How many smart sensors should a car carry?

The following article comes from China Electronics News, author Chen Bingxin

“How to feel the intelligence level of a car? Sit in the cab and feel it.” “How to feel the intelligence level of the cab? Calculate the type and number of sensors in it.” These two sentences reflect consumers’ perception of the car. The most intuitive feeling of the intelligentization process also reflects the important role that sensors play in the intelligentization of automobiles. In recent years, the intelligent process of automobiles has continued to advance, and the cockpit, as a representative of them, has achieved rapid development. Sensors have become one of the key links in the development of smart cockpits and even the entire smart car industry.

The continuous integration of new functions and the rapid development of smart cockpits

In recent years, with the accelerated development of intelligence, electrification, and networking, automobiles are transforming from a single means of transportation to a third space integrating leisure, entertainment, office and other functions. In this process, as a space to carry and realize a series of intelligent applications and service changes of automobiles, the importance of intelligent cockpits in the development of intelligent vehicles has become increasingly apparent.

The popularity of smart cockpits in new car models has been accelerating in recent years. The central control large screen/connected screen, intelligent voice, OTA upgrade and other functions have become the most installed and common parts, and have gradually become an important criterion for judging whether the car is equipped with a smart cockpit. In addition, as technology upgrades and automakers seek to differentiate, more new functions have been incorporated into the smart cockpit.

Driver Monitoring System (DMS) is one of the most talked about driver assistance functions today. According to Zhang Chengyi Jerry Chang, Technical Marketing Manager of STMicroelectronics Asia Pacific Imaging Products Department, the DMS system can acquire images through cameras, and use image recognition technology and algorithm analysis capabilities to detect the driver’s driving behavior and physiological state, including head tracking, Eye tracking, driver recognition, fatigue driving detection, gaze tracking/distraction reminder, etc. Studies have shown that more than 60% of traffic accidents are caused by distracted or fatigued drivers, of which rear-end collisions account for as high as 94%. The image sensor is the core component of the DMS system. The continuous improvement of image sensor technology also brings higher safety and scene applicability to DMS systems and driving.

Human-computer interaction is also a focus of the current development of smart cockpits. As the voice interaction technology matures, the cockpit voice interaction has now achieved dual-tone interaction, which can identify the voice commands of the driver and the passengers. In the future, in-cabin interaction and object perception solutions such as gesture interaction, line-of-sight interaction, and head motion interaction will begin to receive more and more attention. Perception, understanding and expression will be an important development direction of the future intelligent cockpit human-computer interaction system. Although the human-computer interaction method in the car has been changing, the logic it follows remains the same, that is, how to make the driver’s operation more convenient and safe.

In addition, steering wheel pressure sensing, passenger identification (such as identifying child seat usage), temperature, humidity, gas sensing, etc., will be increasingly integrated into the car cockpit. Starting from human-computer interaction, as people have higher and higher requirements for safety and health, more and more new functions will be integrated in the future. The general direction is to improve the safety and comfort of car driving. After the rapid development of road recognition and automatic cruise, in-vehicle perception will become another focus of future development. Specifically, the currently mature in-vehicle environment perception content mainly focuses on speech recognition and control, driver fatigue monitoring, automatic air conditioning, etc., such as occupant health sign monitoring, children’s emotional monitoring, in-vehicle biological monitoring, etc. to give users warmth The functional content of caring will be the focus of the future.

The market continues to grow, and the variety and quantity of sensors increase

Conceptually, the smart cockpit is a system with the cockpit domain controller of the car as the core and the display screen, HMI (human-machine interaction), visual tracking and other components. Since the car cockpit does not involve chassis control and other aspects for the time being, the difficulty in technical implementation is relatively low. In addition, the cockpit is the space that has the closest contact with the driver and passengers, and the function landing is easier for users to perceive. Therefore, the smart cockpit has also become the most intelligent step in the current car. quick part.

