Developing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems with Peace of Mind

At the recently concluded North American International Auto Show, the audience got a glimpse of an awesome array of vehicles from the around the globe, from the super exclusive Porsche 918 Spyder behind a glass enclosure to the more mainstream every day cars we see on the road.

Engine displacement and kilowatt stats were impressive, however even more impressive was the array of functionality the vehicles boasted, including the ability to parallel park itself, a task that many a new driver dreads while taking their driver’s license test.

Over the years, with the advancements in the braking systems, vehicle stability systems, etc., the car has become increasingly safe, as long as the driver is able to pay attention to driving. Over the same period, the numbers of devices in a vehicle that contribute to increasing driver distraction have also grown significantly, to the extent that today the act of driving has become a distraction.

With the development in robust and increasingly inexpensive GPS, video and proximity sensing technology, along with the growth in computing performance of automotive grade microcontrollers, a new class of vehicle electronics has been made possible: one that makes it possible to reduce the reliance on the driver to execute the task of driving. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) hold the promise of minimizing, if not eliminating, fatalities due to vehicle accidents by automating the act of safe driving and taking evasive action to mitigate unwanted events − even if the driver is not paying attention.

With the next generation of ADAS systems, which includes improvements in V2V and V2X standards, infrastructure, data security and reliability, the dream of a vehicle becoming fully autonomous has a very good promise of becoming a reality within the next 6 to 8 years.

ADAS systems development requires careful planning of the functionality, as well as a robust and powerful platform on which to implement concepts. In many instances, you see examples of development vehicles crammed to the limit with computing electronics being employed in the development stages. 

The dSPACE MicroAutoBox II enhanced with an embedded PC layer is an ideal compact, powerful and robust platform for developing ADAS functionality in the car. It blends the highly respected and field proven MicroAutoBox II development platform with an independent Intel ICore7 PC layer to deliver a compact and robust, yet powerful, development platform for ADAS feature development. This unit also provides Ethernet, USB, CAN, LIN and UART as standard interfaces and ability to add options such as FlexRay, and, in the near future, CanFD. In addition, the MicroAutoBox II platform can be further enhanced with a FPGA layer that can allow for application-specific communication protocol stacks to be integrated into the system.

On the software front, in addition to the unparalleled Simulink interface, the development environment is greatly enhanced with out-of-the-box interfaces to ADAS specific products and libraries like GPS Map data from NAVTEC (ADAS RP), and image processing and object detection libraries like EB Assist ADTF.

So if your vehicle programs require you to develop the next generation vehicle software to keep vehicle occupants safe, MicroAutoBox II with Embedded PC offers peace of mind in being a robust and capable development platform.