Collaboration Is Critical for Real-World Validation of Autonomous Vehicles

The road to automated driving has definitely seen a few bumps! However, with the sobering statistic of approximately 1.3 million road traffic deaths every year and 90% of accidents being caused by human error, the quest for safer roads is still real¹. The key for car OEMs, Tier1s and especially silicon providers is safety. Providing safe automated driving functions and capabilities to make the roads a safer place.

Not only does the autonomous vehicle as the end-product of need to be safe, but the development and validation processes also need to be safety aware. In addition to safety, there are other factors to consider during the validation process. For example, the number of miles that these cars will need to be driven in order to truly deem them safe, plus the amount of garage space for all the test vehicles and let’s not even start the conversation about the municipality restrictions!

This leads us to the benefits of simulation to assist with all these issues. NXP, in coordination with Kalray, Embotech and dSpace have developed a simulation platform with software and hardware in-the-loop systems to create complex and realistic virtual worlds where validation miles can be driven safely and at a fraction of the cost and time. This is a great step for car manufacturers before they take their testing to actual roads!

So Let’s Dive Into the Details!

NXP partners with many domain experts in the AD space to help ensure our customers will have what they need to deliver profitable driverless solutions to the market quickly and safely.

This is possible with the NXP BlueBox paired with software and hardware in-the-loop systems

• NXP processors in the BlueBox platform provide the necessary automotive grade compute performance and the many connectivity options of the BlueBox including 10GB Ethernet, CAN and automotive Ethernet, ease the transition from the lab to the physical vehicle so you can complement your virtual fleet with real world validation.
• The dSPACE ASM simulation environment is used to provide an accurate simulation of the vehicle surroundings, traffic participants, as well as the sensor models (ground truth sensors, as well as a physics-based camera sensor simulation). The output of the sensors is provided to the autonomous driving software via the dSPACE virtual environment sensor interface (VESI) API, which also captures the output of the sensor to close the loop and actuate the vehicle accordingly in the simulation.
• Kalray’s 3rd generation coolidge massively parallel processor array (MPPA) perception accelerator and AI software provides the object detection and classification application support for sensing the world around the automated vehicle.
• Embotech’s ProCruiser Highway Planner solution built on the Forces Pro real-time optimal control software plans smooth driving trajectories and can provide all standard functionality such as lane change assist (LCA), automatic cruise control (ACC), traffic jam assist (TJA) and additionally capable of handling emergency situations at the limit of handling such as emergency braking (EM), double-lane change (DLC) maneuvers, emergency safe stop (ESS), etc.

Witness This Live!
NXP and our partners have a live demo of this simulation at #CES2020! Our automated driving solution with AI and functional safety will showcase the end-to-end solution for L2 to L4 automated driving.

Based on:

• NXP BlueBox 2nd generation autonomous driving development platform with production ready automotive silicon
• Kalray Coolidge 3rd generation MPPA perception accelerator and AI software
• Embotech Forces Pro and ProCruiser real-time optimal control software and highway planner solution
• dSPACE ASM Traffic real-time simulation environment with traffic, sensor simulation, full VD and BEV powertrain.

Collaboration is critical for real-world validation of Autonomous Vehicles.

The demo will once again highlight our work with perception, motion planning and simulation partners to provide a high-performance end-to-end solution with BlueBox for self-driving software development, testing and validation.

So don’t miss this! Stop by the NXP booth at CES, CP-18 in the Central Plaza.

1. Source: Seattle’s Vision Zero Plan/Documents/Departments/beSuperSafe/VisionZeroPlan, ASIRT.ORG