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AspenCore Media, a publisher of EE Times, launced a book entitled “AspenCore’s Guide to Sensors in Automotive” on Oct. 19, 2020. This 152-page anthology, with a forward by Michiel van Ratingen, Secretary General, Euro NCAP, is available for purchase here.
The book, contributed by leading thinkers on autonomy and safety, in addition to keen observers of the tech and car industries, asks the critical question about all the advancements in automotive sensors, software, hardware, next-generation vehicle architecture: How close are we, really, to making cars see and think for themselves?
What needs to be developed? What issues are still up for debates? What pieces of this puzzle must still be tested and verified?
Contributors include: safety expert Phil Koopman, co-founder and CTO at Edge Case Research and associate professor, Carnegie Mellon University; Phil Magney, co-founder of VSI Labs whose firm is engaged in applied research on AV technologies; Colin Barnden, lead analyst at Semicast Research and a “Seriously Skeptical” columnist for EE Times; Mike Demler, senior analyst at The Linley Group; Mark Fitzgerald, associate director for automotive at Strategy Analytics; Egil Juliussen, former director research at IHS Automotive, now the “Egil’s Eye” columnist for EE Times, and Rob Stead, conference director of AutoSens.
We put together the market overview on “connected, autonomous, shared and electric” vehicles, based on the data and insights provided by Yole Développement.
The book also includes our exclusive one-on-one interviews – on “The Chasm Between ADAS and AV” with Amnon Shashua, CEO of Mobileye, an Intel company, and another with Peter Hartwell, CTO of TDKInvenSense on “Augmenting Human Sensors in a car.”
Why the book?
Many potential readers might ask: “Why the book now?”
We believe that every stakeholder, software/hardware developer, technology/business management and entrepreneur need right now a thoughtful book to prompt them to reflect, digest and explore all the options inherent to the development of highly automated vehicles.
Every media outlet, including EE Times, has done voluminous coverage on new products and new technologies, reporting on new business/technology alliances, and writing about design wins and the horse races among technology suppliers. This is accompanied by the excitement and hype about how ADAS and autonomous vehicles is going to save people’s lives. In sum, our homework’s been turned in.
But the technology is still waiting for it to be graded.
The very idea of putting together a “book” struck us as bold and possiby an overreach when it was proposed by Victor Gao, CMO of Arrow, a parent company of AspenCore. He countered our hesitancy by reminding us of the value of the reporter’s daily grind — sitting in the front row, following the news, asking questions and educating readers on fast-changing technology and industry scuttlebutt.
It was Anne-Francoise Pele, EE Times’ French correspondent and AspenCore’s book editor, who articulated the book’s vision. “We, reporters, always looking for the next big stories, tend to forget that we are also writing history as news breaks and events unfold,” she noted. She saw a book that stands at the nexus of the past (what we have reported) and the future (what we will report).
While these commentaries offer useful data points from different times and perspectives, we wanted to connect them coherently. I insisted that we delve deeper into the issues. We did so with the help of independent experts and industry analysts who were all willing to share candidly and impartially their views and insights.
The book also includes in its reference section some great tech papers from Intel, Nvidia, Siemens, NXP, Arm, Omnivision and Qualcomm.
Book reviews
The potential for autonomous mobility to deliver huge societal benefits is perhaps clearer now than even in the halcyon days of the industry. Over the past two years, however, technical and safety challenges have come to the fore. In particular, unlike many other consumer applications of AI, autonomous mobility relies on safety-critical sensing and perception. That’s why this book arrives at exactly the right time: it provides real technical depth that both decision makers and practitioners need to meet these challenges.
— Michael Wagner, Co-Founder, and CEO, Edge Case Research
I dropped everything and have just finished reading the whole thing. It is absolutely bloody brilliant. I’m struck by the range of opinions about how things develop, which is exactly as it should be. The future hasn’t happened yet.
–Colin Barnden, Lead Analyst at Semicast Research
