Autonomous and Self-Driving Vehicle News: Arriver, Qualcomm, BMW, Mitsubishi & Valeo

.In Autonomous and self-driving Vehicle news are Arriver, Qualcomm, BMW, Mitsubishi and Valeo.

Arriver Supplies Vision for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride & BMW

Arriver, the ADAS and AD software unit of Veoneer, announced that, via its existing Master Collaboration Agreement with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., will provide Vision Perception software as part of Qualcomm Technologies’ announcement with BMW to bring the latest advancements in driver assistance technologies, and products of its Snapdragon Ride™ Platform to BMW.

Arriver’s vision perception software will be running on the Snapdragon Ride™ Platform, a product of Qualcomm Technologies. The start of production is slated for 2025. The collaboration contemplates, but is not limited to, the deployment of deep learning algorithms for vision perception with a full suite of vision functions.

“We are honored to have the opportunity to partner with Qualcomm Technologies and BMW for Arriver’s next generation vision software,” says Jan Carlson, Chairman, President and CEO, Veoneer. “This is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our teams. We look forward to continuing collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies to enable automakers to bring more safety and convenience benefits to drivers.”

Snapdragon and Snapdragon Ride are trademarks or registered trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated.
Snapdragon Ride is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or subsidiaries.

Mitsubishi Talking to Kamakura City About Autonomous Driving

Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) has been in talks with Kamakura City’s municipal government about developing its urban core and surrounding region into a smart city. Recently, our partnership joined forces with four other interests to commence a pilot project that will combine autonomous-driving technologies and healthcare services in Shonan Health Innovation Park (Shonan iPark). Along with Shonan iPark, our other partners on this project are Tokushukai Shonan Kamakura General Hospital (Kamakura General), Macnica, Inc. and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.

Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) has been in talks with Kamakura City’s municipal government about developing its urban core and surrounding region into a smart city. Recently, our partnership joined forces with four other interests to commence a pilot project that will combine autonomous-driving technologies and healthcare services in Shonan Health Innovation Park (Shonan iPark). Along with Shonan iPark, our other partners on this project are Tokushukai Shonan Kamakura General Hospital (Kamakura General), Macnica, Inc. and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.

One of the keys to the scheme will be making local medical services more convenient and accessible. Recently, MC has been working with the five parties to monitor roughly 1,000 residents of Kamakura and Fujisawa cities and augment those cities’ various medical services with self-driving vehicles.

The pilot project will likely involve the vehicles traveling to and from healthcare facilities to perform examinations, check patients’ vital signs and take their medical histories using digital technologies. If the pilot project is successful and the program can be rolled out permanently, then it should improve accessibility to patients’ homes and local healthcare facilities, enable those facilities to provide smoother treatments and reduce patient wait times.

Financial support for this pilot project is coming by way of Kanagawa Prefecture’s publicly-funded program to assist businesses that are engaged in trials of robotics technologies, as well as funding from the cities of Kamakura and Fujisawa.

MC has been nominated by Kamakura City as a private partner in its “Super City Concept.” We plan on making full use of our global business network, boosting the area’s value through collaborations with its local enterprises, and examining ways to introduce a variety of municipal services that are both safe and dedicated to improving quality of life.

In this new age of digital transformation, MC has been leveraging advanced technologies to introduce a wealth of urban services both in Japan and around the world. We have also been combining those efforts with energy-transformation initiatives aimed at lowering or even eliminating carbon emissions. To help realize distributed, carbon-neutral societies, we remain committed to “smart” urban developments that represent the next generation of city-management business, and we are pleased to do our part to make services in Kamakura and its surrounding region more convenient and environmentally friendly.

◆Shonan Kamakura General Hospital
1370-1 Okamoto, Kamakura, Kanagawa
Nobuaki Shinozaki
Operations/Hospital management

◆Shonan Health Innovation Park
2-26-1 Muraokahigashi, Fujisawa, Kanagawa
Toshio Fujimoto
Operation/Co-location ecosystem comprised of researchers, industry experts, venture startups, government, and academia who will collaborate and co-create – to accelerate research, with the aim of transforming cutting-edge science into impactful health solutions for patients across the world.

