao, Shanghai, Kansas (USA) and Boston, the company is committed to providing global customers with more reliable, accurate, and efficient millimeter wave radar products and solutions. The following article is from Shidao, author Shidao. Shidao. Exploring the Way of Survival in the Business Empire. 1. Popular 4D Millimeter Wave Radar 2. Low Cost, High Performance 3. Initial Winners, Accelerating the Popularization of High-speed/City NOA Produced by: Shidao EV Team Header Image: AI Generated ‘On the current table, if you only have the card of electrification without preparation for intelligence and ecology, car companies will eventually face a reshuffle,’ pointed out Jia Ke, chairman of the China Automotive Blue Book Forum, sharply addressing the new anxiety faced by car companies. How to win the intelligence throne? In 2023, Chinese car companies are all eyeing City NOA. NOA (Navigate on Autopilot), i.e., autonomous assisted navigation driving, is a crucial step in the industrial evolution from basic L2 to L3; City NOA (L2.9), i.e., NOA in urban scenarios, ‘entering the city’ is a necessary stage for car companies to step into higher-level autonomous driving. Ideally, you only need to input the destination, and the car can automatically navigate through the urban jungle, complete lane changes, overtaking, waiting for traffic lights, yielding to pedestrians, and a series of ‘driving test’ operations, achieving a much higher difficulty than the previously highway NOA (L2+). Therefore, urban NOA has extremely high requirements for the ‘eyes’ of a car – the new generation of sensors, which must have high performance and high precision, able to distinguish between stationary and moving objects, high and low objects in the driving environment, providing accurate assessability; at the same time, it also needs to have all-weather anti-interference capability, able to drive in rain, snow, and fog, solving exceptional cases (Corner cases) etc. More importantly, the new generation of sensors must be just around the corner, able to rapidly scale up, and it’s best to solve high-speed/urban NOA for cars under 200,000 yuan, making it affordable for everyone. Compared to laser radars which often cost nearly ten thousand yuan and in-car cameras that frequently ‘cannot see clearly’, 4D millimeter wave radar, which has both low cost and high performance, is becoming the best option for the new generation of sensors for realizing urban NOA. 1 Popular 4D Millimeter Wave Radar In just four months, two companies have been reported to ‘show love’ for 4D millimeter wave radar. The first one, the world’s largest automotive supply chain enterprise – Bosch. In July this year, a spokesman for Bosch confirmed: ‘Considering the complexity of the technology and the time needed for market promotion, we will no longer invest more funds into the hardware development of laser radar.’ Simply put, laser radar is too expensive, and car companies are unwilling to use it after manufacturing. In contrast, Bosch plans to transfer technology and investment to other sensors, namely 4D millimeter wave radar. It is reported that as early as August last year, Bosch reached an agreement with the Swedish innovative RF antenna technology company (GapWaves) to jointly develop and produce millimeter wave radar antennas that meet automotive high-resolution requirements. Unlike Bosch’s ‘public expression of love’, a domestic listed company, the leader in the front-loading mass production scale of global laser radar delivery – HS Technology, is ‘secretly flirting’ with 4D millimeter wave radar. In August this year, the 4D imaging radar startup – Outu Technology announced the completion of seed round financing (several million dollars), and one of the individual shareholders turned out to be the CEO and founder of HS Technology. Is laser radar no longer attractive? At least capital is becoming cautious. On the one hand, because the performance of laser radar in the capital market is a bit like a ‘black hole’. Industry giants Ibeo, Quanergy Systems, as well as Velodyne, Luminar, Innoviz, etc., some have filed for bankruptcy while others are in poor business condition; on the other hand, the capital market nowadays does not focus on some relatively distant tracks, lacking patience to wait for ultrasonic radar or other passive sensors to tell a story about the future. This has led to the ‘near at hand’ 4D millimeter wave radar being favored by capital. In the first half of this year, at least 6 companies focusing on 4D millimeter wave radars have received financing. For instance, in February this year, the industry leader Muniu Technology announced the completion of a C round financing of several hundred million yuan, and obtained pre-installed model orders from several leading car companies. Shidao (ID: survivalbiz) learned that just this year, several brands including SAIC, BYD, Ideal, Geely, Hongqi, and Changan announced pre-installation or installation of 4D millimeter wave radar. Currently, confirmed models with 4D millimeter wave radar include BMW iX, Ideal L7, L7 Pro, Feifan R7, F7, Ruilan 7, Lotus, Deepblue SL03, Asking M5, etc. NIO also announced progress in 4D millimeter wave radar related applications. According to the report by Gaogong Intelligent Automotive Institute, the domestic market penetration rate of L2+ and above new car millimeter wave radar is expected to exceed 50% by 2025. Simultaneously, the number of pre-installed 4D millimeter wave radars in China’s passenger car market is expected to exceed one million units in 2023, and the proportion of 4D imaging radar in all forward millimeter wave radars is expected to exceed 40% by 2025. All signs indicate that in the context of the first year of urban NOA in 2023, 4D breakout has become the main theme of the new generation sensor market. So, what exactly is the ‘fragrance’ of 4D millimeter wave radar that everyone is eyeing? Image Source: Getty Image 2 Low Cost, High Performance Cost, still cost. According to the data from Zosiqi Research, in the sensor solution for City NOA, many car companies including NIO, XPeng, Great Wall Motors, SAIC Maxus, and Zhiji Auto currently adopt the 5R solution. It is estimated that the 5R solution will account for 39.6% by 2026, becoming the most prevalent solution. The 5R solution, which includes 1 long-range forward radar and 4 corner radars. The known price of the Extreme Fox Alpha S new HI version with three laser radars exceeds 400,000 yuan. If all five were to use laser radars, how high could the price soar? Nowadays, the price war in the car market has reached a white-hot stage. Car companies can persist with huge losses to ‘storm the city’ with laser radars, but there’s no need to. After all, compared with 1,000 dollars per laser radar, the current price of about 200 dollars per unit, and possibly dropping to 100 dollars per unit (according to Yole Group’s forecast) for 4D millimeter wave radar, is obviously more ‘fragrant’. However, the main reason why 4D millimeter wave radar is highly favored is because of its excellent performance. Although it appears that 4D millimeter wave radar is just one more ‘D’ – elevation angle – than 3D millimeter wave radar, this addition is akin to putting glasses on someone with severe myopia. On the one hand, the current angular resolution of 4D millimeter wave radar has reached 1-2 degrees, basically reaching the level of 8-16 line laser radar, with some even reaching 32-line levels, making them technically and cost-wise competitive with medium and low-line laser radars.Adopted the 5R solution. It is estimated that by 2026, the proportion of the 5R solution will reach 39.6%, becoming the most adopted solution. The 5R solution is a combination of 1 long-range forward radar and 4 corner radars. It is known that the price of the Arcfox Alpha S New HI Edition, equipped with 3 LiDARs, exceeds 400,000 RMB. If 5 LiDARs were used, how high could the price climb? Currently, the car market price war has reached a fever pitch, and car companies can use LiDAR for ‘entering the city’ despite huge losses, but it is not necessary. After all, compared to a LiDAR costing 1,000 USD per unit, the current 4D millimeter-wave radar costs around 200 USD per unit, potentially dropping to 100 USD per unit in the future (according to Yole Group’s data forecast), is obviously more ‘fragrant’. However, the main reason why 4D millimeter-wave radar is highly favored is that its performance is good enough. Although it seems that 4D millimeter-wave radar only has one more ‘D’—elevation angle—than 3D millimeter-wave radar, it is this addition that is akin to providing glasses for someone with severe myopia. On one hand, the angular resolution of current 4D millimeter-wave radars has reached 1-2 degrees, basically reaching the level of 8-16 line LiDAR, and some even reach the 32-line level, which can replace mid and low-beam LiDARs in terms of technology and cost. This means that even low-end models within 200,000 RMB can achieve L2+ level intelligent driving solutions by adopting 4D millimeter-wave radar. On the other hand, 4D millimeter-wave radar has unique advantages in solving unusual cases (Corner cases) and covering long-tail scenarios, which is particularly crucial for urban NOA. According to the latest test results from IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety), the vehicle’s AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking System) can detect pedestrians but only works during the day or in well-lit conditions. For urban NOA, lighting conditions are also a challenge, especially in southern cities where it often rains. For example, Tesla, which uses a purely visual solution, has been involved in traffic accidents due to not seeing whether the obstacle ahead was a white truck or the sky background; a certain emerging automaker using LiDAR + visual camera has recognized tombstones as pedestrians and bicycles on cloudy days. By comparison, one significant advantage of 4D millimeter-wave radar is that it is not afraid of weather and light. Even in dense fog, 4D millimeter-wave radar can still accurately identify targets and obstacles, providing precise spatial positioning information. For example, the accident rate of Bobcat (Doosan Bobcat) in harsh environments such as high dust, low light, and complex obstacles was as high as 80%, but after being equipped with the world’s first 4D imaging radar O-79 4D released by Muniu Technology in 2019, the accident rate dropped to nearly zero. Secondly, compared to highway scenarios, urban road conditions are more complicated, with more intersections, complex lanes, and non-motor vehicles and pedestrians. For example, at a traffic light intersection, facing different directions, vehicles need to find the correct lane and also need to prevent pedestrians and non-motor vehicles. Therefore, the new generation of sensors needs to have very high confidence. 4D millimeter-wave radar has performed excellently in road tests, with more dense point cloud images output, which can depict a more realistic environmental image, effectively analyzing the contours, behaviors, and categories of detected targets, thereby adapting to more complex roads, identifying more small objects, and effectively monitoring occluded parts and stationary or lateral objects. For example, by recognizing the braking of the vehicle ahead, the system can take braking measures in advance to avoid rear-end collisions, and so on. Of course, 4D millimeter-wave radar cannot completely replace cameras and LiDARs in a short time, and they are more of a cooperative and complementary relationship. For example, cameras can achieve early warning in autonomous driving, but control implementation relies on the cooperation of millimeter-wave radars. A typical example is Tesla’s visual camera + millimeter-wave radar solution. In short, the progress of 4D millimeter-wave radar has indeed greatly improved the overall perception system of autonomous driving and further addressed the shortcomings of other sensors. Currently, the intelligent driving market has also completed a cognitive shift, no longer relying on one type of sensor, but adopting a multi-sensor fusion solution. This is also the real reason why Laser Radar manufacturers like HS Technology are deploying millimeter-wave radars. The industry believes that in the current implementation of urban NOA, the future application of 4D millimeter-wave radar in dynamic range and fusion capabilities with other sensors will be better. 3 Winners are beginning to emerge, accelerating the popularization of highway/urban NOA As a disruptor of performance and cost, domestic market 4D millimeter-wave radar’s ‘competition’ has long begun. According to incomplete statistics, there are currently nearly 20 local companies dedicated to developing 4D millimeter-wave radar products. However, the gap between startups and mature manufacturers is vast, and there are only a few companies that can demonstrate technical strength and excellent products in millimeter-wave radar. Therefore, when Muniu Technology launched their third-generation 4D imaging radar I79, it was a sensation in the industry. 1. Self-developed array antenna technology + real-time processing super resolution; high-density point cloud, with false target invalid point cloud rate