Technical Insight
Impact of autonomous driving technology on component design Saurabh Kumar Elektrobit India Pvt Ltd
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n the past decade there has been a significant evolution of technologies in personal computing, wireless communication, and automotive. The emerging convergence of these technologies is leading to new possibilities like advanced features for automation, safety, and convenience in modern vehicles. The attractive opportunities in the areas of sustainability and reducing road accidents are driving future investments towards the mission of realizing autonomous vehicles. While the journey towards this mission has already begun, there are still several legal and technological barriers to be addressed before the benefits are widely dispersed across the globe. Additionally, the pandemic in 2020 has impacted the timelines towards fully autonomous vehicles slightly further. As per a recent Global Data vehicle market forecast, only around 2% of all light vehicles will be fully autonomous by 2034. However, it is not too far to imagine that by 2050 a significant percentage of vehicles will be fully autonomous. While the design of the autonomous features is important, the impact on existing components must be investigated because of the potential for a wide-spread adoption of autonomous vehicles. For example, the impact on the two categories below are interesting to consider: 1. Human-to-vehicle interface: With autonomous vehicles there will be an increase in sensors and the ability for the vehicle to take real-time decisions. To build trust, the vehicle would need to interact with the occupant in multimodal manner. To reduce the cognitive load on the occupant, who must respond rationally, the user interface has to be redesigned to make it more 32 | Telematics Wire | February 2021
intuitive and intelligent (situation aware) leveraging technologies in speech processing, touch and gesture recognition, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and graphics. 2. Vehicle-to-road interface: Road transportation networks are significantly well developed across the globe and are here to stay even with the advent of autonomous vehicles. However, the autonomous vehicle manufacturers have to reconsider the design of tires. There are emergent requirement changes on range, vehicle weight, torque demand and sustainability. Additionally, there are new possibilities which can be considered to increase the safety and reliability of vehicles. Let us look at the current megatrends which are accelerating the technology
While the design of autonomous features is important, the impact on existing components must be investigated because of the potential for a widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles.
towards achievement of fully autonomous vehicles, and their impact on the two components above as an example.
1. Increase of software in vehicles With the advancement of sensor technology, additional software is implemented to process more information about the state of the vehicle and the environment. As a result, software is becoming increasingly pervasive in automotive system design. The latest trend reports indicate that the software and E/E content in the car is expected to grow at a much larger rate (~7%) compared to the automotive market (~3%) until 2030. (Reference: McKinsey Report – Automotive software and electronics 2030). Traditional vehicle architectures are predominantly distributed, with information exchanged between sensors and various ECUs and gateways via multiple network technologies like CAN, LIN, Ethernet, etc. With new sophisticated ADAS features like lane departure warning, automatic emergency braking, etc., interaction at system level becomes complex, increasing the possibility of introducing errors in design, performance, or user experience. To increase reliability, such risks must be addressed by multiple approaches. Firstly, with the increasing availability of higher computing power in a single electronic chip, it is possible to rationalize the ECU network architecture itself. Multiple ECU software can be consolidated into a single hardware called domain controllers. Besides system design and performance, this leads to advantages like the reduction in cost, weight, and power consumption. Further consolidation is possible with zonal and
