Introduction to ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System)
Traffic collisions in India are a major source of deaths, injuries, and property damage every year. So, in order to decrease traffic collisions or reduce fatal injuries, Automobile companies require some solution that they can implement in order to provide safety to their consumers, so nowadays Automobile companies are providing ADAS solutions to their consumers in their vehicles.
ADAS helps drivers to assist while driving a car when there are chances of any collision or the driver is not attentive while driving a car.
ADAS helps in preventing road accidents. It increases the safety of drivers or nearby drivers.
The main role of such systems is to continuously update the driver about the surrounding environment and alert the driver in dangerous situations.
Content:
- Why Adas?
- What is the solution?
- How do they Assist Drivers?
- General Working of ADAS
- Role of ADAS
- Levels of Automation
Why Adas?
Below are the reasons which are the main causes of road accidents:
- Low attention while driving a Car.
- Unable to interpret dangerous situations (Ex if the driver is tired while driving).
- Not able to make corrective measures in time. (Ex. if a pedestrian suddenly came running in between vehicles and it is already late to perform an action).
What is the solution?
If we have any solution in a car that can alert the driver in a dangerous situation, then accidents can be prevented or life-threatening injuries can be prevented. So, ADAS can help to prevent road accidents or prevent life-threatening injuries.
How do they assist drivers?
ADAS assist drivers in multiple ways mentioned below:
- By providing visual information:
Such as displaying road speed limit captured from front cameras on the speedometer or display.
Or displaying information about vehicles in front.
And Traffic Lights on the screen.
2. By providing Audio information:
Sometimes, it may happen that the driver has no attention on the screen, then using audio, ADAS can assist the driver with the environment outside the car he/she is driving.
3. By Interfering using an Actuator:
In this type of assistance, whenever any dangerous situation arises, based on the processing of sensor data, Using an Actuator for applying sudden braking or for Lane Keep Assistance.
General Working of ADAS:
ADAS are automation systems with different levels of automation.
In general, the basic blocks of ADAS are as below:
As from the block diagram, every ADAS solution has three basic components
i.e. 1) Sensors
2) Processors
3) Actuators
Sensors capture the environment around the vehicle and processors process the data captured by sensors by performing preprocessing and decision-making, based on the Actuators' intimates' action as described earlier by applying sudden brakes or keeping the vehicle in the respective driving lane.
Below is a more detailed block diagram of the ADAS solution. Note: Implementation varies from various developers, so this can be one of the ways an ADAS solution can be implemented.
Now with the help of one example of an ADAS solution, I will show you how it is implemented using the above block Diagram.
I will take an example of One ADAS solution i.e. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
Above is the block diagram of how the Adaptive Cruise Control ADAS solution may work.
For capturing the environment, the vehicle is accompanied by Front end camera, which along with the Long-Range RADAR sensors captures the environment details, and then the environment is perceived in order to detect the vehicle and calculate the distance and speed of that vehicle, after using processors, processing the data based on processed data, decision making is done whether to increase/decrease the speed of your vehicle. Once the decision-making is done, then using actuators, the ADAS solution will increase/decrease the speed.
Below is an example block diagram of the LANE Departure Warning and Prevention System:
In the Perception and Processing Decision-Making stage, various algorithms are used in order to process the data extracted from the nearby environment using Sensors fitted on vehicle on which the ADAS solution is implemented.
Role of ADAS:
Autonomous Driving:
Vehicles that can have the capability of driving themselves without a driver are known as self-driving cars or Autonomous Driving (AD).
The journey of making Autonomous Driving (AD) starts with ADAS.
It is the very first step of automated vehicle functions.
This is very well explained in SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers).
SAE has actually defined some levels to identify autonomous levels of vehicles, starting from 0 to 5.
Levels of Automation:
- Level — 0
- Level — 1
- Level — 2
- Level — 3
- Level — 4
- Level — 5
Level — 0: No Automation
No automation features in a vehicle.
Level — 1: Driver Assistance
Nowadays, almost all vehicles are of level-1 assistance.
The driver has full control over the vehicle, and speed, however, the car can alert the driver (collision warning/emergency braking)
Ex: Audi- A7
Level — 2: Partial Automation (Adaptive Cruise Control/Automatic Emergency Braking)
The driver continues to remain in contact with the vehicle.
Ex: Tesla Autopilot
Level — 3: Conditional Automation
All car functioning is the responsibility of an autonomous system except under certain atmospheric conditions. If conditions are not suitable to handle, the autonomous system informs the driver to regain control.
Ex: Audi Traffic Jam Pilot
Level — 4: High Automation
Vehicles can perform all the driving functions but driver intervention is required from time to time.
High Automation is feasible only in certain environments or compatible geographic locations.
Ex: Waymo Firefly
Level — 5: Fully Automation
No Driver input is required.
The car actually drives itself in all conditions.
Ex: BMW I Next (Concept Cars)
So, this is how basic ADAS Solutions work, what is the Role of ADAS, and Various levels of Automation in ADAS and in my next blog I will describe famous terms which are used frequently in ADAS implementation and various sensors used in ADAS Solutions.
Stay Tuned and Clap this blog, if this blog helped you in some way.
