For years the automotive industry has always been a fuel to innovation and growth. With the rapidly increasing population and the transport systems, the need for driver safety and experience is becoming important. Lot of R & D is happening to make the travel safe and secure. With the government’s continuing to push for greater road safety, followed by increasing consumers’ interest, automotive OEM’s are under pressure to make vehicles smarter than ever before and helping drivers to avoid potentially dangerous situations. The focus has shifted from crash survival to crash avoidance. This has led to the emergence of Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS).
Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are technologies that provide a driver with essential information, automate difficult or repetitive tasks, and lead to an overall increase in car safety for everyone.
Currently by using ADAS the automotive industry is developing sensor-based solutions to increase vehicle safety in speed zones where driver error is most common: at lower speeds, when the driver is stuck in traffic, and at higher speeds, when the driver is cruising on a long stretch of highway.
By using a combination of the advanced sensors, such as stereo cameras and long- and short-range RADAR, combined with actuators, control units, and integrating software, to enable cars to monitor and respond to their surroundings. The sensor based ADAS techniques help to figure out the three – dimensional geometry of any situation in front of a vehicle in real time from the images it sees. Thus these Driver Assistance technologies will not just have a positive effect on driver behaviour, but it would also help to improve drivers understanding of their potential to impact road safety, traffic efficiency and the environment.
Some of the ADAS solutions include lane departure warning systems, adaptive cruise control, back-up alerts, parking assistance, object detection, 360 degree cameras for better viewing, Blind spot detection, Driver drowsiness detection amongst others.
Thus by using ADAS technologies not just enhance safety but it also augments the driving experience by performing the following functionalities like – Draw the attention of the driver beforehand to the approaching traffic, signal road users located in the driver’s blind spot, assist the driver in directing his attention to relevant information and providing knowledge on the next traffic situation in advance.
Currently premium segment cars do have ADAS technology embedded in their high-end selected models which promise safety coupled with enhanced driving experience. The penetration of the ADAS technology has been currently limited to high end and mid-segment cars.
Thus the next generation of driver-assistance systems will likely offer greater vehicle autonomy at lower speeds and may reduce the incidence of low-impact crashes.
In this context, Tata Elxsi’s Transportation Business unit has closely worked with many automotive OEMs and suppliers to bring out advanced active safety systems. The organization have worked on every aspect of the process, starting from paper specifications to final prototyping, as well as custom engineering design solutions to address the entire product lifecycle. Image processing experts are involved in developing Driver Assistance algorithms which can be easily ported to target hardware. Experience in video analytics makes it easier for OEMs or suppliers to develop new advanced safety assistance features inside the car. Tata Elxsi have worked on systems like Lane Departure warning, Driver Drowsiness Detection, Pedestrian detection system, Parking assistance, Night vision systems, Blind spot warning systems etc.
At this juncture, Mr. Anil Sondur, Vice President – Tata Elxsi will highlight how Tata Elxsi is poised to take advantage of the new growth opportunities in the automotive electronics and ADAS, how ADAS will play a crucial role in self-driven cars and what would be the future of ADAS and its adoption in the Indian markets.
