Podcast: The Autonomous Race & Drift Cars Of The Not So Distant Future

Daniel Mitchell

fromThe Next Byte

06 Sep, 2022

image: Toyota Research Institute

In this episode, we talk about how Toyota and Stanford are collaborating to utilize AI for drifting controls and the efforts behind a team at TUM which has resulted in an autonomous race car performing at the capacity of an amateur F1 driver.

artificial intelligence

- Autonomous Vehicles

- lidar

In this episode, we talk about how Toyota and Stanford are collaborating to utilize AI for drifting controls and the efforts behind a team at TUM which has resulted in an autonomous race car performing at the capacity of an amateur F1 driver.

This podcast is sponsored by Mouser Electronics.

EPISODE NOTES

(3:55) - Drifting Autonomous Vehicle🚗

(16:50) - Autonomous F1 Races By 2025🏎

Episode 86 was brought to you by Mouser Electronics, Farbod & Daniel’s favorite electronics distributor. Click here to read about the Mouser technical resource discussing Formula racing!

As always, you can find these and other interesting & impactful engineering articles on Wevolver.com.

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Driver Monitoring Systems for Ensuring Driver Alertness

Article #4 of Innovations in Electric and Autonomous Vehicles Series: Advances in technology and new safety regulations are accelerating the adoption of Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) into passenger vehicles. DMS is expected to be a mandatory feature in new cars in many countries by the end of the decade.

Alex Pluemer

fromMouser Electronics

06 Mar, 2023

artificial intelligence

- Autonomous Vehicles

This is the fourth article in an 8-part series featuring articles on Innovations in Electric and Autonomous Vehicles. The series presents an insight into the developments and challenges in the automotive sector as it undergoes massive transformations with the arrival of electric and self-driving vehicles. This series is sponsored by Mouser Electronics. Through the sponsorship, Mouser Electronics shares its passion for technologies that enable smarter and connected applications.

According to a 2021 study by the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), over 38,000 automobile accidents occurred in the United States in 2020—and approximately 95% of those accidents were caused by human error.^[1] Advocates for automated driving systems have long argued that automated driving technology will be central to reducing the impact of human error and making driving safer. However, fully automated driving systems are still years, if not decades, away, making the human element a lingering part of the equation.

In this article, we take a look at Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) and their role in reducing the possibility of mishaps due to human errors. We start with an introduction to the problem statement and go on to explain the recent developments and the present state of DMS.

Introduction

As semi-automated driving systems become more and more ubiquitous in passenger vehicles, a relatively new form of human error has reared its ugly head: distracted driving. Concern over distracted drivers with their eyes on their phones, tablets, etc., failing to pay enough attention to avoid preventable collisions and other accidents continues to increase as automated driving systems have become more common. Although confirmed malfunctions in automated driving systems have been sporadic, there are still legitimate concerns about their safety, mainly regarding the element of human error.

How do car

Image: An erbium-doped waveguide amplifier on a photonic integrated chip. Credit: EPFL Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurements/Niels Ackerman

Boosting light power revolutionizes communications and autopilot

EPFL scientists have built a compact waveguide amplifier by successfully incorporating rare-earth ions into integrated photonic circuits. The device produces record output power compared to commercial fiber amplifiers, a first in the development of integrated photonics over the last decades.

Nik Papageorgiou

fromEPFL

20 Jun, 2022

Autonomous Vehicles

- integrated photonics

- lidar

- photonics

Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) are devices that can provide gain to the optical signal power in optical fibers, often used in long-distance communication fiber optic cables and fiber-based lasers. Invented in the 1980s, EDFAs are arguably one of the most important inventions, and have profoundly impacted our information society enabling signals to be routed across the Atlantic and replacing electrical repeaters.

What is interesting about erbium ions in optical communications is that they can amplify light in the 1.55 mm wavelength region, which is where silica-based optical fibers have the lowest transmission loss. The unique electronic intra-4-f shell structure of erbium – and rare-earth ions in general – enables long-lived excited states when doped inside host materials such as glass. This provides an ideal gain medium for simultaneous amplification of multiple information-carrying channels, with negligible cross-talk, high temperature stability and low noise figure.

Optical amplification is also used in virtually all laser applications, from fiber sensing and frequency metrology, to industrial applications including laser-machining and LiDAR. Today, optical amplifiers based on rare-earth ions have become the workhorse for optical frequency combs (2005 Nobel Prize in Physics), which are used to create the world’s most precise atomic clocks.

Achieving light amplification with rare-earth ions in photonic integrated circuit can transform integrated photonics. Already in the 1990s, Bell Laboratories were looking into erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers (EDWAs), but ultimately abandoned them because their gain and output power could not match fiber-based amplifiers, while their fabrication doesn’t work with contemporary photonic integration manufacturing techniques.

Even with the recent rise of integrated photonics, renewed efforts on EDWAs have only been able to achieve less than 1 mW output power, which is not enough for many practical

Podcast: The Autonomous Race & Drift Cars Of The Not So Distant Future

In this episode, we talk about how Toyota and Stanford are collaborating to utilize AI for drifting controls and the efforts behind a team at TUM which has resulted in an autonomous race car performing at the capacity of an amateur F1 driver.

EPISODE NOTES

Introduction

Boosting light power revolutionizes communications and autopilot

kapture - A unified data format to facilitate visual localization and structure from motion.

How Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) Impact Automotive Semiconductors

In this episode, we talk about how Toyota and Stanford are collaborating to utilize AI for drifting controls and the efforts behind a team at TUM which has resulted in an autonomous race car performing at the capacity of an amateur F1 driver.

EPISODE NOTES

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