Autonomous Solutions
First the lawnmower, then the car, then machines such as snowploughs. Industry constantly needs to go on developing more cost-effective, eco-friendly processes and products. Many companies are now looking at automated and autonomous solutions as the next step on the road to improvement.
Automated machines and vehicles
Autonomous solutions are nothing new. They are based on automation developed over more than a century of industrialisation, up to the robotics solutions of today. Autonomous vehicles are not new, either – they are based on Automotive Active Safety and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which have been in development since the 1990s. But what is new are autonomous vehicles capable of un-supervised driving (High Autonomous Driving (HAD), correlating the SAE Autonomous Driving Scale – levels 4 and 5).
People before technology
Semcon has been working with state-of-the-art development of Active Safety and ADAS for more than a decade alongside our leading customers, which include Volvo Cars, Zenseact, BMW, Volvo Trucks, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, Veoneer and Qualcomm. We have learned many key lessons over this decade and built the foundation for HAD.
If customers are to choose autonomous cars, they have to both feel and actually be safer than cars driven manually. Compare this to a roller coaster ride, which is designed to seem scary but is really very safe.
Technical challenges within autonomous
Besides working on the UX perspective, we also face a number of key technology challenges that still need to be addressed so as to implement fully autonomous vehicles successfully. In the main, these are:
Environmental perception: the vehicle must be able to understand its entire environment at all times. Sensor Fusion – handling information from multiple sources such as camera, radar and lidar sensors, geodata and V2X data is key. These input sources, as well as data handling and interpretation, are still being developed.
Decision-making: a fully autonomous vehicle needs to be able to handle an infinite number of scenarios in the real world. Hence a classic code programming approach is impossible (it is not possible to hard code actions to cope with an infinite number of cases). This is why smart learning algorithms are needed.
Semcon specialises in machine learning and deep learning technologies, working with handling environmental perception and decision-making challenges. Semcon offers its customers end-to-end AI/machine learning solutions; from defining use cases with customers, to machine learning/deep learning development and finally product integration, verification and validation.
Read more about our expertise within AI
Our automated vehicles offering
Semcon’s offering is crossing automated and autonomous concepts from different industries in order to offer these solutions to new customers and segments. Automated solutions appear to be particularly well suited to the following applications:
Operations in restricted areas, e.g. in industry or agriculture
Speed limits
Communication and navigation challenges between machines and buildings
Work environment improvements in terms of health and safety
Longer operating times for equipment
We are able to develop custom solutions for these challenges that are largely based on technology and components from the automotive industry and others.
Our areas of expertise with regards to automated solutions:
Create roadmaps so that automated solutions can be implemented
Mapping and navigation options
Patterns and object recognition
Connection and data management
Machine Learning Systems
Prototype production and validation