Jan 20, 2022

This Week

The Ojo Yoshida Report

Straight From the Heart: Startup Celtro Eyes Self-Powered Pacemakers
Who Does the Plumbing for IoT?
Imaging Radar Gets a Second Look for AVs

Straight From the Heart: Startup Celtro Eyes Self-Powered Pacemakers

By Adele Hars
German company’s implantable chip to run on energy harvested from cardiac cells.

What’s at stake?
The pacemaker envisioned by Celtro is both leadless and battery-free. The company sees a big market opportunity, but there are miles to go to get there. A prototype is three years away.

Who Does the Plumbing for IoT?

By Junko Yoshida
Matter, the new IoT application layer spec, is coming to save the smart home, with Amazon, Google, Apple and Samsung joining the bandwagon. But really, who are going to do the plumbing for Matter?

What’s at stake?
At CES 2022, the IoT community was giddy over Matter, the new IoT application layer that unites wireless devices in a smart home. While Amazon, Google, Apple and Samsung are Matter’s headliners, who does the plumbing for the Internet of Things? Devils linger in the details.

Imaging Radar Gets a Second Look for AVs

Mobileye Radar Image — Mobileye’s imaging radars separate objects in dense traffic construction area (Source: Mobileye)

By Junko Yoshida
As 3D/4D imaging and software-defined radar emerge, radar sensors are becoming much more useful, with higher resolution.

What’s at stake?
Mobileye is promising “true redundancy” for Level 4 consumer autonomous vehicles by adding a subsystem that pairs a single LiDAR with a blanket of software-defined radar sensors. The company believes its new 4D imaging radars will be pivotal in the push to L4, and the market indeed appears to be giving radar a second look. Given the rise of competing approaches and LiDAR’s installed base in L2/L2+ cars and robotaxis, the challenges for Mobileye are its own aggressive timetable and the relative cost and complexity of its approach.