Just because we live in an age of many sensors doesn’t mean we always have the right one for the job. One in particular we’ve been lacking is a radar system that can detect obstacles and aircraft hundreds of meters out, yet fit comfortably on a small drone. The laws of physics, it seemed, prevented it — but Echodyne made it work anyway[1]. And it’s ready to put out its first product.
The problem isn’t that the drone in your back yard doesn’t know where a tree is (it does) or that cars can’t tell how far they are from one another (they can). It’s that if you want to fly a few hundred feet up, you start having to worry about helicopters, small planes, and if you get high enough, commercial jets. You need to see hundreds or thousands of feet out to effectively accommodate them (it’s called “detect and avoid”), and at that range no optical, lidar or ultrasonic sensor in the world is reliably effective.
Radar is generally the answer, but there are two issues: first, a decent phased-array radar is going to be pretty big, and second, we’re talking six figures out of the gate. Neither of these are friendly to small drones or small companies.Echodyne’s radar is a fraction the size and price, but performs many of the same functions — some better than the big boys. How is it possible? By rethinking the entire system using metamaterials.
Making MESA
We won’t get too deep into the technical side of things, but here’s the deal. Phased-array radars use a grid of antennas that, by emitting radio waves in precisely defined patterns, can steer a radar beam in a desired direction. By doing this multiple times...