Autonomous Vehicles - KPIT

Dr. Vinay G. Vaidya
CTO
KPIT Technologies Limited,
Pune, India
Editorial
Sometime ago I was talking with one of the engineers working with an automotive OEM in France. We started talking about the
complexities in airplane design and automotive design. Having worked in the aerospace industry on the autopilot design for many
years, I was of the opinion that it is the addition of one more dimension in space that makes a world of difference in adding complexity.
My automotive engineer friend on the other hand has spent all his engineering career in automotive engineering and he was not ready
to agree with me. He said aerospace engineers have to deal with that third dimension but it is lot easier to deal with that than dealing
with randomly walking pedestrians on the street.
It got me thinking about real scenes on a street. The very reason why one would like to have a driverless vehicle is to handover the
complexity of maneuvering through traffic to computers. The problem statement for designing an autonomous vehicle is fairly simple.
It can be written as follows.
To design a driverless vehicle to go from place A to place B, do not bump into anything, follow all traffic rules, and ensure proper
functioning of the vehicle. Let's take each one of the sub requirements.
To go from place A to place B, one needs to know where the vehicle is, where is the place B, directions to go from A to B. All this is
possible with the help of a GPS. Thus, first major component of this system would be a GPS.
What does 'do not bump into anything' mean? The vehicle needs to know what is around it. What action taken by the vehicle could lead
to bumping? Every action taken by the vehicle has to be well thought out to ensure that none of the actions would lead to adverse
reaction. Now we slowly start seeing the complexity. One needs to have fairly complex sensor system in place. These sensors could be
optical (cameras), ultrasound, radar, LIDAR (radar based on laser), or infrared. Thus, sensor systems is the second major component
in our design.
Following all traffic rules requires one to know a few things. First of all we need to know where the signals and traffic signs are. Having
identified them we need to understand what they mean. One also needs to know other rules and regulations regarding driving in
general and speed limits in particular. Regulations forms the third system component.
While doing all this if your car is not working properly then we will not go anywhere. When we go out on a long distance trip, what do we
check? We check fuel, oil, water, and tires. While driving we keep an eye on the engine temperature. Now while we sit back and relax in
an autonomous vehicle, someone else has to keep an eye. We have another way of eyeing the system and that is through sensors.
Our system should check all this at all times. Therefore, the fourth component is the health monitoring system.
With more and more systems getting added one cannot forget that we have to move the car. All electronics should work in conjunction
with mechanical systems. That constitutes our fifth component called mechatronics.
All these system components would not be able to do anything unless someone gathers all the information, analyzes it, and comes up
with a concrete action to be taken by some sub system. This requires a command, control, and communication unit. This unit is our
sixth component.
Although we have all the systems in place, there is no guarantee that we can acquire information, assimilate it, and give out proper
guidance in a timely manner. The command control system may take long time to make a decision. It may tell you to stop but in the
mean time you have already hit a pole on the street! This necessitates use of fast processing using multicore processors.
We now have all the components ready but it has no life in it. Our system will never be able to “think”. We need to develop algorithms to
make the system mimic thinking. These algorithms should be able to capture signals, get live streaming videos, find cars in front of your
car, and find cars behind your car as well as on the side. It should calculate speeds of all these vehicles. If you want to increase speed it
should tell you not to, since the car in front of you is too close. If you want to make a lane change then it should tell you that there are cars
on the side. It should also watch for pedestrians during day time and night time. It should watch for any other obstacles. It should
observe lane markings. It should read traffic signs and check speed regulations. It should monitor health of the car. In case of any
issues within the command control system, it should fall back on a redundant system. Let's have our fingers crossed for not having any
intruder getting into the system to cause havoc. One should have tight cyber security system in place. Of course, it cannot lose track of
where we are headed! The system requires a good scheduling algorithm to schedule tasks on different processor to ensure real time
performance from multicore processors.
Yeah, I understand the complexity better now. Anyone out there with any doubts? My automotive engineer friend would be very glad
to read this confession.
Please send your feedback to :
vinay.vaidya@kpit.com
TechTalk@KPIT, Volume 6, Issue 4, 2013
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