Yifan from the Vice-Pilot Temple
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The first Tier 1 Bosch Radar Global Head, joined a Silicon Valley startup?
Bosch, the world's No. 1 Tier 1, gave up the research and development of lidar half a year ago. At that time, the industry believed that it was possible to focus resources and invest heavily in 4D millimeter-wave radar to defend the last line of defense for high-end intelligent driving.
However, the general director of millimeter-wave radar gave up the privileged environment of the giant at this time and joined the start-up company Aotu Technology——
A start-up mainly engaged in 4D millimeter-wave radar, which has been established for less than a year and a half.
If you can't beat it, join it?
The direction of the tide of the times has changed.
The head of Bosch Radar joins Aotu Technology
Aotu Technology has recently officially announced the appointment of Li Mingkang, the former head of Bosch millimeter-wave radar, as its president, responsible for the application and development of 4D millimeter-wave radar and the expansion of the European market.
Li Mingkang has worked in the world's No. 1 Tier 1 for nearly 10 years and graduated from Tongji University with a bachelor's degree in vehicle engineering.
After graduating in 2012, Li Mingkang went to RWTH Aachen University in Germany to pursue a master's degree.
During this time, Li Mingkang interned at Bosch and graduated in 2015.
In 2016, he began to study for a doctorate under the joint training of Bosch and the Technical University of Braunschweig.
Only four years later, Li Mingkang received his Ph.D. and has been with Bosch ever since, successively as project manager and head of millimeter-wave radar.
Counting the internship experience, he worked at Bosch for nearly 10 years until he joined Aotu Technology.
Why did you leave Bosch and join a start-up at this time?
In the supply chain reshuffle cycle, traditional Tier 1 has encountered innovation impact
The wave of smart cars has reshaped the supply chain pattern, and although traditional Tier 1 has certain technical reserves, intelligence is generally lagging behind.
This is already an indisputable fact.
The direct manifestation is that because of the slow transformation, in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, Bosch, Continental, Valeo, ZF and other companies have recently announced layoffs, with a total of more than 22,000 jobs eliminated.
However, the slow transformation of intelligence does not mean that Bosch radar technology is not good, let's take a look at the market performance of Bosch radar.
According to the data, in 2021, Bosch accounted for 18% of the domestic ultrasonic radar market, and millimeter-wave radar accounted for more than 32% of passenger cars.
By the end of 2022, Bosch had shipped more than 70 million millimeter-wave radars worldwide.
Therefore, on the whole, Bosch's radar products have gained market recognition and have a foundation in the past.
However, the future is uncertain.
It is the general trend for high-end intelligent driving to occupy the market.
Most OEMs want to achieve high-end intelligent driving, especially in urban areas, and cannot do without lidar or its effective alternatives.
However, Bosch abandoned the development of lidar last year.
For the 4D millimeter-wave radar, although it has long been laid out and has been adhered to, it has not seen much effect yet.
In October 2021, Bosch exhibited the "Fifth Generation Millimeter-Wave Radar Extreme Edition", which sounds strange, but it is actually a 4D millimeter-wave radar.
Using the 76-77GHz frequency band, the maximum detection distance is 302 meters, the horizontal field of view can reach 120 degrees, and the vertical field of view can reach 24 degrees.
Later, in August 2022, it signed an agreement with GapWaves, a Swedish RF antenna technology company, to cooperate in the development of millimeter-wave radar antennas that meet high-resolution requirements.
This year also invested in a 4D millimeter-wave radar player, Geometry Partner.
At the same time, Bosch also invests in new players, and it seems that Bosch is determined to win 4D millimeter-wave radar and wants to maintain its leading position in the radar industry.
However, Bosch's products, compared with Aotu Technology, have already shown the results brought by focusing on innovation.
This may be the reason why the head of Bosch, who has been working at Bosch since his student days, gave up the favorable conditions of a giant company and joined a start-up.
Because anyone who is familiar with a giant like Bosch knows that in-house R&D not only has the best resources, but also the best vision – you can see almost all the projects that are being carried out on a global scale, at what level, and whether they are powerful or not.
This may also be the core reason why the head of Bosch switched to a start-up company.
So a new question arises again, who is Aotu Technology?
What products can attract the technical leaders of the giants to join?
Who is Aotu Technology?
Founded in January 2023, Aotu Technology is mainly engaged in 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar.
Compared with the traditional millimeter-wave radar, the 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar increases the pitch angle (altitude) on the basis of the three dimensions of distance, speed and horizontal angle.
This allows 4D millimeter-wave radar to achieve higher resolution and output a denser number of scatter clusters, which in turn forms a point cloud image that provides a similar perception effect as LiDAR.
Compared with lidar, 4D millimeter-wave radar also has certain advantages:
Lidar measures and calculates by emitting lasers and receiving signal echoes.
4D imaging radar emits electromagnetic beams, uses the Doppler effect to detect the frequency difference of the reflected signal, and then measures and calculates.
This enables the 4D millimeter-wave radar to work stably in bad weather, overcoming the weakness of lidar's performance in bad weather such as rain, snow, haze, sand and dust.
In addition, 4D millimeter-wave radar is cheaper and has a cost advantage.
Therefore, 4D millimeter-wave radar is regarded as a powerful alternative to lidar.
This also makes 4D millimeter-wave radar players attract attention.
One of the representatives of Aotu Technology is Aotu, and the three founders have rich experience in autonomous driving, RF design, signal processing, computational optimization, and radar perception.
Co-founder and CEO Niu Li graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree in automotive science and later received a doctorate degree in automotive science from Clemson University.
He was also an early member of Apple's autonomous vehicle department and an early member of Pony.ai's Silicon Valley hardware team, independently responsible for sensor hardware, and led the development and testing of high-performance 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar, vehicle electronic architecture design, etc.
Li Xiaobo, co-founder and CTO, graduated from the Institute of Electronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences with a Ph.D. degree.
He served as the head of Huawei's HiSilicon radar algorithm and Pony.ai's high-performance radar algorithm.
Michael Wu，联合创始人兼首席科学家，毕业于罗格斯大学（Rutgers University）。
He has served as the head of system performance at Mozilla, an optimization expert for Pony.ai's Silicon Valley program, and has experience working in the autonomous driving departments of Apple and Lyft.
Under the leadership of the three co-founders, Aotu has launched two products in the first year of its establishment, the latest product Altos V2 has been tested, which can detect pedestrians 200 meters away, small cars 400 meters away, and large cars 600 meters away, and the maximum detection distance is farther than Bosch's "fifth-generation millimeter-wave radar Extreme Edition".
Therefore, the talents of the old giants defect to start-ups, perhaps in the new players, seeing new hope and greater potential.
The world is like a tide, and smart car talents are rushing with the wave of smart cars. The wave of smart cars is also being reshaped, and will even continue to reshape the supply chain landscape.
4D millimeter-wave radar wants to become a lidar killer, and lidar players will not sit idly by, actively upgrade and reduce costs, and defeat the advantages of 4D millimeter-wave radar.
Therefore, the volume of intelligent driving is the volume of the whole industry.
Car companies are rolling up the city, rolling "the whole country can be opened", betting on pure vision or fusion perception, and even two roads in parallel.
And the suppliers behind it are also betting on the performance, the cost, and the route.
The wave of smart cars is driving the reshuffle of OEMs and the supply chain.