Montreal-based One Silicon Chip Photonics (OSCP), a developer of optical and navigation sensors, will receive CA$3.2 million government funding. OSCP is a growing Canadian cleantech company. The funding will help advance the safety and accuracy of autonomous vehicles and drones.
The investment is routed through Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). It is the second SDTC investment in OSCP, a graduate of SDTC’s Seed Fund for early-stage cleantech entrepreneurs who have gained solid ground and are ready to scale up.
The sensors could also be used in mobile robotics, spacecraft, delivery bots, and various consumer products.
OSCP is an emerging pioneer in optical sensor technology and builds inertial navigation sensors for autonomous vehicles. OSCP will use the SDTC investment to develop lighter, lower-cost inertial navigation sensors for the next generation of autonomous vehicles and drones.
This initiative will also involve the design of a novel inertial measurement unit (IMU) that will offer high performance in the precise navigation of any moving object, thereby advancing the safety and accuracy of self-driving vehicles. OSCP aims to further de-risk its IMU technology through a series of design improvements and market validation.
OSCP’s partners include Thales, Silicon Catalyst, and McGill University.
SDTC is an independent federal foundation that funds companies with the potential to become world leaders in environmental technologies and help solve some of the planet’s most pressing environmental challenges, such as climate change and polluted air, water and soil.
So far, SDTC has invested more than $1.38 billion in 460 companies. According to the organization’s website, the companies in the program have collectively eliminated around 22.4 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions.
In certain chips, copper-based circuits are generating too much heat for today’s shrinking chips to dissipate effectively. To mitigate this, some chip manufacturers have turned to silicon photonics, a technique to build circuits using photons and optical fibres instead of electrons and copper wires. For the most part, silicon photonics complements traditional copper wire circuitry.
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