ON Semiconductor and AImotive, are to work together to develop prototype sensor fusion platforms for automotive applications.

The collaboration will help customers explore  integrated solutions for future generations of sensor data conditioning hardware platforms.

The companies plan to develop a series of hardware platform demonstrators, combining ON’s latest HD camera and radar sensor and pre-processor chipsets and expertise with AImotive’s advanced AI-based perception algorithms, hardware acceleration and simulation capabilities.

The platforms will showcase AI-based real-time sensor fusion and will utilize AImotive’s aiWare hardware NN (Neural Network) acceleration IP in FPGA-based prototypes, as well as modules from its aiDrive software portfolio and its aiSim simulation environment.

It has become clear to many researchers, as well as automotive OEMs and Tier1s, that future autonomous driving platforms will require the fusion of data from multiple different sensor types to achieve the necessary robustness and the highest quality results in all operating conditions.

One approach gaining popularity is combining high resolution image sensors with advanced radar sensors to improve perception performance in all weather conditions. The complementary nature of these types of sensors enables the extraction of significantly more information when the data is combined intelligently, giving significantly more accurate results.

ON offers all four sensor modalities.

Combined, and used with technologies offered by companies like AImotive, these are able to address future vehicle requirements for robust, high performance sensor fusion platforms that support ADAS and autonomous driving.