Companies connected car news this week were Honda, VW, QuantumScape, OpenSynergy, FLIR Systems, Valens, CMT, Morpace, Quanergy, Iteris, AdaCore, DANNAR, ZF and Mobileye.
Honda Headquarters Goes Solar
Honda flipped the switch on a new solar energy system at the American Honda Motor Co., Inc. campus in Torrance, Calif., one of the largest solar arrays on a commercial building in Southern California, and at 2.0 megawatts (MW) direct current, one of Honda’s largest on-site renewable energy installations anywhere in the world. The new solar array expands Honda’s ongoing commitment to reduce its environmental footprint by developing and implementing renewable energy projects throughout its operations.
VW Invests in Solid-State EV Battery Company QuantumScape
By increasing its stake in the California technology company QuantumScape Corporation and forming a new joint venture, Volkswagen Group is paving the way for the next level of battery power for long-range e-mobility. Dr. Axel Heinrich, Head of VW Group Research, who will take a seat on the board of directors of QuantumScape, says: “We want to accelerate the commercialization of QuantumScape’s solid-state batteries. And we combine forces to leverage Volkswagen’s experience as a production specialist and QuantumScape technology leadership. Volkswagen is thus taking another step toward a sustainable, zero emission mobility for our customers in the future.” Volkswagen will invest 100m USD in US-based QuantumScape and will become the innovative enterprise’s largest automotive shareholder. Closing of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval.
Faurecia Automotive Parnters with OpenSynergy
Faurecia Automotive, announced its new partnership with OpenSynergy, a specialist in automotive hypervisor technology. Parrot New Infotainment System (NIS) 8X00 will be equipped with OpenSynergy’s COQOS Hypervisor SDK to become a fully scalable platform. Thanks to this technology, the NIS 8X00 can simultaneously run several operating systems on a single SoC (System-on-Chip) – effectively and safely separating Android from safety functions such as displaying tell-tales on the instrument cluster display. As a result, the NIS 8X00 can drive 2 or more displays at once: the digital instrument cluster, the center stack, etc.
OpenSynergy’s COQOS Hypervisor is part of the COQOS Hypervisor SDK that provides virtualization for the car. This highly efficient and reliable hypervisor has been built to meet the specific requirements of demanding automotive applications. It creates virtual machines that can host operating systems like Linux and Android, and also real-time operating systems such as AUTOSAR. It is also able to handle multi-OS window composition on several displays: the center display features an Android window while on the instrument cluster display, RTOS and Linux windows are composed together with an Android window (showing navigation, current music or phone call) – a market first!
The NIS 8X00 is a full-fledged infotainment system running the latest version of Android with a complete feature set: analog & digital radio, navigation, hands-free telephony, voice recognition, smartphone projected modes (Apple CarPlay, Android Auto), connected services, multimedia content and a very wide range of apps. The NIS 8X00 is open, scalable and can be upgraded wirelessly: from Android Oreo to Android P, Q, etc.
FLIR Systems Dataset for ADAS
FLIR Systems, Inc. announced the availability of a free machine learning thermal dataset for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and self-driving vehicle researchers, developers, and auto manufacturers, featuring a compilation of more than 10,000 annotated thermal images of day and nighttime scenarios.
The first of its kind to include annotations for cars, other vehicles, people, bicycles, and dogs, the starter thermal dataset enables developers to begin testing and evolving convolutional neural networks (CNN) with the FLIR Automotive Development Kit (ADK™). The dataset empowers the automotive community to quickly evaluate thermal sensors on next-generation algorithms. When combined with visible light cameras, LiDAR, and radar, thermal sensor data paired with machine learning, helps create a more comprehensive and redundant system for identifying and classifying roadway objects, especially pedestrians and other living things.
Mobility Generates Revenue
The need to provide clean, decarbonized, and efficient transportation is crucial to solving many of the most serious challenges facing cities including air pollution, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions. Technologies such as EVs, automated vehicles, intelligent transportation systems, smart parking systems, last-mile logistics, mass transit innovations, and mobility-as-a-service options are expected to approach mainstream adoption within the next decade. According to a new report from Navigant Research, cumulative revenue for global urban mobility technologies is expected to reach $240.9 Billion in 2027
Valens Launches PCIe Mod Platform
Valens, the developer of HDBaseT technology for in-vehicle connectivity, is announcing the launch of its PCIe Module, an evaluation platform to demonstrate the long-distance transmission of PCIe data over an HDBaseT Automotive link. HDBaseT Automotive’s ability to extend PCIe signals simplifies complex in-vehicle architectures by optimizing resource sharing of ECUs (Electronic Control Units), communication devices, SSDs (Solid-State Drives), and more.
HDBaseT Automotive enables symmetric tunneling of data, with native networking capabilities over a single unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable for up to 15 meters (50 feet).
A key application for the PCIe Module are smart antennas and telematics, as HDBaseT Automotive can connect the numerous antennas on top of a car to an ECU located in a more environmentally-friendly location than the roof, with only unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cables. The PCIe Module is also able to converge other interfaces over the same cable (such as I2S, UART, side-band signals, etc.), as part of the telematics unit.
