There are four trends now shaping
the automotive market and in
a report published in 2016 by
McKinsey & Company (“Automotive
revolution – perspective towards
2030”) these were identified as
autonomy, connectivity, electrification
and diverse mobility.
In the year of publication, however,
fully autonomous vehicles still seemed
to be years away, and advanced
driver-assistance system (ADAS)
applications were much less common
– in fact, the pace of disruptive change
seemed glacial.
Fast forward to 2020 and things
are very different. The rollout of 5G
will have a significant influence, while
the automotive-centric dedicated
short-range communications (DSRC)
standard is now in production
vehicles. With momentum growing, the
deployment for DSRC to support ADAS
features is set to expand. In that
respect, features such as adaptive
cruise control, automatic emergency
braking and lane departure warnings
are becoming commonplace enabling
Level 2 autonomy in mainstream
vehicles.
There is plenty of investment in
developing autonomous vehicles by
carmakers, car-sharing companies
and cash-rich internet companies on a
worldwide basis.
One of the four trends, the
evolution of electric vehicles, is
fundamental to these developments.
Sales are growing, in part due to
the improvements made in battery
technology, and we are approaching
an inflection point where the battery
cost is coming down to a competitive
level and at $100 per kWh, battery
electric vehicles can be competitive
with internal combustion engines.
Looking at these trends from
the perspective of a semiconductor
company, the complexity involved
with developing ADAS and automated
driving, as well as more established
features such as infotainment, is now
centred on a system-on-chip (SoC)
approach.
A clearer
roadmap
Meeting the demands of new
sensor modalities in ADAS.
By Thomas Wong
The close integration of functions,
made possible by SoCs based on
the latest 7nm and 16nm processes,
provides the performance needed
to deliver these advanced features.
In turn, this is having a disruptive
effect on the way automotive SoCs
are designed, accelerating the move
to finer semiconductor process
geometries.
Bringing technologies together
The main sensor most human drivers
rely on is the eye. We can see in
colour, perceive depth and distance,
estimate speed and direction, and
adjust to variable light conditions.
If we apply these requirements to
Above: Autonomous
vehicles will rely
on situational
awareness in order
to function safely
autonomous driving systems, it
becomes clear just how big the task
is. We are using image sensors,
coupled to SoCs, to mimic the human
experience. This involves synthesising
information to make decisions, at
the same speed and with the same
accuracy as a human driver.
This will require more data than
an image sensor can provide. Sensor
fusion, based on multiple types of
sensor technologies, distributed around
the vehicle, will become the “eyes” of
the autonomous driver. This sensor
data will need to be processed, typically
by a single SoC in order to reduce
latency and avoid synchronicity issues.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI)
to perform the data synthesis will also
be essential, with the core intelligence
also running on the SoC, rather than
the cloud. These requirements are
exerting extreme pressure on SoC
designers.
Autonomous driving will require the
vehicles to be capable of perceiving
their environment. This means using
sensors to monitor the road, other
road users and the car itself.
This “situational awareness”
is essential to allow the vehicle to
navigate safely, plan its ideal route
and adapt its plans based on the
prevailing and changeable conditions.
There are three main computational
modalities that any autonomous
system must use to achieve
situational awareness: sensing,
through image and signal processing;
perceiving, using data analysis; and
decision making, through the use of
AI. All of these can only be executed
through semiconductor technology and
Below: Comparing
the three main
sensing technologies
currently used in
autonomous vehicles
20 13 October 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
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