Seminar October 9 2019

Electrical & Computer Engineering Colloquium

October 9, 2019 4:30 P.M.

ITE 430

Light Detection and Ranging and Self Driving Car Applications

Indrid Xhuti

Abstract: LIDAR is used in the self driving car industry. LIDAR uses light pulses and measures reflections to generate maps of environments. Two types of sensors used to measure the reflections are linear mode avalanche photodiodes (LMAPDs) and geiger mode avalanche photodiodes (GMAPDs). These sensors can be meshed together in grids and/or revolved around an axis to develop a LIDAR scanning system that can be used in vehicles. The data collected from LIDAR sensors attached to a car is used to generate a 3D map of the surrounding environment which is then factored into the car’s decision making in real time. Modern cars, such as Teslas, use some flavor of embedded Linux running on an embedded ARM or other proprietary embedded hardware. YOCTO, an embedded linux generation tool, has become a popular tool in this field and is by automotive manufacturers such as Tesla. An example of the embedded hardware is the iMX8X platform developed by NXP which is an ARM based platform with an emphasis on safety certification and safety critical applications.