◆Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
2-7-3, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Kei Uruma
Operation/Manufacture and sales of a wide variety of electronics and electrical equipment.

◆Macnica Inc.
Macnica Bldg. No.1, 1-6-3 Shin-Yokohama, Kouhoku-ku, Yokohama,
Kazumasa Hara
Operation/Import, export, sale, development and processing of semiconductors and integrated circuits. Development, import, export and sale of electronic devices and peripherals.

Valeo Intros Third Gen LiDAR

Valeo, the global leader in driving assistance systems (ADAS), presented its third generation scanning LiDAR, set to make its market debut in 2024.

This new technology, which offers significantly enhanced performance, makes autonomous mobility a reality and provides previously unseen levels of road safety.

Geoffrey Bouquot, Valeo’s Senior Vice-President, R&D and Strategy said: “Valeo’s third generation LiDAR is a major technological advance toward the autonomous vehicle. This upgrade strengthens Valeo’s technological and industrial leadership in the field, when it was already the only supplier on the market currently series-producing an automotive-grade LiDAR scanner. Our number one goal with this device remains the same – to save lives on the road.”

Valeo’s third generation LiDAR delivers unrivaled performance in terms of range, resolution and frame rate.

It reconstructs a 3D real-time image of the vehicle’s surroundings at a rate of 4.5 million pixels and 25 frames per second. Compared to the previous generation, the resolution has been increased 12-fold, the range 3-fold and the viewing angle 2.5-fold.

Thanks to its unique perception capabilities, this new LiDAR can see things that humans, cameras and radars cannot. This means that driving can be delegated to the vehicle in many situations (level 2 automation and above), including on the highway at speeds of up to 130km/h. Even in such situations, a vehicle fitted with the third-generation scanning LiDAR can manage emergency situations autonomously.

Valeo’s scanning LiDAR detects, recognizes and classifies all objects located around the car. If the objects are moving, it measures their speed and direction. The scanning LiDAR can adapt to all light conditions, whether it’s dazzlingly bright or pitch black. It even measures the density of raindrops to calculate the right braking distance. It tracks nearby vehicles, even when they are no longer in the driver’s line of sight, and uses algorithms to anticipate their trajectories and trigger the necessary safety maneuvers.

Thanks to these features, the scanning LiDAR protects people inside the car and those around it – pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. Beyond the vehicles it equips, this LiDAR will alert, via the Cloud, other vehicles of road hazards so that the community benefits from its exceptional perception capabilities.

Valeo designs and manufactures the entire system, including the hardware, the software and the associated artificial intelligence, the “brain” that combines collected data and enables the vehicle to instantly make the right decision. Its software automatically adapts to the environment and improves its performance over time through regular updates.

Valeo’s LiDARs are produced in Germany at Valeo’s Wemding plant in Bavaria, where components are assembled with a micron level of precision. The plant’s production lines draw on Valeo’s state-of-the-art expertise in optics, mechanics and photonics (the branch of physics that focuses on the emission and detection of light particles, or photons). 300 engineers at Valeo are dedicated solely to this technology, for which over 500 patents have already been filed.

Valeo was the first, and to date remains the only, company to produce a scanning LiDAR on an industrial scale. It has already produced over 150,000 units and 99% of cars equipped with a scanning LiDAR scanner worldwide are equipped with a Valeo scanning LiDAR.

Up to 30% of premium new vehicles are set to reach level 3 automation by 2030, and to do so will need to be equipped with LiDAR technology. As well as cars, autonomous shuttles, robotaxis, delivery droids, autonomous trucks or the agriculture, mining and infrastructure sectors will need to be equipped with one or more LiDARs. The LiDAR market is expected to represent more than $50 billion by 2030.

Valeo’s new third generation LiDAR will be a key contributor to this change in scale.