A collaborative project between Actasys and Wideye® by AGC.
Autonomous vehicles will be more and more developed and commercialized in the future. However, safety remains the key technical challenge to ensuring this autonomy and avoiding accidents. The ability to detect data from a multitude of sensors such as lidars, radars, time-of-flight sensors, visible light cameras, and infrared cameras, and process the data through AI algorithms to observe their environment is also at the core of ADAS and AD (autonomous driving) vehicle development. No matter how advanced, sensors can lose functionality when challenged by weather, heat, and other impacts, threatening safety and performance by providing outputs that cannot be trusted. To achieve high autonomy, all optical perception sensors must be cleaned while ensuring efficient electrical power and cleaning liquid consumption.
In this context, Wideye and Actasys have collaborated to tackle this challenge using strengths from both companies to combine Wideye’s unique glass solutions and Actasys’ innovative cleaning system. For the project, Wideye provided glass that includes a water-repellent coating. This coating is also a product developed by AGC and is already used in the automotive industry for front door glass. Actasys performed testing in different conditions thanks to their unique solution, Actajet, which allows low energy and water consumption. In addition, Wideye and Actasys are developing packaging definitions and guidelines to create a seamless, integrated system for autonomous vehicles.