Siemens introduces Pave360

Siemens’ Pave360 pre-silicon autonomous validation environment allows suppliers to collaborate and develop next-generation automotive chips. Pave360 extends digital twin simulation to include automotive hardware and software sub systems, full vehicle models, sensor data fusion, traffic flows, and the simulation of smart cities through which self-driving cars will ultimately travel.

“Pave360 enables everyone in the automotive value chain to develop custom system-on-chips (SoCs), optimized for the performance, power, safety, thermal, and form factor requirements of driver-assisted and fully automated vehicles in a completely virtual environment,” says Jim McGregor, principal analyst at TIRIAS Research. “It is part of a complete, closed-loop simulation solution that allows designers to test everything from silicon development to full vehicle validation.”

Pave360 is on display in the Center for Practical Autonomy Lab in Novi, Michigan.https://www.siemens.com

Several motor vehicle suppliers – ZF, Sense Photonics, and Innovusion – are launching vision systems to support advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving.

ZF’s contribution is the Dual-cam two-lens camera for commercial trucks, part of their S-CAM4 lineup. Supported functions include traffic sign recognition, lane-keeping assist and centering, and object- and pedestrian-detection to enable automatic emergency braking (AEB).

Sense Photonics raised $26 million to continue developing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and 3D sensor solutions for autonomous vehicles, industrial equipment, and other applications. The company’s solid-state LiDAR system’s flash architecture doesn’t have moving parts or scanning, enabling high resolution across wide horizontal and vertical fields-of-view without compromising frame rate.

Innovusion’s Cheetah hybrid solid-state LiDAR uses a rotating polygon optical architecture, proprietary detector electronics, advanced optics, and sophisticated software algorithms for long-distance, high-resolution sensing. The system can detect objects with 10% reflectivity 200m away and more-reflective objects from 280m. https://www.innovusion.com; https://www.sensephotonics.com; https://www.zf.com

Truck maker Volvo and chip maker Nvidia plan to jointly develop the decision-making system for autonomous commercial vehicles and machines. Using Nvidia’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform for training, simulation, and in-vehicle computing, the resulting system should handle fully autonomous driving on public roads and highways.

The solution will be built on Nvidia’s software for sensor processing, perception, map localization, and path planning, enabling autonomous driving applications such as freight transport, refuse and recycling collection, public transport, construction, mining, and forestry.

The partnership will focus on developing a flexible, scalable autonomous driving system to be used first in commercial pilots and later in commercial offerings from the Volvo Group. The agreement spans several years. https://www.nvidia.com; https://www.volvogroup.com