5 tech firms that aim to develop Self-Drive technology
AUTONOMOUS Contenders
In previous posts, I have mentioned Samsung & Harman tag team currently leading the market on autonomous technology innovation. However, I think it is time to look at the competition and Harman on its own without the embedded Samsung Tag-line.
1- HARMAN International Industry
Harman's approach is showcased around an integrated approach to provide a rich digital car experience,. Using their in house developed Digital Cockpit, it aims to provide a built in information, entertainment, and communication solutions.
Digital Cockpit is a 12.3-inch OLED screen which provides your usual driving information such as speed and RPM. Infotainment display consists of a 28-inch QLED (Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diode) Central Information Display (CID) and Passenger Display, below these displays is the Control Display, a 12.4-inch curved OLED that enables you to control other features such as air conditioning. The Digital Cockpit showcases HARMAN vision for future of the car becoming a mobile living space of and also paves the way for further innovations.
2- Aptive
The automotive parts specialist, created when Delphi Automotive spun off its aftermarket business into Delphi Technologies and rebranded, has been working with ride-sharing firm Lyft on autonomous technology, and displayed self-driving BMW taxis at CES 2018 earlier this year.
"With Aptiv's autonomous driving technology deployed throughout Las Vegas and broadly accessible through the Lyft app, a wide range of consumers will be able to share the experience of autonomous vehicles in a complex urban environment," said Kevin Clark, Aptiv president and chief executive officer. "More importantly, the resulting knowledge and data will allow us to further refine our autonomous driving capabilities and strengthen our portfolio of industry-leading active safety solutions."
3- Nvidia
While NVIDIA has been a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) company throughout the entire history of the company, they are also the first to tell you that they know they can’t remain strictly a GPU company forever, with unabashed car enthusiast Jen-Hsun Huang at the helm of NVIDIA, it’s no coincidence that the company has also started branching out in to automotive technology as well. To this end, NVIDIA has announced two new automotive platforms, NVIDIA DRIVE CX and DRIVE PX.
DRIVE CX is NVIDIA’s in-car computing platform, which is designed to power in-car entertainment, navigation, and instrument clusters. While it may seem a bit odd to use a mobile SoC (System on Chip) for such an application, Tesla Motors has shown that this is more than viable.
Drive PX is a sensor fusion technology, a combination of hardware and software, which enables cameras, LiDAR, radar and sonar sensors to work together. This enables the platform to run advanced driver assistance features such as including collision avoidance, pedestrian detection simultaneously. Nvidia has so far secured deals with Volkswagen, Chery, Baidu, Aurora and Uber.
4- Continental Automotive
They are perhaps best known for their tyres, the German automotive parts firm is investing in connected car and autonomous technology, highlighted by the launch of a self-driving concept vehicle called BEE (Balance Economy and Ecology). It is aiming to partner with car companies.
With the release of BEE, Continental aims to create a public transport system that caters to the needs of everyone. Age, physical appearance and challenges aside, anyone can use and summon the BEE from wherever they are located, simply using an app from their smartphone.
5- Aurora Innovation
The small Silicon Valley start-up has secured deals to develop autonomous driving technology for the Volkswagen Group, Hyundai and Byton. The deals have a lot to do with one of its founders: Sterling Anderson (former director of the Autopilot program at Tesla), Drew Bagnell (headed the autonomy and perception team at Uber), and Chris Urmson (former head of Google’s self-driving project, now called Waymo).
The company is focused on Level 4 autonomous systems leaning toward Level 5. “What’s most overlooked is how complicated the problem is,” Urmson says. “There’s a flood of companies that are indicating they’re going to come and solve this problem quickly. We understand where the pitfalls are and how hard this problem really is, and we’re building a company to go solve it for real, over time.”
The companies around the world are spending billions of dollars into self driving technology. There is one reason for this, it is believed to be the future. These companies do not have the in house expertise to design and maintain the tech needed and to seamlessly integrate the much needed hardware and software into their vehicles. Building a strong working relationship with multiple providers is seen by many as the way forward.
Sam Abuelsamid, a senior research analyst at Navigant Research, mentions, "To have something that can really be considered a safe and robust system, not only do you need redundancy, but you need diversity. So you need distinct systems that are not the same."
The road to a fully autonomous driving is still uncertain. There are safety issues raised by many experts around the lack of the required situational awareness when passenger is asked to take control of the vehicle during an emergency, human acceptance of being no longer in charge or control, the list is long.
However, This is the future the industry is going and maybe, just maybe, we should embrace the change rather than resist it.
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Comments (8)
Nice read! Organized into a list of sorts.. Neat!
Thank you, I hope it is useful and informative.
I'm here to give you a bump and a comment.
You are simply too kind, personally i think you should do more since you are responsible for this article
Ha you did a listicle😛
Yes, I am sure I will not hear the end of it
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