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

  • New ticket purchase methods expected to drive advance of US public transit
    April 2, 2015
    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Strategic Analysis of the US Automated Fare Collection Market in Rail and Urban Transit Systems, finds that the market earned revenues of US$324.5 million in 2014 and estimates this to reach US$634.8 million by 2021. The rising cost of fare management, coupled with the increasing presence of computing, sensors and connected devices, have made public transit systems more accessible to end users, thus boosting interest in automated fare collection (AFC) systems. With 33
  • Innoviz to supply VW Lidar
    August 10, 2022
    Deal with VW subsidiary Cariad involves InnovizTwo Lidar sensors and perception software
  • Virtual cockpit in cars ‘edges closer to reality’
    September 3, 2015
    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Rise of Virtual Cockpits in Cars finds that the instrument cluster (IC) market in North America and Europe is expected to clock a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.2 percent from 2014 to 2021, with digital IC expected to reach a CAGR of approx. 26 percent by 2021. While the virtual cockpit will be limited to premium-segment vehicles, fully digital clusters that will be standard in about 20 percent of cars will also be offered as an option on medium-segment cars.
  • #ITSDubai2024: Driving the future of mobility through ITS
    August 30, 2024
    The ITS World Congress 2024, set to take place in Dubai from September 16-20, promises to be a landmark event for the global ITS community. Here is an in-depth look at what visitors can expect from their time at the cutting edge of mobility technology...