Looking for the future of autonomous driving? It’s in your car today
How today’s semiconductors are powering the current and future landscape of autonomous driving
Semiconductors are crucial to designing new and evolving vehicles; a vehicle today has between 1,000 and 3,500 semiconductors. As drivers continue to prioritize features such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), the importance of semiconductors in the vehicles of today – and tomorrow – will only increase. Looking ahead, more than 50 percent of vehicles in the US are estimated to have a full suite of ADAS features by 2050, potentially helping prevent 37 million crashes over a 30-year period.
Given this projected growth, how are today’s semiconductors powering the current and future landscape of autonomous driving?
To show off current ADAS, highlight future capabilities of these systems and discuss the semiconductors that make them possible, Mike Pienovi, general manager for high-performance processors, and Sneha Narnakaje, business manager for automotive radar, took a car with these features out for a test drive. Watch the video:
Enhanced sensing capabilities
Cars with ADAS functions need to see further in front and behind in order to better perceive and respond to the world around them. The driver assistance systems in these vehicles use a combination of semiconductors for sensing, processing, in-vehicle communication and power management.
Serving as the eyes and ears of these new vehicles, sensing integrated circuits enable enhanced angular and distance resolution sensing, whether on the road or in a parking lot. These vehicles use a combination of sensor modules (radar, lidar and cameras) to actively gather data from around the vehicle, with each type of sensor and their supporting sensing semiconductors best suited for particular driving or weather conditions.
Pairing these sensors with high-speed interface solutions facilitates the transfer of the rapidly growing volume of data about the vehicle’s surroundings to advanced embedded processors.
TI has portfolios of innovative highly precise automotive radar sensors as well as embedded processors with edge artificial intelligence capabilities. For camera-based systems, we continue to invest in high-speed FPD-Link™ SerDes interface technology, which is capable of transferring high-resolution, uncompressed video data and control information over lightweight automotive coaxial cables.
Meeting regulations and functional safety requirements for automotive systems
Manufacturers are striving to expand the capabilities and features of their vehicles while also complying with current and future safety regulations for new vehicles.
Selecting semiconductors that are designed, qualified and certified according to automotive, functional safety and cybersecurity standards is crucial to meeting the stringent demands of these regulations. Our automotive-qualified devices are designed to not only help manufacturers create safer vehicle systems, but also to provide the advanced capabilities and scalability they need to meet current and future design requirements while differentiating from their competition in terms of features and safety.
Driving closer to the future of vehicle autonomy
With portfolios like TI’s, manufacturers can elevate the ADAS features in cars while setting expectations for the future of autonomous driving. Semiconductors are enabling this journey by making it easier for manufacturers to implement ADAS such as parking and lane assistance, collision monitoring, adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking across new vehicles.
These enhanced semiconductors, including sensors, processors, power components and interface devices, are the building blocks for innovation. They can help manufacturers reduce design complexity and more easily meet regulatory requirements in current automotive systems while also planning for the future.
From current features like lane and parking assist to the enhanced Level 3 environmental detection capabilities now hitting the market, each innovation, no matter how seemingly minor, moves us closer to full vehicle autonomy, one mile and one parking space at a time.