Porsche looks to Israeli startup to bring better visibility to drivers
German sports car manufacturer will test out TriEye’s advanced camera technology to help improve driving in poor weather conditions
Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter
Israeli startup TriEye, a developer of short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensing chips that enable drivers to see in adverse road conditions, said Thursday it will collaborate with German sports car manufacturer Porsche to test out and improve the performance of some of its products.
TriEye, which in August received an investment from Porsche in a Series A funding round, said the two firms will collaborate to improve the performance of its advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles (AV) products.
“The fact that Porsche, a leading car manufacturer, has decided to invest in TriEye and evaluate TriEye’s CMOS-based SWIR camera to help further improve advanced driver assistance systems is a significant vote of confidence in our technology,” said Avi Bakal, CEO and co-founder of TriEye.
The Israeli company has developed a high-definition SWIR camera that is smaller in size, has a higher resolution and costs a fraction of the price of current technologies, the company says. TriEye has also already proven that the technology works and can be mass-produced.
Once integrated, the camera allows ADAS technology and AVs to achieve high-resolution vision capabilities under common adverse weather and low-light conditions such as fog, dust, rain, and night, according to the firm.
As ADAS systems are expected to operate under a wide range of scenarios, car manufacturers have recognized the need to integrate advanced sensing solutions. Even when combining several sensing solutions such as radar, lidar and standard cameras, it is not always possible to accurately detect and identify all objects on the road when visibility is limited.
To address this particular challenge, Porsche will test out TriEye’s CMOS-based SWIR camera in its cars to enable drivers to achieve better visibility capabilities, especially in adverse weather conditions, the Israeli firm said in a statement.
In August the firm said that it expanded its Series A funding round led by Intel Capital, with the participation of Porsche Ventures, Marius Nacht and existing investor Grove Ventures.
TriEye was founded by Bakal, Omer Kapach and Prof. Uriel Levy after years of advanced nanophotonics research by Levy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
