Automotive

Vehicle computing technology for smart mobility has been introduced by congatec, at Intertraffic Amsterdam (29 March – 01 April).

The rugged vehicle computing platforms are designed to simplify and accelerate digitisation and autonomous driving in harsh environments such as transportation, logistics, construction, and agriculture. The computing platforms target the next generation of real-time 5G connected, unmanned, functionally safe vehicles and systems designed for digitising the mobility kinematics of existing fleets. The goal is to provide accurate orientation data to improve situational awareness and to optimise the movement and operation of autonomous vehicles, said congatec.

Mobility OEMs and their Tier 1 suppliers must tackle a variety of tasks when designing the next generation of smart autonomous mobility controllers, advised congatec. The first is to integrate vision and other sensors for gathering situational raw data, and to implement data pre-processing and AI to improve data analytics. They also need to design controller logic for autonomous vehicle movement and operation. In addition, the systems need 5G network sliced device connectivity for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. An added complication is that all of this needs to be implemented with real-time capabilities and functional safety. 

One focus for congatec at Intertraffic Amsterdam, will be the Intel Xeon D processor-based COM-HPC server modules for edge servers in autonomous railway applications and 5G wayside equipment. Another is the 12th Gen Intel Core processor-based COM‑HPC client and COM Express modules for smart vehicle gateways and vehicle network controllers. There is also an application-ready, Intel Atom processor-based, real time kinematic platform by congatec’s partner Etteplan.

This is based on congatec Computer-on-Modules and features an RTK-enabled GNSS unit with accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer. It is designed for automotive voltage ranges up to 36V. It supports a wide operating temperature range of -40 to +85 degreesC and provides IP65 / IP67 protection. 

For vehicle communication network connectivity, it offers extensions for real-time Ethernet (TSN), RS232, RS485 and CAN. Further edge connectivity options include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as well as LTE/5G. There are also ambient pressure, humidity and temperature sensors.

The platform is available as a prototype that can be ordered immediately for engineering purposes. For larger quantities, customisation is possible on a project basis. The standard system platform is scheduled to go into series production in the second half of 2022.

http://www.congatec.com 

For central processing in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving systems, the R-Car V4H SoC achieves deep learning up to to 34 tera operations per second (TOPS). This equips it for high speed image recognition and processing surrounding objects using automotive cameras, radar and lidar, said Renesas Electronics.

The R-Car V4H allows customers to develop cost-competitive, single-chip, ADAS electric control units (ECUs), said Renesas. It combines IP and hardware optimisation, to support driving systems appropriate for automated driving levels 2+ and 3, which are responsible for managing the highest volume of processing, including full NCAP 2025 support. The R-Car V4H also supports surround view and automatic parking functions with 3D visualisation effects such as realistic rendering.

The SoC development process targets ASIL D systematic capability for all safety relevant IP for ISO 26262 functional safety. The signal processing portion of the R-Car V4H is expected to achieve ASIL B and D metrics for the real time domain.

Renesas provides a dedicated power management for the R-Car V4H based around the RAA271041 pre-regulator and the RAA271005 power management IC (PMIC). This enables a power supply for the R-Car V4H and peripheral memories from the 12V supply of the vehicle battery at low power operation while targeting ASIL D compliance for systematic and random hardware faults with a low bill of materials cost, confirmed Renesas.

An R-Car V4H software development kit (SDK) is available for initial device evaluation, and software development including deep learning. The SDK offers full functionality for machine learning development, and optimisation of embedded systems for performance, power efficiency, and functional safety. Complete simulation models are available. The software is operating system-agnostic, pointed out Renesas. When developing from scratch, Fixstars’ Genesis platform enables engineers to evaluate R-Car from anywhere via their cloud solution and can provide CNN benchmark results.

The SoC has four Arm Cortex-A76 cores operating at 1.8Ghz for a total of 49kDMIPS of general compute, three lockstep Arm Cortex-R52 cores at 1.4Ghz, for a total of 9kDMIPS to support ASIL D real time operation and eliminate the need for external microcontrollers. There is also dedicated deep learning and computer vision IP, and image signal processor (ISP) with parallel processing for machine and human vision, image renderer (IMR) for fisheye distortion correction or other mathematical operation and an AXM-8-256 GPU operating at 600MHz, for a total of over 150 GFLOPS. There are also dedicated automotive interfaces (CAN, Ethernet AVB, TSN and FlexRay) and two fourth generation PCIe interfaces.

Samples of the R-Car V4H SoC are available now, with mass production scheduled for the second quarter of 2024.

http://www.renesas.com