There’s a great deal of buzz about driver- and machine-vision systems merging and ADAS gradually giving way to AD systems as a stepping stone on the path toward AVs. That’s good and appropriate; these are crucial key things we’re all working on, and the work goes faster and better when we talk about it.
But how do we actually get there? How do we actually achieve the fusion of sensors and cameras and lights? How do we accelerate the proliferation of ADAS and AD systems? More to the point, how do we do it in ways that are effective, cost-effective, and affordable? An old-time auto industry truism holds that it’s much harder to design a water pump for a Chevrolet than for a Rolls-Royce: both have to do the job adequately and without fail for a reasonable number of years and kilometres, but the Chevrolet pump has to be engineered and built to much tighter cost constraints.