innovation paper

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ADAS: How tomorrow’s vehicles will keep their drivers safe

Systems to assist drivers and enhance vehicle safety are fast becoming mainstream across the auto industry, with HARMAN among the pioneering companies in this field. By overlaying images from car-mounted external cameras with advanced software visualization graphics, HARMAN Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) give warnings and offer greater directional clarity to drivers in complex road situations.

Driver assistance systems usually work by linking sensors in the vehicle for speed and wheel revolutions with safety devices such as lane departure warning systems, enabling the system to alert drivers if their car is drifting out of its lane and prevent collision with other vehicles. This is supported by other safety features such as blind spot and distance warnings. Even if the driver’s attention wanders momentarily, the system warns of impending danger, such as a car or bicycle in the driver’s blind spot. These features all work to increase safety—the primary function of ADAS. However, as well as safety devices, ADAS systems also provide augmented-reality navigation, with clear directional cues to show drivers the way, and can display traffic jam warnings by accessing traffic information.

2D and 3D reality enriched with navigation data There are essentially two approaches to presenting the real-time view of the road. One option is to use a

head-up display unit (HUD). In this method, warnings and directional instructions are projected onto the windshield by the display, creating an enriched version of reality, with transparent arrows and other cues overlaying the road and roadside landmarks. The second option is to use a separate display device. In this case, the system combines instructions with an image of the road which is captured by the car’s own video cameras, with route geometry taken from the map database. Information such as the distance to the manoeuvre, current speed, yaw rate and direction of motion is captured by vehicle sensors. All this information is combined and projected into a motion picture showing the road ahead (as filmed by the video camera). The outcome is a real-time film of the road from the driver’s perspective, enriched with directional and other guidance information.

In all cases, the ability of the system to direct drivers depends on complex, powerful algorithms to calculate and compensate for vehicle movement and to place directional arrows correctly. If processing is not speedy enough, a delay is experienced – which can be too late to warn of impending collision.

HARMAN uses special filter algorithms to precisely calculate the current vehicle position. These are now enhanced by HARMAN’s recent acquisition of the iONRoad company, a developer of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, including the iOnRoad

ADAS: How tomorrow’s vehicles will keep their drivers safe

By Kelei Shen

Heads-up display unit

ADAS on Android

Rear view camera

innovation paper

augmented-reality driving app. This complements HARMAN’s expertise in head-up displays in a unique way, and enables HARMAN to provide many of the safety features of a premium HUD solution on smartphone platforms. The technology uses the phone’s native camera and on-board sensors to detect other vehicles, enabling it to give drivers timely warnings of collisions, issue headway distance warnings to alert drivers when they are getting too close to the vehicle in front, and give speeding alerts to encourage safer (and greener) driving.

Infotainment systems and smartphones in any case share many similar components, including hardware, interfaces and operating systems, enabling the technology to work in both in-vehicle infotainment units and smartphones. HARMAN plans to embed the algorithms into the head-up display on both scalable and premium infotainment platforms.

ADAS systems are becoming more common – and software-only solutions such as apps point the way forward for many drivers. By integrating the leading iOnRoad technology into its platforms, while also giving users the choice of a full-featured app for their smartphones, HARMAN is again pioneering a fresh direction in this field.

innovation paper / ADAS: How tomorrow’s vehicles will keep their drivers safe

ADAS systems also provide augmented-reality navigation, with clear directional cues to

show drivers the way, and can display traffic jam warnings by accessing traffic information.

Kelei Shen is the vice president of Harman International’s China R&D Center, where he has also held the post of senior director. Previously, Mr. Shen worked at Harman/Becker Automotive Systems, where he held roles of increasing responsibility, including principal engineer, software platform manager, and senior manager of electronic system integration. He has also worked as a senior software engineer at Siemens VDO and as a software engineer at DSP Technology Inc.

Mr. Shen holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Eastern Michigan University; he also holds a degree from the Shanghai Theatre Academy.

HARMAN (www.harman.com) designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of infotainment and audio solutions for the automotive, consumer, and professional markets. It is a recognized world leader across its customer segments with premium brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, and Mark Levinson® and leading-edge connectivity, safety and audio technologies. The Company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems.

Keywords: ADAS, infotainment, navigation, safety, automotive ivi, in-vehicle infotainment, augmented reality, head-up displays

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