CMTC ARA Consulting
CMTC announced the addition of Advanced Robotics and Automation (ARA) consulting to its portfolio of manufacturing services throughout our California’s Manufacturing Network. Raminder Sandhu has joined CMTC in the position of Advanced Robotics & Automation Practice Lead. Raminder brings over 30 years of experience in engineering, manufacturing automation and technical sales to CMTC. He has worked at a diverse range of organizations, from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 50 companies. In addition to Raminder’s expertise, CMTC has developed relationships with key resource partners across the state from industry, economic development and academia to support the advanced robotics and automation needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
Morpace Wins Geotab Data Challenge
Morpace is honored to have won the inaugural Geotab Data Challenge in the category of Smart Community for their concept of DataDialogue™|Park. The concept is for an application designed to help find and recommend convenient, safe parking for long-haul truck drivers before their Hours of Service (HOS) expire.
Depending on the level of data integration, the parking recommendation engine can be tailored to:
- Find parking in a preset radius based on current location, when integrated with vehicle telematics/GPS
- Find parking near projected location of HOS expiration, when integrated with Electronic Logging Device (ELD)/HOS
- Find parking near location most appropriate based on final destination and HOS expiration, when integrated with dispatch.
Using a proprietary Parking Favorability Score for each parking area, the app concept provides the driver with:
- Parking areas based on current or projected location
- A ranked order of the recommended parking locations
- Detailed pop-up including ranking, rating, and distance
Quanergy Honored by Juniper Research
Quanergy Systems, Inc., a global leader in the design and development of solid state LiDAR sensors and smart sensing solutions, t announced that its innovative LiDAR sensors have been selected as Best Consumer Product in Automotive and Telematics by Juniper Research in its annual Future Digital Awards for Technology and Innovation. Audi’s AI Traffic Jam Pilot was named runner-up in the same category. The Future Digital Awards are awarded to companies that have made outstanding contributions to their industry and who are positioned to make a significant impact in the future.
Car2Go in Chicago
car2go, the world’s largest and fastest-growing free-float carsharing service, is bringing its pioneering mobility offering to Chicago. Beginning July 25, car2go will introduce Chicagoans to a new form of carsharing through its on-demand, “free-floating” network of 400 affordable, eco-friendly vehicles.
Iteris IDIQ from FHWA
Iteris, Inc. the global leader in applied informatics for transportation and agriculture, announced that it has been awarded an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract with a ceiling of $19.5 million from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to provide continued development, evolution and deployment support for the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) reference architecture program.
Under the five-year IDIQ contract, Iteris will support the evolution of the Architecture Reference for Cooperative and Intelligent Transportation (ARC-IT) content to reflect changes in ITS, and connected automated vehicle (CAV) developments. The program supports statewide and regional ITS planning and deployment to encourage interoperability and CAV preparedness through workshops, training and technical assistance.
AdaCore for GNAT Pro
AdaCore, a trusted provider of software development and verification tools, announced that customers using the LynxSecure Separation Kernel Hypervisor from Lynx Software Technologies can take advantage of GNAT Pro in a variety of scenarios to maximize their productivity with Ada. Potential use cases include migrating code from PowerPC LynxOS-178 to Intel LynxOS-178 under LynxSecure, writing safe and secure lightweight Bare-Metal LynxSecure Applications in Ada, and running Ada code under guest OSes such as Windows and Linux.
Ada brings many benefits to avionics software developers through higher reliability, increased confidence in an application’s safety and security, and lower verification costs. The language’s strong typing and other compile-time checks detect errors early, when they are least expensive to correct. And Ada’s contract-based programming features (such as subprogram pre- and postconditions) embed low-level requirements in the source code where they can be verified either with run-time checks, or, with appropriate tool support such as from the SPARK Pro technology, through static analysis. These benefits have long been enjoyed by GNAT Pro customers using Lynx Software Technologies’ solutions, and the support for LynxSecure opens up new opportunities for Ada developers. Projects using LynxOS-178 as part of the LynxSecure Safety Bundle can realize system SWaP (Size, Weight and Performance) benefits through safe sub-system consolidation on multi-core processors and, in a DO-178B/C context, save significant certification costs by taking advantage of Reusable Software Component (RSC) artifacts.
DANNAR Provides MPS in San Joaquin Valley
DANNAR, a leader in zero-emission off-road technologies, is partnering with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to deploy the first Mobile Power Stations (MPS) in California at the Port of Stockton. The MPS is a robust off-road battery-electric mobile platform that offers multi-function capabilities that can efficiently replace multiple pieces of single-purpose, conventional diesel off-road equipment. Funded in-part by the California Air Resources Board through California Climate Investments, the project will help accelerate the commercial deployment of zero-emission off-road technologies, as well as significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, criteria pollutants, and diesel emissions to benefit adjacent and surrounding disadvantaged communities.
ZF & Mobileye for Big OEM
ZF announced it will team with Mobileye, an Intel Company, to launch the S-Cam4 family of advanced cameras in 2018.
The two companies have joined forces to provide this innovative camera technology to a major automotive OEM, resulting in the largest automotive camera contract in ZF’s history.
Toyota RI Open Sources CARLA
Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is furthering its support of open source platforms by donating $100,000 to the Computer Vision Center (CVC) to accelerate its development of an open source simulator for automated driving, Car Learning to Act (CARLA).
CARLA is hosted on Github, and its development is directed by the CVC at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain. The non-profit, open source simulator is for the development, training and validation of automated urban driving systems. It is designed to ensure the stability of automated vehicles in myriad situations that are not always testable in the real world. With flexibility and realism in mind, CARLA offers a multitude of environmental conditions and is designed to be extended and easily modified to fit specific project needs.
The team behind CARLA plans on using TRI’s gift to expand its engineering team and the simulator’s capabilities.
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