Auto radar back to analog

As some motorist have discovered the hard way, today’s automotive radar can’t see objects that a camera or lidar can see. Also, many radars operate at processing speeds that simply aren’t fast enough for the highway. Radar’s only saving grace is that it operates in all-weather conditions. Metawave Corp., spun out of PARC, a Xerox company based in Palo Alto, Calif., thinks it can alter what the automotive industry perceives as the “limitations” of conventional radars. The solution comes from metamaterials, small software-controlled engineered structures, laid out on a printed circuit board and able to steer electromagnetic beams in ways that were previously only possible with the much larger, powerful and more expensive systems.