Autonomous cars and sensors will become the focus sensor shipments will soar

Automats, cars that drive themselves with little to no human intervention, may well represent the future of driving. According to the IHS Automotive Research report, the automotive sensor market that helped create this engineering miracle has now emerged and will maintain high growth in the coming years.

Parking assist cameras and lane departure warning cameras are just two of the sensors that will appear in autonomous driving applications and are expected to grow strongly each year for the next five years. Shipments of such sensors are expected to reach 3.4 million in 2012, double last year's 1.7 million, and reach about 18 million by 2015, almost 20 times the 939,200 shipped in 2010, as the chart shows.

A great deal of effort has been put into developing autonomous cars. Also known as robot cars or driverless cars, these vehicles can sense their surroundings and drive themselves. Although a person can choose the destination, there is no need to perform mechanical operations.

Automatic vehicle control is based on environmental and situational awareness, and current driver assistance systems rely on the same perception. This perception is provided by a variety of sensors inside and outside the vehicle, which monitor the front, rear, left and right sides of the vehicle and various control systems inside the vehicle. For example, parking assist cameras help drivers park and avoid hitting any objects or other cars, while lane departure warning sensors detect when a car may be drifting out of its lane due to driver distraction or mismanagement.

While cameras and relays currently dominate cars, telemetry called LIDAR is being used in at least one self-driving prototype, Google's driverless car. Google's technology is used in a Toyota car. According to Wired magazine, the Toyota Prius is equipped with VelodyneLIDARInc. A LIDAR sensor uses 64 laser heads that rotate 900 times per minute to create a 360-degree view around the car.

In addition, there are three radar sensors in the front, one in the back, and a high-resolution camera on the front windshield that instantly reflects the situation around the car. Wired says the system generates comprehensive images of objects and areas around the car, analyzes them and predicts their future movements 20 times a second.

The sensor network installed on the Google Prius prototype is already present in several production models from several automakers, providing horizontal and radial automatic control. What remains, according to IHS, is to integrate these systems and all of their sensing data into a comprehensive control system for all of the car's actions. But this is easier said than done.

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class also has almost all the advanced safety and driver assistance systems that German manufacturers have to offer. Forward radar (including long and short range), forward camera sensor, rear short range radar. Additional sensors monitor car systems and driver input, ready to activate electronic stability control if a corner overturns, or alert the driver to avoid sleepiness or crash hazards. Together, these sensors and systems monitor the areas that are currently most dangerous for drivers: the areas in front of the car to pass through, the blind spots behind and on the side of the car.

For the auto industry, one challenge in rolling out autonomous vehicles will be to sell the concept to generally cautious car buyers, even though driverless systems could theoretically ease drivers' workloads. It can automatically perform a variety of tasks, such as parallel parking, and can also provide assistance in case a driver makes a mistake or is injured. The automotive industry knows that cars and the process of driving can be an emotional experience for many people, so caution must be taken in advertising the possible benefits of a new system, even if it may minimize injuries or save lives.

At the same time, players outside the automotive industry, such as entities such as Google, are increasingly focused on personal mobility in relation to cars, and these players are not as bound by conventional wisdom as those in the automotive industry. These manufacturers continue to define processes, develop systems and prepare for autonomous vehicles. Automatic cars seem to have to be the focus of the future.

IHS believes these two paths will meet somewhere in the middle, and the resulting automotive innovations will provide a new sense of security and freedom of movement.