Simulation is the only way to get the kind of confidence necessary to field autonomous vehicle functions. Karsten Krügel, Sven Flake, dSPACE GmbH HOW do you ensure that an autonomous vehicle will perform safely when the driver’s responsibility has essentially been removed? The necessity for reliable operation under this scenario is raising major challenges within […]
Inertial measurement units will keep self-driving cars on track
IMUs are just as important as cameras and radar when it comes to operating autonomous vehicles reliably. Mike Horton, Aceinna Inc. AN inertial measurement unit (IMU) is a device that directly measures a vehicle’s three linear acceleration components and three rotational rate components (and thus its six degrees of freedom). An IMU is unique among […]
How to test time-sensitive networks effectively
Connected vehicles depend on networks that won’t bog down when handling real-time data. Specialized TSN tests ensure messages arrive on time and intact. Jeff Warra, Spirent ETHERNET has been the backbone of IT infrastructure for more than 40 years, but it was never designed to be a determinist network. That’s why, over time, Ethernet standards […]
When tire pressure monitoring gets smart
Bluetooth-enabled tire monitors will check inflation pressures and temperatures with much more precision than available through yellow lights on a dash panel. Addy Mulders, Dialog Semiconductor THE words “connected cars” often bring to mind self-driving autonomous vehicles. But connected cars will offer a variety of capabilities, not the least of which is tire pressure monitoring […]
The tricky business of teaching cars to see
Neural network software can be difficult to debug. One reason: It functions only vaguely in the way it has been explained to the general public. Leland Teschler, Executive Editor CRACK open an autonomous-driving vehicle and you will find neural networks taught to recognize objects such as pedestrians, road signs, and other vehicles. Recent accidents involving […]
Connecting the car is the easy part
At the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers, no small number of technical papers cover issues surrounding driver interactions with features on the car dashboard. Touchscreens, in particular, are a hot topic. You can find SAE papers with impressive-sounding titles such as, Touch Interactive Display Systems: Human Factors Considerations, System Design and Performance […]
Cozmo Robot, a distant relative of Vector: Teardown
Cozmo is a palm-sized robot from San Francisco-based Anki, the same company that makes an intelligent racing robot system called Overdrive that we’ve torn down previously. Cozmo is actually an earlier version of an Anki robot called Vector. Vector has more capabilities in the area of artificial intelligence, thanks to its use of a processor that’s […]
Drone kit aims to make innovation easy for amateurs
IIT Bombay-based nano-drone startup, Drona Aviation, has developed PlutoX, said to be ultimate aerial robotics kit for makers. “Being tinkerers ourselves, we’re well aware of the demotivating crashes, burdensome coding and other challenges that limit the scope of tinkering and innovating with drones. PlutoX was engineered particularly ensuring agility, durability and affordability for fellow tinkerers,” […]
Synchronous 8Kx36 RAM compatible with RC10001 MCUs demonstrates long life
The RelChip RC2110836 is a synchronous 8Kx36 RAM compatible with the RC10001 microcontroller. The memory is highly configurable, with options for data width, parity, latency, and burst-mode. Each byte of the 32 data pins can be written individually with the byte write (BW0n through BW3n) control pins. Thirteen bits of address (ADQ [14:2]) are input […]
Bluetooth Low Energy sensor development kit features low power dissipation
A new 15 Degrees-of-Freedom (DOF) SmartBond Multi-Sensor Kit supports sensor connectivity in the Internet of Things (IoT). Built on Dialog’s DA14585 SmartBond System-on-Chip (SoC), the kit allows engineers to easily connect sensors to the cloud at the lowest power and smallest footprint. Said to support more sensors than any other on the market, the kit […]