As a representative, the development of the cockpit system reflects the process of intelligentization of the entire car. In this process, sensors will play a key role. Cars can be regarded as a platform for installing sensors. Sensors of various physical quantities, chemical quantities, and biomass will be more and more used in cars with the development of automobile intelligence. The degree of vehicle intelligence will become a key factor in determining vehicle performance and functionality. One of the foundations of intelligence is perception technology.

Against such a background, the market size of automotive sensors continues to grow. According to IHS data, the global smart cockpit market size will be approximately US$42 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to US$68.1 billion in 2030. Based on this, it can be seen that the process of automobile intelligence will continue to develop and provide more new growth points for upstream semiconductor products. IHSMarkit statistics show that the average number of sensors on a single vehicle (only including cameras, millimeter-wave radar and physical monitoring sensors) will be 3.3 in 2020, and it is expected to increase to 11.3 by 2030.

From the trend point of view, the future automotive sensor market will show a rapid upward trend. Automotive sensors can be roughly divided into two markets: stock and incremental. On the one hand, the scale of the stock market, mainly based on applications such as body and chassis, will not be reduced, and it will mainly be updated to a certain extent; on the other hand, the incremental market based on smart cockpit and autonomous driving is also rising rapidly. At present, most models of lidar have not been installed, millimeter-wave radars are only installed in a few cars, and fatigue driving monitoring sensors are only installed in a few models. These are predictable incremental markets. The forecast, if judged by the growth of new sensors, is expected to increase by more than 10% per year.

With the development of intelligence in the automotive field, effective driver monitoring is an important part of realizing autonomous driving, and it has also brought “core” opportunities for domestic CMOS image sensor manufacturers. The development of intelligence in the automotive field will provide more development opportunities for the sensor industry.

Reliability and stability are highlighted, and the development of automotive-grade sensing has become a key point

With the expansion of the automotive sensor market, more and more companies are showing some new technological trends while cutting into the automotive sensor track. The first is that more and more advanced sensors from semiconductor manufacturing processes such as MEMS will replace traditional types of sensors. MEMS and advanced sensors have low cost, good reproducibility, and high yield, and have a great alternative to traditional types of sensors. Of course, MEMS and advanced sensors will not completely replace traditional types of sensors. Silicon-based products still have certain limitations. For example, sensors that measure exhaust emissions need to support a high temperature environment of 800°C, which is a feature that silicon-based products do not have. .

Second, multi-sensor fusion in automobiles has become a mainstream trend. In view of the complexity of perception objects outside the vehicle, in order to cope with different scenarios and ensure vehicle driving safety, it is an industry consensus to choose a multi-sensor fusion perception scheme. Multi-sensor fusion has obvious advantages in dealing with different scenarios. It improves the accuracy of perception, increases the dimension of perception, and enhances the ability to adapt to the environment, further improving the reliability of system decision-making.

Third, the combination of sensors and artificial intelligence technology is becoming more and more closely, sensing people’s emotions and behaviors, and providing assistance for safe driving. AI can process real-time data from cameras, microphones, biosensors and even radar and then help the car make decisions. Computer vision is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers and systems to extract meaningful information from digital images, videos, and other visual input data, and act or make recommendations based on that information.

Finally, reliability and stability are the most important performances of automotive-grade sensors. The geographical environment of the world is very complex, and reliability and stability are very important for automotive sensors. Cars need to withstand more vibration and shock during the movement process, which requires automotive sensors to provide long life, high stability, and meet the requirements of high reliability of automotive products.

Based on these technological trends, the world’s development of the automotive sensor industry should take the user as the leader, gather system integrators, module hardware, sensor device and chip manufacturers to jointly build a technology research and development platform for production, education and research. Only in this way can a complete R&D system be established in accordance with the industrial chain structure, open up different links in the industry, promote the development of basic technologies, and jointly promote the localization of automotive sensors.

Cheersonic is the leading developer and manufacturer of ultrasonic coating systems for applying precise, thin film coatings to protect, strengthen or smooth surfaces on parts and components for the microelectronics/electronics, alternative energy, medical and industrial markets, including specialized glass applications in construction and automotive.