Electronic companies team up for automotive vision systems

Freescale Semiconductor has teamed up with Neusoft Corporation and Green Hills Software to set up a comprehensive advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) ecosystem designed to dramatically speed and simplify the creation of next-generation automotive vision applications.

As ADAS vision systems grow to encompass a greater portion of vehicle braking and steering systems, developers and systems designers need turnkey solutions that address stringent protocols for automotive safety and are compliant with the ISO 26262 functional safety standard. This purpose-built ADAS ecosystem is engineered to meet these challenges by streamlining the time-consuming process of developing and porting complex algorithms to target hardware.

The collaboratively developed solution integrates CogniVue Corporation’s APEX image cognition processing (ICP) IP available from Freescale with advanced, silicon-aware software from Neusoft’s ADAS vision applications, and the safety certified Integrity operating system and multitool chain from functional safety company Green Hills Software. The result is a comprehensive off-the-shelf solution built on an ISO 26262 ASIL assessed software foundation. Specific applications include pedestrian detection, traffic sign recognition, collision avoidance and other advanced ADAS capabilities.

“Pairing sophisticated object recognition and identification technologies is a key step to bridging first-generation ADAS products toward the autonomous vehicles of tomorrow,” said Ray Cornyn, VP of product management and global marketing for Freescale’s Automotive MCU business.

“The expanding role that vision ADAS technology plays in decision-making and real-time object identification tasks positions companies focused on safety-oriented vision systems - such as Freescale - for future success.”

PEX processor technology enables extraction of application-specific information from a scene and interprets the image data to make decisions or take actions based on the extracted data. Freescale licensed CogniVue’s APEX-642 ICP core IP in 2012 and is the exclusive provider of this technology to the automotive market.