As the world is becoming more and more connected, so are vehicles.
The challenge today is to enhance the process of travelling,
to make automobile traffic smarter, safer, more comfortable and even greener.
Find out what our sensor solutions do for the automotive industry!
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With the rise of automated driving, hands-on wheel detection is gaining importance. Besides comfort, the main motivation of driver assistance systems is a safer driving experience.
ams OSRAM AS8579 capacitive sensor uses novel technique for foolproof, hands-on detection design. It enables sensing placement within the steering-wheel industry’s first completely reliable solution for hands-on detection and offers the simplest way for car makers to comply with the UN Regulation 79.
Read also our blog post about capacitive sensor and new capabilities in fluid level sensing.
Driver monitoring systems are designed to obtain information about the driver for safety- and comfort- related applications.
Camera-based driver monitoring systems can detect signs of driver drowsiness or driver distraction and trigger the car's safety systems to respond with appropriate acoustic and haptic warnings to ensure driver attentiveness and so increase safety. Beside the safety enhancing aspects, driver monitoring systems can realize comfort-related applications like driver identification and authentication used to adjust automatic settings and in-car payment.
Various system architectures can be used to realize optical driver monitoring: from 2D-based NCAP and regulation-compliant systems up to more advanced 3D-capable designs like Active Stereo Vision, Structured Light, and Time of Flight (ToF).
The TARA2000-AUT high-power flood illuminator is ideal for the new optical in-cabin sensing (ICS) systems based on 3D time-of-flight sensing and 2D NIR imaging, which support the next generation of assisted and autonomous driving technologies in vehicles. The TARA2000-AUT provides a uniform beam with edge-to-edge high-power illumination over a rectangular field, and is the industry’s first to be qualified to the AEC-Q102 automotive quality standard and the ISO 26262 functional safety standard. It is ideal for 3D gesture sensing as well as 2D/3D driver and interior monitoring applications.
| Product | Longevity | Datasheet | Demoboard | Buy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TARA2000-AUT | The TARA2000-AUT is designed for th ... |
Tomorrow’s automotive interior will be fundamentally different in shape and functionality, as end customers demand greater convenience, safety, and individualization. Car manufacturers around the world are working toward enhancing the overall driving experience for their customers and this includes implementing innovative ways in which the driver and the passengers can interact with the vehicle's systems and settings.
Optical gesture sensing has proven itself to be a superior technology to simplify human-machine interaction in the car and improve safety by enabling the driver to keep their eyes on the road while communicating with the vehicle via gestures . Already today, optical gesture control systems enable applications like starting or ending a phone call, starting or ending the navigation, controlling the sunroof, radio and sound-settings, scrolling through menus, and adjusting the interior lighting. As the technology matures, more and more applications will follow.
With its rich portfolio of illumination and sensing solutions, ams can support various system approaches ranging from proximity-based solutions for simple and static gesture recognition up to highly sophisticated 3D ToF architectures for complex and dynamic gesture recognition.
With new upcoming occupant-related safety standards and increasing vehicle autonomy, interior monitoring systems are becoming indispensable to gather a sophisticated scene understanding of the vehicle's interior.
Focusing on passengers, pets, and objects in the car, interior monitoring systems can enable various safety- and comfort-related applications for passenger cars and robo-shuttles, like child- and pet-presence detection, adaptive-airbag deployment, unbuckled-occupant detection, people counting and object left-behind detection.
With a wide range of illumination and sensing solutions, ams can address all common 2D and 3D imaging-based system architectures to realize interior-sensing applications.
Based on the inductive sensor technology, these sensors measure the coupling between an excitation coil (TX) and two receiver coils (RX) via a rotating target. The coils are executed as printed circuit coils and the rotating target is a simple punched metal part. With the correct layout of the coils and the target, both synchronized to the number of pole-pair count of the motor, the IC output is proportional to the electrical angular position within one pole-pair segment with increased resolution and high performance of only 0.3° electrical INL!
Due to its flexibility, easy adaption and low overall system costs, these products act as the perfect resolver replacement and can be used for on-axis as well off-axis applications!
Highly accurate, robust and reliable, compact position sensors from ams are an ideal fit for automotive angle and rotary position sensing applications.
ams automotive angle sensors are widely used for sensing the angle of the accelerator and brake pedals, and the position of gear shifters and chassis.
Dedicated rotary position sensors for motor control are also ideal for automotive uses, such as the pump motors in electric power steering and transmission system motors. The number of electric and hybrid electric vehicles on the road is also set to grow at a rapid rate. Here, the ams motor control sensor portfolio offers high accuracy at high rotation speeds, while remaining inherently immune to the external magnetic fields induced by the high currents flowing through the motor.
The move to equip vehicles with increasingly sophisticated driver assistance systems, and eventually to make the vehicle fully autonomous, requires a combination of object detection and imaging sensors. By combining radar detectors, cameras and optical depth sensing systems such as LiDAR, a vehicle can capture a detailed, real-time view of the space around it, while building in redundancy to protect against the failure of any one sensor.
For LiDAR systems, the VCSEL arrays and VCSEL driver technology from ams provide high-power light sources that operate extremely reliably over a broad temperature range.
>> Join the LiDAR Tech Talk on Dec. 15th
>> Watch our demo video about automotive solutions
Micro Lens Array (MLA) projection technology from ams enables automotive manufacturers to implement compact, small-footprint projection lighting which can cast bright and crisp images on to flat surfaces. Featuring inherently extended focal lengths, MLA Projected Lighting devices can cast images on a variety of surfaces and over long focal distances, making them ideal for both exterior body lighting and interior lighting.
Future applications include decorative lighting for cars' exterior and interior, but also safety lighting, such as an additional brake light or back up guide lamp, helping to raise awareness of other traffic participants about actions this vehicle is taking. With upcoming autonomy of cars, this will also become ever more important to show when a vehicle is in autonomous mode.
> Check out our webinar about projected lighting
> Watch our demo video about projection lighting
Electric vehicles need to measure very precisely the traction battery’s state of charge and state of health in order to make an accurate estimate of the vehicle’s range.
Shunt resistor-based, zero-offset battery sensing solutions from ams enable automotive battery management systems to make the very accurate current and voltage measurements which are required in this application.
ams offers a data acquisition IC for battery management, the AS8510, and a companion IC chip, the AS8525, for current measurement at the positive pole of the battery.