"How do you feel the intelligence level of a car? Sit inside the cab and feel it. "How do you feel the level of intelligence in the cab?" Calculate the type and number of sensors in it. These two sentences reflect the most intuitive feelings of consumers on the process of automobile intelligence, and also reflect the important role played by sensors in automobile intelligence. In recent years, the intelligent process of automobiles has continued to advance, and the cockpit has achieved rapid development as a representative of it. Sensors have become one of the key links in the development of the smart cockpit and even the entire smart car industry.
First, new functions continue to be integrated, and the intelligent cockpit is developing rapidly
"In recent years, with the accelerated development of intelligence, electrification and networking, automobiles are changing from a single means of transportation to a third space that integrates leisure, entertainment, office and other functions." Guo Yuansheng, chief engineer of the Electronic Components Industry Development Research Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said in an interview with reporters. In this process, as a space to carry and realize a series of intelligent applications and service changes in the car, the importance of the intelligent cockpit in the development of intelligent vehicles has become increasingly apparent.
According to a report released by Yishi Capital, the popularity of smart cockpits in new car models has been accelerating in recent years. Functions such as the central control large screen/continuous screen, intelligent voice, and OTA upgrade have become the most installed and the most common parts, and have gradually become an important criterion for judging whether the car is equipped with a smart cockpit. In addition, as technology upgrades and automakers seek differentiation, more new features are being incorporated into the smart cockpit.
The Driver Monitoring System (DMS) is one of the most talked-about driver assistance features today. According to Jerry Chang, Technical Marketing Manager, Imaging Products Division, STMicroelectronics Asia Pacific, DMS systems can acquire images through cameras and use image recognition technology and algorithm analysis capabilities to detect drivers' driving behavior and physiological status, including head tracking, eye tracking, driver recognition, fatigue driving detection, and line of sight tracking/distraction reminders. Studies have shown that more than 60% of traffic accidents are caused by driver distraction or fatigue driving, of which rear-end accidents account for up to 94%. Image sensors are the core components of DMS systems. The continuous improvement of image sensor technology also brings greater safety and scene applicability to DMS systems and driving.
Human-computer interaction is also a focus of the current development of smart cockpits. With the maturity of voice interaction technology, cockpit voice interaction has now achieved dual-tone zone interaction, which can identify the voice commands of the driver and the passenger. In the future, in-cabin interaction and object perception schemes such as gesture interaction, line of sight interaction, and head action interaction will begin to receive more and more attention. Tu Shaobi, marketing manager of ams and OSRAM Optoelectronics, said that perception, understanding and expression will be an important development direction for intelligent cockpit human-computer interaction systems in the future. Although the human-computer interaction methods in the car have been changing, the logic it follows is unchanged, that is, how to make the driver's operation more convenient and safe.
In addition, steering wheel pressure sensing, passenger identification (e.g. identification of child seat usage), temperature, humidity, gas sensing, etc., will increasingly be integrated into the car cockpit. "Starting from human-computer interaction, as people's requirements for safety and health become higher and higher, more and more new functions will be integrated in the future, and the general direction is to improve the safety and comfort of car driving." Zhu Jiaqi, deputy secretary-general of the China Sensor and Internet of Things Alliance, pointed out, "After the rapid development of road identification and automatic cruise, in-vehicle perception will become another focus of future development. "Specifically, the current mature in-car environment perception content mainly focuses on speech recognition and control, driver fatigue monitoring, automatic air conditioning, etc., such as occupant health signs monitoring, children's emotion monitoring, in-car biological monitoring and other functional content that gives users warm care will be the future power point."
Second, the market continues to grow, and the types and quantities of sensors have doubled
Conceptually, the smart cockpit is a system with the cockpit domain controller of the car as the core, and the display screen, HMI (human-computer interaction), visual tracking and other components. Because the car cockpit does not involve chassis control and other aspects, the technical realization is relatively low, and the cockpit is the space with the closest contact with the driver and occupants, and the function landing is more easily perceived by the user, so the intelligent cockpit has also become the fastest part of the current intelligent pace of the car.
As a representative, the development of the cockpit system reflects the entire process of car intelligence. Sensors will all play a key role in this process. "The car can be regarded as a platform for installing sensors, and various physical, chemical, and biomass sensors will be increasingly used in cars with the development of automotive intelligence." The degree of intelligence of the car will become a key factor in determining the performance and functionality of the car. One of the foundations of intelligence is perception technology. Guo Yuansheng pointed out.
