AEye Inc., a startup developing a novel, artificial intelligence-powered sensor for autonomous vehicles, today announced that it has picked up a $40 million funding round from Intel Corp. and Kleiner Perkins.

The lead investor was Taiwania Capital, a fund associated with Taiwan’s National Development Council. Other participants included aerospace giant Airbus SE, Tychee Partners and several unnamed “global” auto industry suppliers. The involvement of these anonymous suppliers may suggest AEye already has potential buyers lined up for its technology.

The startup offers a self-driving sensor that uses LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, to survey a vehicle’s surroundings. The basic principle behind LiDAR is to create a real-time map of the environment using laser pulses fired in a 360-degree circle. AEye has put a unique twist on the technology by adding on a camera that generates images with natural light.

The system, which the startup calls iDAR, references this footage to identify and filter unnecessary LiDAR data. The result is a significant reduction in the amount of processing power it takes to generate a useful map: AEye claims that its technology enables autonomous vehicles’ perception software to run up to 10 times faster than normal.

Even more notable is the sensor’s range. In a recent test, a car equipped with an iDAR system managed to track a moving truck from over 3,000 feet away, which AEye said is about four times greater than the maximum range of traditional LiDAR products. This long-distance capability is facilitated in part by an onboard AI that can “identify and focus on specific regions of interest within a single frame.”

“The iDAR system performed as we expected,” AEye Chief of Staff Blair LaCorte said in a statement. “We detected the truck with plenty of signal to identify it as an object of interest, and then easily tracked it as it moved over 1000m away. We now believe that with small adaptations, we can achieve range performance of 5km to 10km or more.”

LaCorte told Forbes that AEye will use the capital to start manufacturing iDAR on a commercial scale. The startup has two products in the pipe, one of which is expected to cost $5,000 while the other is set to become available for around $1,000 and will target passenger vehicles. The latter variant is on track to enter low-volume production in the second half of 2019. 

AEye is joining a crowded market. Numerous other venture-backed startups are developing sensing technology for self-driving cars and at least one has already started mass-producing its product.   

Photo: AEye