Mehdi Asghari is currently the President & Chief Executive Officer at SiLC Technologies, Inc. Prior to this, he worked because the CTO & SVP-Research & Development at Kotura, Inc. from 2006 to 2013. He also held positions as Vice President-Silicon Photonics at Mellanox Technologies Ltd. and Vice President-Research & Development at Bookham, Inc. Asghari holds a doctorate degree from the University of Bath, an undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge, and graduate degrees from St. Andrews Presbyterian College and Heriot-Watt University.
SiLC Technologies is a silicon photonics innovator providing coherent vision and chip-scale FMCW LiDAR solutions that enable machines to see with human-like vision. Leveraging its extensive expertise, the corporate is advancing the market deployment of coherent 4D imaging solutions across a wide range of industries, including mobility, industrial machine vision, AI robotics, augmented reality, and consumer applications.
Dr. Asghari, you have got an intensive background in Silicon Photonics and have been involved in multiple startups on this space. Could you share what first sparked your interest on this field?
I went into photonics as I desired to be within the closest branch of engineering to physics that I could. The concept was to give you the chance to develop products and viable businesses while playing on the front line of science and technology. At the moment, around 30 years ago, being in photonics meant that you simply either did passive devices in glass, or energetic devices (for light emission, modulation or detection) in III/V materials (compound of multiple elements resembling In, P, Ga, As). Each industries were migrating to integration for wafer scale manufacturing. Progress for each was very slow, primarily attributable to material properties and a scarcity of well-established fabrication process capabilities and infrastructure.
I used to be within the III/V camp and got here across a small startup called Bookham which was using silicon to make optical devices. This latest idea offered the foremost advantage of having the ability to use mature silicon wafer fabrication processes to make a highly scalable and cost-effective platform. I felt this might transform the photonics industry and decided to hitch the corporate.
With over 25 years of experience and over 50 patents, you’ve had a major impact on the industry. What do you see as probably the most transformative developments in Silicon Photonics during your profession?
Bookham was the primary company ever to attempt to commercialize silicon photonics, which meant there was no existing infrastructure to make use of. This included all facets of the event process, from design to fabrication to check, assembly and packaging. On design, there was no simulation tool that was adapted to the big index steps we were using. On the fab side, we needed to develop all of the fabrication processes needed, and since there was no fab able to process wafers for us, we had to construct wafer fabs from scratch. On assembly and packaging, there was virtually nothing there.
Today, we take all of those as a right. There are fabs that provide design kits with semi-mature libraries of devices and plenty of of them even offer assembly and packaging. While these remain removed from the maturity level offered by the IC industry, life is a lot easier today for individuals who wish to do silicon photonics.
SiLC is your third Silicon Photonics startup. What motivated you to launch SiLC, and what challenges did you set out to deal with when founding the corporate in 2018?
Throughout my profession, I felt that we were at all times chasing applications that more mature micro-optics technologies could address. Our goal applications lacked the extent of complexity (e.g. variety of functions) to actually justify deployment of such a strong integration platform and the associated investment level. I also felt that the majority of those applications were borderline viable when it comes to the quantity they offered to make a thriving silicon-based business. Our platform was by now mature and didn’t need much investment, but I still wanted to deal with these challenges by finding an application that offered each complexity and volume to seek out a real long-lasting home for this amazing technology.
While you founded SiLC, what was the first problem you aimed to resolve with coherent vision and 4D imaging? How did this evolve into the corporate’s current concentrate on machine vision and LiDAR technology?
COVID-19 has shown us how vulnerable our logistics and distribution infrastructure are. At the identical time, just about all developed countries have been experiencing a major drop in working age population (~1% yr on yr for a few a long time now) leading to labor shortages. These are the underlying major trends driving AI and Robotic technologies today, each of which drive enablement of machine autonomy. To realize this autonomy, the missing technology piece is vision. We want machines to see like we do If we would like them to be unchained from the controlled environment of the factories, where they do highly repetitive pre-orchestrated work, to hitch our society, co-exist with humans and contribute to our economic growth. For this, humanlike vision is critical, to permit them to be efficient and effective at their job, while keeping us protected.
The attention is one of the crucial complex optical systems that I could imagine making, and if we were to place our product on even a small portion of AI driven robots and mobility devices on the market, the quantity was actually going to be huge. This could then achieve each the necessity for complexity and volume that I used to be in search of for SiLC to achieve success.
SiLC’s mission is to enable machines to see like humans. What inspired this vision, and the way do your solutions just like the Eyeonic Vision System help bring this to life?
I saw our technology as enabling AI to assume a physical incarnation and get actual physical work done. AI is wonderful, but how do you get it to do your chores or construct houses? Vision is critical to our interactions with the physical world and if AI and Robotics technologies wanted to come back together to enable true machine autonomy, these machines need an analogous capability to see and interact with the world.
