Get FinancingAirbus Teams With ZF Friedrichshafen On End-To-End Autonomous Driving Solution
Airbus, a leading designer and manufacturer of commercial and military aircraft and helicopters, will provide ZF Friedrichshafen with satellite-derived data with the aim of enhancing onboard systems ZF provides to enhance autonomous driving solutions. Founded in 1915, ZF is a global technology company that supplies its systems to commercial vehicle, passenger car, and industrial technology solutions aimed at enabling “the next generation of mobility.”
Highly Precise
Vehicle manufacturers, startups, and mobility providers in the transportation field are among the recipients of ZF’s integrated solutions. ZF says it’s continually enhancing its systems in terms of digital connectivity and automation in order to enable vehicles to “see, think, and act.” This is done through the use of environmental sensors, central electronic control units, and intelligent mechatronics in the chassis and steering systems that convert data to actions.
The company’s ZF ProAI platform, for example, is described as a mobile supercomputer that uses real-world data to help train AI (artificial intelligence) to make increasingly better driving decisions, which are then shared via a cloud-computing approach.
While Airbus says autonomous driving is a “new, enthusing, and challenging market” for itself, it notes that the “highest level of autonomy requires the highest maps precision.” To that end, Airbus will provide ZF with its highly precise GCPs (Ground Control Points). Calculated using radar satellite imagery, GCPs will support ZF’s array of sensor data, including radar and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). The GCPs will also serve as an independent data source to enhance and validate mobile mapping data accuracy, Airbus says.
HD Maps
Elsewhere, Airbus will provide high-definition HD maps to complement ZF’s semantic cards. “HD maps are key to ensure the guiding route, as they build an important link between mobile mapping data and global positioning systems,” Airbus says. Besides providing data concerning lanes, HD maps provide data relating to lane width, curve radius, street signs, bridges, buildings, and distances among these. ZF will integrate both HD maps and remote-sensed-data GCPs into its ZF AD Environment, an enhanced HD maps solution that will implement all data needed for autonomous driving in a cloud-based system, Airbus states.
Source: Airbus
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