AEye and ANSYS Accelerate Autonomous Driving Safety

The next generation of autonomous vehicles will mimic how human eyes focus on and evaluate road conditions by leveraging AEye and ANSYS technologies, the companies suggest. AEye is incorporating ANSYS' simulation solutions into the design of its Intelligent Detection and Ranging (iDAR) platform—enabling customers to reduce physical prototyping and improve the safety and reliability of autonomous systems. 

Safeguarding autonomous driving requires next-generation sensors to quickly and correctly interpret certain hazardous road scenarios that cannot be reliably detected by conventional perception platforms. To validate the sensors' effectiveness, exhaustive road testing must be successfully completed—requiring significant development time and expenses. With ANSYS, AEye empowers automotive manufacturers to potentially simulate driving situations across millions of miles in just days, minimizing physical prototyping.

AEye is implementing ANSYS SPEOS and ANSYS VRXPERIENCE, a driving simulation tool with physics-based sensor models, into the design of AEye's iDAR—empowering customers to test and certify iDAR designs within a realistic virtual driving environment. AEye's automotive-grade iDAR combines deterministic and AI-driven perception to deliver detection and classification at high speed and far range not possible for conventional LiDAR or camera sensors. Through the integration, automotive customers deploying autonomous vehicle and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) will be able to virtually prototype AEye's software-definable, agile LiDAR to simulate exactly how they want to sense their environment.

"Addressing use cases systematically will eventually allow AEye and its OEM and Tier 1 customers to drive more intelligence from the edge and achieve higher autonomous capabilities, a concept we refer to as autonomy on-demand," says Luis Dussan, co-founder and CEO at AEye. "By collaborating with ANSYS, we are helping to accelerate customer and partner innovation—bringing safer, more reliable autonomous features to the market." 

"iDAR will substantially advance autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems' reliability, enabling improved autonomous perception and, in turn, safer roads," says Eric Bantegnie, vice president and general manager, Systems Business Unit at ANSYS. "ANSYS helps automotive manufacturers test scenarios that are nearly impossible to physically test, fully validating iDAR's performance. As OEMs and Tier 1 manufactures adopt iDAR, our simulation solutions will reduce development time and optimize implementation."

AEye and ANSYS will showcase their ability to detect driving scenarios using SPEOS and VRXPERIENCE at CES on Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas at ANSYS Booth 3310 and AEye Booth 7538 in the Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.