Having just been named as a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 Innovation Award Honouree, international automated driving technology startup DeepRoute has released its SAE Level 4 full-stack self-driving system for purchase by OEMs.
Founded by a highly experienced team with a track record of technological innovation in companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Ford, DeepRoute operates out of research centres located at Shenzhen and Beijing in China, and in the USA at Silicon Valley in California. To enable the autonomous vehicle industry to achieve quicker sensor deployment, and to further promote and progress the overall widespread adoption of self-driving technologies, the company has released its DeepRoute-Sense sensing solution for sale to any interested parties. The system is designed to make use of L4 autonomous driver technologies to safely and accurately handle operations that previously could only be performed by human operators. The system relies on an early sensor fusion technology to interpret the vehicle’s surroundings. The full-stack system also applies a planning algorithm to help the vehicle anticipate turns, execute lane changes and carry out intelligent driving decisions.
The full-stack L4 autonomous driving package includes a sleek, lightweight set-top box and leading sensor fusion calibration service. The roof box consists of eight vehicle cameras, three lidar units, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and a series of other sensors to help correspondence and data synchronization between the controllers. DeepRoute has independently designed the mechanical structure of the roof box, which has outstanding diversion, heat dissipation and sealing functions. The set-top box has lighter weight, smaller volume and higher impact resistance to other products currently on the market. With four tripods, the roof box can be easily mounted to the roof of different vehicle models for sensors deployment.
The system uses a self-developed in-vehicle camera created by DeepRoute, featuring anti-glare, anti-ghosting and highly reliable signal detection. Compared with industrial cameras, the camera comes at a lower cost, but also offers a higher dynamic range. The roof box has been developed to accommodate different and extreme weather conditions, whether it be during intense sunlight, or night-time high beam illumination, it can stably handle the exposure and avoid overexposure.
In the set-top box, there is also a sensor data processing device called ADS Synchronous Controller. The product is pre-processed and fused with massive data of cameras, lidars, GNSS and other sensors through high-precision time and space synchronization. The ADS Synchronous Controller also supports DNN and SLAM hardware acceleration, which greatly increases computational efficiency. Using the L4 package, DeepRoute has accomplished road tests in daytime, at night, in tunnels and under other complex scenarios in Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Chongqing in China.
“Our team has worked hard on the development of DeepRoute-Sense and we are excited to finally share our technology with the industry,” said Shuang Gao, DeepRoute’s COO. “By bringing this to the market, we are hoping to fuel progress within the industry and bring full vehicle autonomy to be one step closer to the masses.”
