Safe positioning technology is incorporated into the automotive industry

by time news

The technological multinational GMV has recently reached the milestone of incorporating its safe and reliable positioning technology precision on board the vehicles of the German premium car manufacturer BMW.

GMV’s positioning solution has two components: the on-board positioning software (Positioning Engine or PE) and the GNSS correction service (CS). The CS provides BMW group vehicles with the corrections necessary in the transmission of ephemeris for the different GNSS constellations, augmentation data to eliminate local atmospheric effects and security related information to calculate the user’s position reliably. The PE built into the vehicle’s on-board unit uses the corrections together with GNSS signals and information collected from other sensors to reliably calculate the vehicle’s position, speed and heading.

Both CS and PE have been developed, validated and improved in recent years so that they can meet the requirements demanded by the different markets for high-precision positioning based on GNSS, including the automotive market. The latter has been the most recent challenge that GMV and its positioning system have faced and for which it has been necessary to adopt, among others, the ISO 26262 standard, the strictest standards applicable in the automotive sector, as well as many other demanding practices in force that guarantee the highest quality in what refers to critical software.

In addition to the software, GMV’s solution depends on a redundant and secure physical infrastructure. Owns and operates a global network of GNSS stations which provides the raw GNSS data needed by the CS to generate its corrections. These corrections are calculated in two data centers that are independent of each other and provide GMV’s solution with the levels of availability necessary for automated driving applications.

This production milestone incorporates automated driving functions to the portfolio of positioning solutions, consolidating the company as one of the main providers of high-precision positioning solutions based on GNSS worldwide.

The road to the autonomous car

The automotive industry has placed great emphasis in recent years on achieving a high rate of decarbonization, with vehicles with less and less emissions, and with a process, that of electrification, that seems unstoppable. But the autonomous and connected vehicle is also going to be fundamental, with important advances in the coming years, which will take us to level 5 of autonomous driving in which driver intervention will not be necessary.

Between 90 and 95% of car accidents They have their origin in a human error and it is expected that with the advent of the autonomous vehicle this accident rate will drop radically and so will the insurance premiums. A role that could be assumed in part or in full by the manufacturers themselves.

Autonomous cars will have technology that will allow them to drive on any road thanks to artificial vision systems, radar, laser systems, GPS, etc., and interact with aid infrastructures to driving in smartcities that, if they fail, could cause accidents. In addition, vehicle hacks or failures in systems such as satellite positioning create other cases that will force us to change the coverage we know today.

Although new vehicles for sale in Spain they have more and more aids and assistance to driving, the level of equipment of ADAS systems in the car park is medium-low, especially in those with a greater capacity to avoid road accidents, such as lane maintenance systems, the automatic emergency braking (in its different versions), blind spot detection, or fatigue detection systems, among others. Part of the blame lies with the average age of the cars on our roads, which is over 13.1 years.

Apart from this consideration, 70% of drivers believe that they react better in the event of an accident on the road than a technological assistant. More than 40% of the Spanish driving population acknowledges not having sufficient knowledge about ADAS systems (Advanced Driving Assistance Systems). The remaining 60%, although they claim to know them, when asked for an in-depth definition, show large gaps, as well as confusion between different systems and their functions. These are some of the conclusions of the study “Knowledge of ADAS systems by the Spanish population” which is part of the VIDAS project (road safety and ADAS), promoted by Bosch and FESVIAL.

The most common ADAS systems fitted to Spanish cars are automatic headlights, tire pressure control, intelligent speed limitation (ISA) and adaptive cruise control, although, in this sense, it is more than likely driver confusion and that are equipped with a non-intelligent speed limiter and/or cruise control, but not adaptive.

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