In such a context, the size of the automotive sensor market continues to grow. IHS data shows that the global smart cockpit market size is about $42 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $68.1 billion by 2030. From this as a base point, it can be seen that the process of automotive intelligence will continue to develop and provide more new growth points for upstream semiconductor products. IHSMarkit statistics show that the average number of bicycle sensors (including only cameras, millimeter-wave radar and sign monitoring sensors) in 2020 is 3.3, and it is expected to increase to 11.3 by 2030.
Zhu Jiaqi stressed that from the trend point of view, the future automotive sensor market will show a rapid upward momentum. Automotive sensors can be roughly divided into two markets: stock and increment. On the one hand, the stock market size based on applications such as body and chassis will not be reduced, and it will be mainly upgraded to a certain extent; on the other hand, the incremental market based on intelligent cockpits and automatic driving is also very fast. At present, most models of lidar have not been installed, millimeter-wave radar is only a small number on the car, and fatigue driving monitoring sensors are only installed on a few models. These are foreseeable incremental markets. "If you judge the growth of new sensors, it is expected to increase by more than 10% per year." Zhu Jiaqi predicted.
Ouyang Jian, deputy general manager of Steway Technology, believes that with the development of intelligence in the automotive field, effective driver monitoring is an important part of achieving automatic driving, and it also brings "core" opportunities for domestic CMOS image sensor manufacturers. Guo Yuansheng also pointed out that the development of intelligence in the automotive field will provide more development opportunities for the mainland sensor industry. Chinese image sensor manufacturers will have a lot of promise.
Third, the reliability and stability are highlighted, and vehicle-grade sensing has developed into a key point
With the expansion of the automotive sensor market, more and more companies are showing some new technology trends in addition to cutting into the automotive sensor track. The first is to replace traditional types of sensors with advanced sensors with more and more semiconductor manufacturing processes such as MEMS. Zhu Jiaqi believes that meMS and advanced sensors have low cost, good reproducibility and high yield, which has a great substitution effect on traditional types of sensors. Of course, Zhu Jiaqi also pointed out that MEMS and advanced sensors will not fully replace the traditional type of sensors, silicon-based products still have certain limitations, such as measuring exhaust emissions sensors need to support a high temperature environment of 800 ° C, which is a feature that silicon-based products do not have.
Second, multi-sensor fusion in automobiles has become a mainstream trend. Research institute Wilson said in the "Automotive Intelligent Network Forward Technology Report" that in view of the complexity of the external environment perception object, in order to cope with different scenarios and ensure the safety of vehicle driving, the choice of multi-sensor fusion perception scheme has been the industry consensus. Multi-sensor fusion has obvious advantages in coping with different scenarios, improving the accuracy of perception and increasing the dimension of perception while enhancing environmental adaptability, and further improving the reliability of system decision-making.
Again, the combination of sensors and artificial intelligence technology is becoming more and more close, sensing people's emotions and behaviors, helping to drive safely. Zhang Chengyi said that artificial intelligence can process real-time data from cameras, microphones, biosensors and even radar, and then help cars make decisions. Computer vision is a branch of the field of artificial intelligence that enables computers and systems to extract meaningful information from digital images, videos, and other visual input data and take action or make recommendations based on that information.
Finally, reliability and stability are the most important performance of vehicle-grade sensors. Guo Yuansheng pointed out that China's geographical environment is very complex, and reliability and stability are very important for automotive sensors. Cars need to withstand more vibration and shock during movement, which requires automotive sensors to provide long life, high stability, and meet the requirements of high reliability of automotive products.
Based on these technology trends, Guo Yuansheng stressed that the mainland should take the user as the leader, integrate system integrators, module hardware, sensor devices and chip manufacturers, and jointly build a technology research and development platform for industry, education and research. Only in this way can we establish a complete R&D system in accordance with the industrial chain structure, open up different links in the industry, promote the development of basic technologies, and jointly promote the localization of automotive sensors.
Attached: Chip manufacturers in the main six major fields of automobiles
※ CPU/GPU/FPGA/ASIC chips are the "brains" of smart cars.
※ The power chip is the "heart" of the smart car.
※ Camera CMOS is the "eye" of smart cars.
※ The RF receiver is the "ear" of the smart car.
※ Ultrasonic/millimeter wave radar is the "cane" of smart cars.
※ The memory chip is the "memory" of the smart car.
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