Renesas and Phantom AI Inc., a developer of a vehicle-agnostic autonomous driving platform, announced the joint development of a full-stack Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) solution.

Phantom AI offers a flexible, automotive-grade ADAS solution on Renesas’ single, low-power R-Car V3H system-on-chip (SoC), which provides enough computing power to enable a Level 2 ADAS feature set and meets functional safety needs. This full-stack solution consists of three core products:

  • PhantomVision: a highly scalable deep learning-based computer vision system that supports vehicle, pedestrian, bicyclist, free-space, traffic sign and traffic light detection.
  • PhantomFusion: a platform independent sensor fusion and object tracking system that makes use of camera, radar and LiDAR and helps vehicles to keep track of anything surrounding them.
  • PhantomDrive: a complete ADAS control system that enables features such as adaptive cruise control, lane centering and automatic lane change.

Analysts are predicting that the ADAS market will reach US$134.9 billion by 2027, up from US$30 billion in 2019. As ADAS technologies are developed and refined, car manufacturers look to appeal to a wide range of customers with an increasing range of safety and convenience focused features.

Phantom AI’s software provides OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers an opportunity to deploy ADAS solutions across various low- to mid-end vehicle platforms where development cost is a big concern for manufacturers. The software provides a reliable, cost-effective NCAP 2020 compliant solution with no impact on the system performance.

Functional safety is a key ADAS requirement from vehicle manufacturers and collaboration with Renesas enables Phantom to deliver ISO26262-compliant solutions. Renesas provides a fully optimized and validated SOC / PMIC / timing chip set to reduce development efforts and bill of materials (BOM). The integration of real-time core integration in an SoC, including full AUTOSAR support removing the need of external MCU, contributes to further BOM reduction.

The R-CAR V3H is the Renesas Gen 3 SoC, which delivers high computer vision performance and AI processing at industry-leading low power levels. Designed for ADAS applications such as smart camera and surround view systems, the R-Car V3H includes dedicated accelerators for fast processing of complex deep learning algorithms and highly verifiable image recognition processing. In addition, it incorporates a high quality, on-chip image signal processor (ISP) designed to convert sensor signals for image rendering and recognition processing. This makes it possible to configure a system using inexpensive cameras without built-in ISPs, reducing the overall bill-of-materials cost.