The high-precision sensor for automated driving
Highly automated and fully automated driving are subject to strict requirements. This is especially the case with regard to accuracy and safety. Since the driver transfers responsibility for the task of driving to the system and no longer needs to supervise it, the overall system instead has to ensure the safety of the vehicle occupants. Highly accurate and reliable localization, among other things, is needed to enable this; and that is typically provided through a combination of several technologies designed with redundancy, such as surroundings sensors, satellite navigation, and inertial sensors.
If there is not enough information about the surroundings to provide precise localization or the satellite link is disrupted, inertial sensors are used instead. The overall system bridges the period of time during which no information is available by using the sensor data to calculate the relative change in position of the vehicle and so maintain the vehicle’s localization capability. The standard inertial sensors available so far, however, are not sufficiently capable to satisfy the precision and performance requirements. Bosch has therefore developed high-precision inertial sensors specially for these kinds of applications. They are so precise that the overall system – and therefore the vehicle – can keep to the originally planned path with only minimal deviation.
Another application is the safety stop. If critical errors are detected in the overall system and the driver is unable to take back control of the vehicle, the relative direction of travel can be determined using, among other information, the data from the inertial sensors, and the vehicle can be brought to a stop safely and reliably.
Thanks to the integrated microcontroller, it is possible to process output signals individually for different applications and make them available to multiple higher-level systems simultaneously. Already implemented calibration functions and a standardized software architecture (AUTOSAR) enable flexible integration at the vehicle level.
In addition to this, the equipped hardware security module (HSM) provides protection against manipulation of the sensor data from outside and adds to the safety of the overall system.
