Scalable ADAS solution opens up the front camera market

The new front camera solution combines the R-Car V3M, Renesas' high-performance, low-power image recognition system-on-chip (SoC) for New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP), and HELLA Aglaia's field-proven camera software designed to meet level 2 (partial automation) and level 3 (conditional automation) of the SAE International’s new J3016 standard. Designed for scalability, the solution enables system designers to build a wide range of front cameras from cameras supporting NCAP to cameras supporting requirements for up to level 3 applications.

This collaboration opens up the market for front cameras as sensor vision is projected to become a major requirement for NCAP over the next several years. “The front camera market is expected to exceed 200 million pieces over the next five years,” said Ian Riches, Director Autonomous Vehicles Service at Strategy Analytics. This is driven by the rapid adoption of NCAP safety features such as automated emergency braking, lane departure warning, and traffic sign recognition. OEMs & Tier 1s are seeking open-but-proven solutions with the right performance and cost efficiency balance to provide them the freedom to implement a front camera with their own differentiators.

“The market opportunity for front camera applications has grown rapidly, and customers are desperately seeking an open and proven solution. To realise a superior strategic alignment, we decided to combine the field-proven camera software from HELLA Aglaia with the Renesas autonomy Platform,” said Jean-Francois Chouteau, Vice President, Global ADAS Centre, Renesas Electronics. “The new solution enables customers to realise their own unique selling points (USPs) for their applications with reduced risk and faster time-to-market.”

“With the Renesas autonomy Platform for ADAS and automated driving, Renesas provides an open, scalable platform that matches our open and verified software to deliver a solution that enables OEM and Tier 1 to develop low- to high-end applications while giving them the opportunity to add their own software for extra value,” said Kay Talmi, Managing Director, HELLA Aglaia. “Optimised for low-cost front cameras, the R-Car V3M is the perfect match for our application software to realise NCAP applications.”

The Renesas R-Car V3M SoC implements a power-efficient computer vision platform using different accelerators, including a versatile pipeline engine (IMP) and a computer vision engine (CVE), allowing the R-Car V3M to run convolutional neural networks for the classification of objects and to manage algorithms like optical flow and object detection.

The R-Car V3M also features an integrated ISP and a single DDR3L memory channel offering potential for further cost reductions. The R-Car V3M is part of the Renesas autonomy Platform: Renesas’ ground-breaking platform for ADAS and automated driving that delivers total end-to-end solutions scaling from cloud to sensing and vehicle control.

HELLA Aglaia’s software solutions will shorten the development time, efforts, and risk for the next wave of front camera customers. As an experienced Tier 2 supplier of field-proven camera software for level 2 and level 3, HELLA Aglaia delivers software that is flexible and portable and that can be combined with Tier 1 or OEM software IP, allowing customers to focus on creating their USPs. The software is scalable and covers from low-cost NCAP applications up to level 3-based front camera applications.