Autonomous vehicles: A playground for sensors

The automotive electronics market has increased steadily over the past several years even at times when the automobile market per se is not growing substantially. Indeed the per car electronics content is increasing at a fast pace. This is just the tip of the iceberg as we are entering the age of the “zero-accident car” with autonomous driving based on wireless and wired networks of powerful sensors (potentially including intelligent tires) and complex control algorithms implemented on a distributed computing platform. The key to this brave new world is the continuous evolution of the sensor component of the car electrical architecture. We will discuss the sensor design and manufacturing challenges to bring autonomous cars on the street. Albeit significant steps have been made in the technology base that sustains autonomous driving, massive algorithmic and integration problems loom here.