zFAS

Audi has collaborated with various technology partners to develop a new device that will supply the computing power needed for a self-driving car to operate safely.

The central driver assistance controller (zFAS), which is under development for piloted driving, uses high-performance processors and will work its way into the model range step-by-step in future.

Audi awarded the contract for series productions to technologies specialist Delphi, which will also supply the future system for the zFAS electronics board the size of a tablet PC.

Audi has also partnered with suppliers such as Bosch, Continental, Valeo and Delphi on the sensors and actuating elements, such as braking and steering systems.

"The zFAS board is equipped with the EyeQ3 mobile processor from Mobileye, as well as the new Tegra K1 from nVidia."

The company aims to develop common standards and offer modern driver assistance systems to customers for safety, comfort and convenience on the road to fully automatic driving.

The company led a team of specialists from TTTech, Mobileye, nVidia and Delphi, who jointly developed hardware and software components for the controller.

Integrated with a range of sensor information, the new zFAS uses this to compute a complete model of the vehicle surroundings quickly and makes this information available to the assistance systems.

According to Audi, the zFAS board is equipped with the EyeQ3 mobile processor from Mobileye, as well as the new Tegra K1 from nVidia.

The solution offers computing power, which corresponds to the complete electronics architecture of a well-equipped mid-size car.

Audi said the modular concept of the board makes the zFAS flexible, scalable and futureproof in every respect.

The zFAS board will compute data, which in turn would be transferred through the cellular phone network through LTE, where available to an IT backend in the cloud.

Later on, data will be processed using algorithms for machine learning and artificial intelligence before sending the data back to the car.

Image: Audi piloted driving zFAS. Photo: courtesy of Audi.