Skip to main content

Highly automated driving ‘to spark adoption of centralised ADAS’

As vehicles become highly independent and begin to drive and react to traffic on their own, autonomous systems will aggregate and process data from a variety of on-board sensors and connected infrastructure, says ABI Research. This forces the industry to hit a hard reset on advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) architectures, currently dominated by distributed processing and smart sensors. Automotive OEMs will need to adopt new platforms based on powerful, centralised processors and high-speed low la
August 18, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
As vehicles become highly independent and begin to drive and react to traffic on their own, autonomous systems will aggregate and process data from a variety of on-board sensors and connected infrastructure, says 5725 ABI Research.

This forces the industry to hit a hard reset on advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) architectures, currently dominated by distributed processing and smart sensors. Automotive OEMs will need to adopt new platforms based on powerful, centralised processors and high-speed low latency networking. ABI Research forecasts 13 million vehicles with centralised ADAS platforms will ship in 2025.

James Hodgson, industry analyst at ABI Research, believes the distributed approach to ADAS systems will prove unsustainable as OEMs look to deliver highly automated driving around 2020. The new centralised ADAS architectures will unify sensing, processing, and actuation to deliver integrated decision-making for smooth path planning and effective collision avoidance.

This transition will present major opportunities for vendors new to the industry, as well as old incumbents, including NVIDIA, NXP, and Mobileye, who all announced centralised autonomous driving platforms. While each is in a different stage of development, all have common themes emerging, particularly in relation to processing power. The platforms average between eight and twelve teraflops (TFLOPs), a figure that is orders of magnitude beyond the typical smart sensor currently deployed in ADAS.

Physical separation of numerous dumb sensors and centralised processing will also open up opportunities for in-vehicle networking vendors. Ethernet-based solutions from vendors such as Marvell Semiconductor and Valens Semiconductor are well-positioned to meet the needs of high bandwidth and stringent automotive-grade requirements at a low cost.

"We are fast approaching the end of what can be achieved in automation within the confines of legacy architectures," concludes Hodgson. "While there are not yet any specific standards for centralised ADAS, it is interesting that three separate Tier 2s announced very similar platforms in quick succession. Vendors across the ecosystem need to take this time to plan accordingly in order to appropriately manage the industry transition toward centralised ADAS architectures."

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • EsoftThings works with Renesas’ R-Car to realise autonomous driving
    November 8, 2017
    EsoftThings (EST) has announced it has joined Renesas’ R-Car Consortium to accelerate the development of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving (AD) with computer vision technology optimized for R-Car systems-on-chip (SoCs). The Renesas computer vision and cognitive Accelerator IMP-X5 of the R-Car SoCs are designed with the intention of processing huge amounts of real-time input from cameras and radar sensors that are being added to future models of cars.
  • Global toll revenues $8.5bn while technology ‘battles’ continue
    April 9, 2014
    ABI Research’s Dominique Bonte talks to Jason Barnes about trends in tolling and how a wider appreciation of technology options is sorely needed. Global Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) solution revenues will grow to $8.5bn by 2018, with ETC becoming a main source of funding for both Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Vehicle-to-X (V2X) cooperative infrastructures, according to a new report from ABI Research (Chart 1). But, says the report’s author, ABI Research vice president and practice director Dom
  • Here to lead vehicle hazard warning pilot in Finland
    July 1, 2015
    Mapping and navigation specialist Here has been selected by Finnish traffic agencies Finnish Transport Agency (FTA) and Trafi, the Finnish Transport Safety Agency to lead a pilot project to enable vehicles to communicate safety hazards to others on the road. Here will also work with traffic information management service company Infotripla in implementing the project, which will be the first to implement a road hazard warning messaging system as described in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
  • Smarter transport remains key to smart cities
    January 9, 2018
    Colin Sowman looks at some of the challenges and solutions that will provide enhanced transport efficiency in tomorrow’s smarter cities. However you define a ‘smart city’, one of the key ingredients will be an efficient transport system. As most governments and city authorities face financial constraints, incremental improvements in the existing systems is the most likely way forward. In London, new trains and signalling are improving the capacity of the Underground but that then reveals previously