self-driving cars tagged posts

Artificial intelligence (AI) combined with a novel bio-inspired camera achieves 100times faster detection of pedestrians and obstacles than current automotive cameras. This important step for computer vision and AI and can greatly improve the safety of automotive systems and self-driving cars.

It’s every driver’s nightmare: a pedestrian stepping out in front of the car seemingly out of nowhere, leaving only a fraction of a second to brake or steer the wheel and avoid the worst. Some cars now have camera systems that can alert the driver or activate emergency braking. But these systems are not yet fast or reliable enough, and they will need to improve dramatically if they are to be used in autonomous vehicles where there is no human behind the wheel.

Quicker detection using less ...

Comparing of the cascaded GHz approach with Kinect-style approaches visually represented on a key. From left to right, the original image, a Kinect-style approach, a GHz approach, and a stronger GHz approach. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

Computational method improves resolution of time-of-flight depth sensors 1,000-fold. For the past 10 years, the Camera Culture group at MIT’s Media Lab has been developing innovative imaging systems – from a camera that can see around corners to one that can read text in closed books – by using “time of flight,” an approach that gauges distance by measuring the time it takes light projected into a scene to bounce back to a sensor.

In a new paper appearing in IEEE Access, members of the Camera Culture group present a new approach to time-of-flight im...

Chip microphotograph of the 25GHz fully-integrated non-reciprocal passive magnetic-free 45nm SOI CMOS circulator based on spatio-temporal conductivity modulation. —Photo credit: Tolga Dinc/Columbia Engineering

First circulator on a silicon chip at mm-wave frequencies (near and above 30GHz) that enables nonreciprocal transmission of waves: device could enable two-way radios and transform 5g networks, self-driving cars, automotive radar and virtual reality. Most devices are reciprocal: signals travel in the same manner in forward and reverse directions. Nonreciprocal devices, such as circulators, on the other hand, allow forward and reverse signals to traverse different paths and therefore be separated.

Traditionally, nonreciprocal devices have been built from special magnetic materials t...