Motional, the automated driving joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, is demonstrating how a sensor suite of advanced lidar, cameras and radar allows driverless vehicles to see up to 300 meters and a full 360° around the vehicle.
In a new video from the company, the vision enables driverless cars to respond faster and safer than a human driver can. Motional has partnered with Derq to test how driverless technology reacts to a broader view of the world from a bird’s eye view.
Derq, an artificial intelligence and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) vendor, is working with Motional on a pilot where cameras are placed on busy intersections that transmit data to Motional’s vehicles. The data gives the vehicles a different view of intersections including cars that are exiting parking lots, pedestrians stepping between parked cars and cyclists weaving through cars stopped at traffic signals. The technology also predicts movements to provide advance notice of potentially challenging interactions with the autonomous vehicles.
The data can be studied offline with the scenes being replayed and see how the vehicle navigates the scene with and without the extra data from Derq’s cameras.
The pilot will later receive Derq’s bird’s eye view data in real time to help inform their driving. This allows the vehicles to process data through lidar, camera and radar to make the safest and smartest driving decisions.
The pilot will be launched at two high traffic intersections in Las Vegas. The intersections are complex because they have significant pedestrian and cyclist interactions, challenging sight lines due to trees, signs and other obstacles and various vehicle interactions with multiple lanes of traffic.
The interactions already have smart infrastructure that was installed to help Motional and the local governments monitor and manage these roadways. The pilot will launch in the spring.
Motional has been working on ride-hailing services in Las Vegas and plans to launch robotaxi services with Lyft in major U.S. cities beginning in 2023.