Now, there may be a serious difference between how we humans see the world and the way existing machine vision solutions work. The present 2D and 3D cameras or TOF (Time of Flight) based solutions enable storage of stationary images. These then need to be processed by heavy computing to extract additional information resembling movement or motion. This motion information is vital to enabling hand-eye coordination and our ability to perform complex, prediction-based tasks. Detection of motion is so critical to us, that evolution has devoted >90% of our eye’s resources to that task. Our technology enables direct detection of motion in addition to accurate depth perception, thus enabling machines to see the world as we do, but with much higher levels of precision and range.
Your team has developed the industry’s first fully integrated coherent LiDAR chip. What sets SiLC’s LiDAR technology aside from other solutions available on the market, and the way do you foresee it disrupting industries like robotics, C-UAS and autonomous vehicles?
SiLC has a novel integration platform that permits it to integrate all the important thing optical functions needed right into a single chip on silicon, while achieving very high-performance levels that are usually not attainable by competing technologies (>10X higher). For the robotics industry, our ability to offer very high-precision depth information in micrometer to millimeter at long distances is critical. We achieve this while remaining eye-safe and independent of ambient lighting, which is exclusive and demanding to enabling widespread use of the technology. For C-UAS applications, we enable multi-kilometer range for early detection while our ability to detect velocity and micro-doppler motion signatures along with polarimetric imaging enables reliable classification and identification. Early detection and classification are critical to keeping our people and demanding infrastructure protected while allowing peaceful usage of the technology for industrial applications. For mobility, our technology detects objects a whole bunch of meters away while using motion to enable prediction-based algorithms for early reactions with immunity to multi-user interference. Here, our integration platform facilitates the ruggedized, robust solution needed by automotive/mobility applications, in addition to the fee and volume scaling that is required for its ubiquitous usage.
FMCW technology plays a pivotal role in your LiDAR systems. Are you able to explain why Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technology is critical for the following generation of AI-based machine vision?
FMCW technology enables direct and instantaneous detection of motion on a per pixel basis in the pictures we create. That is achieved by measuring the frequency shift in a beam of sunshine when it reflects off of moving objects. We generate this light on our chip and hence know its exact frequency. Also, since we have now very high-performance optical components on our chip, we’re capable of measure very small frequency shifts and might measure movements very accurately even for objects far-off. This motion information enables AI to empower machines which have the identical level of dexterity and hand-eye coordination as humans. Moreover, velocity information enables rule-based perception algorithms that may reduce the period of time and computational resources needed, in addition to the associated cost, power dissipation and latency (delay) to perform actions and reactions. Consider this as much like the hardwired, learning and reaction-based activities we perform like driving, playing sports or shooting ahead of a duck. We will perform these much faster than the electro-chemical processes of conscious pondering would allow if all the things needed to undergo our brain to be processed fully first.
Your collaboration with firms like Dexterity shows a growing integration of SiLC technology in warehouse automation and robotics. How do you see SiLC furthering the adoption of LiDAR within the broader robotics industry?
Yes, we see a growing need for our technology in warehouse automation and industrial robotics. These are the less cost-sensitive, and more performance-driven applications. As we ramp up production and mature our manufacturing and provide chain eco-system, we’ll give you the chance to supply lower cost solutions to deal with the upper volume markets, resembling industrial and consumer robotics.
You latterly announced an investment from Honda. What’s the impact of this partnership with Honda and what does it mean for the long run of mobility?
Honda’s investment is a serious event for SiLC, and it’s an important testament to our technology. An organization like Honda doesn’t make investments without understanding the technology and performing in-depth competitive evaluation. We see Honda as not only considered one of the highest automotive and truck manufacturers but additionally as an excellent gateway for potential deployment of our technology in so many other applications. Along with motor bikes, Honda makes powersports vehicles, power gardening equipment, small jets, marine engines/equipment and mobility robotics. Honda is the most important manufacturer of mobility products on the earth. We imagine our technology, guided by Honda and their potential deployment, can enable mobility to succeed in higher levels of safety and autonomy at a value and power efficiency that might enable widespread usage.
Looking forward, what’s your long-term vision for SiLC Technologies, and the way do you intend to proceed driving innovation in the sphere of AI machine vision and automation?
SiLC has only just begun. We’re here with a long-term vision to rework the industry. We now have spent the higher a part of the past 6 years creating the technology and knowledge base needed to fuel our future industrial growth. We insisted on coping with the long pole of integration head-on from day one. All of our products use our integration platform and never components sourced from other players. On top of this, we have now added full system simulation capabilities, developed our own analog ICs, and invented highly modern system architectures. Added together, these capabilities allow us to supply solutions which might be highly differentiated and end-to-end optimized. I imagine this has given us the inspiration essential to construct a highly successful business that may play a dominant role in multiple large markets.
One area where we have now focused more attention is how our solutions interface with AI. We at the moment are working to make this simpler and faster such that everybody can use our solutions without the necessity to develop complex software solutions.
As for driving future innovation, we have now an extended list of wonderful advancements we would really like to make to our technology. I imagine that the very best option to prioritize implementation of those as we grow is to listen fastidiously to our customers, after which find the best and smartest option to offer them a highly differentiated solution that builds on our technological strengths. It is barely if you make clever use of your strengths that you would be able to deliver something truly exceptional.
