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Hot technologies: automotive safety
October 3, 2006
Last week I commented on autonomous robots--one of eight top automation and electronics technologies cited by Peter Adrian, a Frost & Sullivan senior industry analyst, at Frost’s “Industry Outlooks and Growth Strategies 2006" executive congress. Truly useful multifunction autonomous robots might be a decade away, but other technologies that Adrian cited are imminent or here now.
Take, for example, automotive safety and driver assistance. Radar for adaptive cruise control is already here, and Adrian predicts that during the next five years CMOS sensor-based cameras will be serving in lane-departure-warning and parking-assist systems. He also sees applications for IR systems that can penetrate fog and smoke.
Ultimately, he expects a fusion of radar and vision systems to take advantage of radar’s longitudinal range capabilities and vision sensors’ wider field of view and superior object classification capabilities.
Key players cited by Adrian include Canesta, a maker of 3-D vision chips, and FLIR Systems, a supplier of thermal imaging systems.
Posted by Rick Nelson on October 3, 2006 | Comments (0)
