Dallas-headquartered Texas Instruments unveiled a new radar sensor capable of detecting objects up to 40 percent farther from a vehicle at CES 2022 in Las Vegas today. The new sensor advances autonomous driving and vehicle safety by more accurately monitoring blind spots and navigating turns and corners to help avoid collisions.

“Changing lanes and navigating tight corners present some of the most complex design challenges for our customers today,” said Yariv Raveh, manager for TI millimeter-wave radar, in a statement. “To create a safer driving experience, driver assistance systems must quickly and accurately process massive amounts of data and clearly communicate with the driver.”

The vision? A “collision-free future”

The radar sensor— the AWR2944 —is the latest entry in TI’s extensive lineup of analog and embedded processing products and technologies for the automotive industry. The new sensor is an expansion of TI’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to sense objects. 

Along with recognizing oncoming vehicles up to 40 percent farther away, the sensor is around 30 percent smaller than other radar sensors currently available and provides 33 percent higher resolution than other sensors.

Vehicle tech sensors and software

Some high-end vehicles have a need to quickly process up to 100 million lines of code, making updated capabilities in sensor platforms more necessary, said Ryan Manack, director of automotive systems engineering at TI, according to Fierce Electronics. 

TI says the performance improvements of the new sensor address the fact that more than half of the combined total of fatal and injury collisions happen at or near intersections, according to the Federal Highway Administration. The new sensor also helps automakers with the New Car Assessment Program motor vehicle safety requirements around improving steering systems to support advanced driver assistance and automated driving.

“Visibility around corners has historically been challenging for autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles. This challenge presents the opportunity to design high-quality, premium ADAS technology that helps enhance vehicle perception,” said Curt Moore, manager for Jacinto processors at TI. “For automated parking and driving, being able to see farther with devices like the AWR2944 sensor—and then seamlessly process that data with our Jacinto processors—leads to improved awareness and safety.”

Last October TI announced a breakthrough 3D position sensor with applications in smart factory operations and in November the tech giant announced up to four new semiconductor wafer fabrication plants in Sherman worth up to a $30 billion investment and supporting up to 3,000 jobs.

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