Altos Radar raises US$3.5m to accelerate commercialization of 4D imaging radars

Automotive radar startup Altos Radar has raised US$3.5m during a seed funding round to accelerate the commercialization of its 4D imaging radars used in ADAS and autonomous vehicles.

The funding round – led by Hesai Technology CEO David Li, ZhenFund and Monad Ventures – will enable Altos Radar to mass produce and market its latest high-performance 4D imaging radar, the Altos V1. The smart solution is stated to benefit from “revolutionary perception capabilities at a fraction of the cost of its competitors”.

Since the FCC and other international RF regulators opened up the 76-81GHz frequency band for automotive radar use in 2017, high-resolution radars can now be manufactured at a third of the size of previously used 24GHz radars with similar angular resolution.

Altos Radar is stated to deliver real-time, onboard computed, lidar-like point clouds from a ready-to-ship product. The radar also provides long-range detection and a point cloud with up to 3,000 points per frame at 10fps and has a detection capacity that can achieve a range of 500m for cars and 180m for pedestrians.

Altos states its V1 radar is the “world’s first production-ready non-FPGA-based, 4-chip cascaded (12TX, 16RX) 4D imaging radar”.