Oxobotica and Navtech join forces

Oxbotica, autonomous vehicle software provider, and Navtech, a global radar solution company, have announced their joint product development of a radar-based navigation and perception system to be launched in 2020.

The multi-module localisation system (radar, vision and laser) allows customers to deploy autonomy in both on-road and off-road locations, whether in mines, ports or airports and whatever the weather conditions where standard GPS or lidar is not possible.

The Oxbotica and Navtech product will not be reliant on any external infrastructure and can operate on its own or be fused with other location services driven by GPS, lidar or laser vision.

Oxbotica has already successfully tested its proprietary algorithms in a variety of environments and conditions as part of its Localisation module development and wider full-stack autonomy solution. This will be twinned with Navtech's expertise in bringing autonomy sensors to market around the world.

Ozgur Tohumcu, Oxbotica CEO, said: "This collaboration with Navtech is a key milestone in bringing autonomy especially to off-road domains such as mines, ports, or airports where existing lidar or GPS may not function effectively due to weather or operating conditions such as dust, rain, or snow."

Phil Avery, CEO of Navtech, said: "Navtech are delighted to be working with Oxbotica on this project. Despite the potential of radar very few companies have successfully developed the necessary algorithms to use it properly. Oxbotica are world leaders in this area and together with our high performance radars sensors we believe the resulting system will deliver a step change in the performance available for all weather all environment localisation and perception. This is crucial for automation in more challenging environments such as mines and ports."