Full Press Release:

SYDNEY - October 12, 2021

Baraja, creator of the breakthrough Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology for autonomous vehicles, today announced its first volume commercial deal for long-range LiDAR with Hitachi Construction Machinery, the construction and mining equipment company.

The multi-year commercial partnership will give some of the largest mines and mining operators global access to high-performance LiDAR systems capable of withstanding the world’s most hazardous mining environments. Baraja has worked closely with Hitachi Construction Machinery, a strategic partner and investor, to develop a LiDAR, Spectrum Off-Road utilizing the core Spectrum-Scan™ platform, configured specifically for autonomous and semi-autonomous mining machine and vehicles.

The deal follows Baraja’s partnership with tier one automotive supplier Veoneer earlier this year to deliver Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR for the next generation of autonomous vehicles. Spectrum-Scan™ is built for the automotive industry and mining machine and vehicles at scale but will continue to evolve to implement its technology into many different types of vehicles to meet the world’s ever-changing needs.

Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology, is built to enable true autonomy in mining, optimized for heavy industrial settings, and delivers high-resolution pointclouds tested in a ruggedized system capable of withstanding hazardous environments. Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan™ technology has been tested in mine sites around the world, and proven outperformance in dust and fog, designed for high thermal tolerance (-40C to +85C) and built to endure shock & vibration in the harshest of environments on the planet.

“With this high-volume commercial deal, Hitachi Construction Machinery confirms Baraja’s maturity in long-range LiDAR by moving our technology to the real world at scale. This is a significant indicator that Baraja’s long-range LiDAR technology trumps the competition given the ruggedization and reliability of the technology in mining environments. As a continuation of our existing relationship with Hitachi Construction Machinery, this will include the funding and testing partnership. The data and durability testing under this partnership will enable a step-change in LiDAR performance and durability in all sectors including autonomous vehicles,” said Federico Collarte, CEO and Founder of Baraja.

“Following our strategic investment in Baraja earlier this year, this commercial deal demonstrates our continued confidence in Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR as a high-performance system,” said Hideshi Fukumoto Vice President, Executive Officer, and CTO, Hitachi Construction Machinery. “After comprehensive testing with Baraja, we have been able to work closely with Baraja to accelerate the development of Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR products with mine site specifications and the commercialization of advanced autonomous driving and mining.”

About Baraja

Baraja is building the future of LiDAR to enable the autonomous future. With its revolutionary Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR technology, Baraja gives leading automotive companies a solid-state system in the fast axis that sets a new benchmark in precision and reliability. Baraja was founded in 2016 by telecommunications engineers Federico Collarte and Cibby Pulikkaseril, who discovered a way to use the industry’s proven optic fiber + photonics technology to solve the problems faced by legacy LiDAR. Baraja is backed by Sequoia China, Blackbird Ventures, Hitachi Construction Machinery and Main Sequence Ventures.

Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR

Baraja’s revolutionary Spectrum-Scan™ LiDAR completely rethinks the way autonomous vehicles see the world around them. Built on proven optical and photonics technologies from the telecommunications industry, Spectrum-Scan™ precisely steers infrared lasers through prism-like optics in the sensor, rapidly switching the laser’s wavelength to send each color of light in a different direction — the same way optic fiber technology works. The resulting pointclouds are extremely high-resolution and immune to interference from other light sources and LiDAR systems. Baraja Spectrum-Scan™ operates on the 1550 nm infrared spectrum, making it safe for human eyes, and creates crystal-clear pointclouds with a high-resolution 2000-channel vertical axis and responsive focus to effectively detect objects at ranges of more than 250 metres.