OEM&Lieferant Ausgabe 1/2018

114 Images/Graphics: © ServiceXpert GmbH ServiceXpert Gesellschaft für Service-Infor- mationssysteme mbH and ESG Elektroniksys- tem- und Logistik-GmbH have jointly devel- oped the current software solution based on structure-from-motion (SfM) technology that enables 3D optical environment recon- structions using motion pictures from a mo- no-camera. In this case, a 3D point cloud of the environment, as well as the relative move- ment of the camera (six degrees of freedom), is calculated from the tracking of individual image features over several frames and ge- ometric equations. This means significantly lower hardware expenditure in terms of cam- era selection compared to stereo imaging. This image processing software has now been integrated by ServiceXpert engineers on an embedded one-chip system. Until now, the SfM solution has been used on PC architectures such as x86/x64 using Win- dows or Linux, so implementing this solu- tion on dedicated hardware as an embedded system is the next step in the evolution of this technology. This implementation makes this first step into the vehicle possible – of course, taking into account operational safety, costs, and installation space, amongst other things. The NVIDIA Jetson TX2 serves as a platform for the integration of the software. The hard- ware is based on NVIDIA Tegra technology and features a dual-core Denver2 processor and a quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 processor. It uses ARM64 technology, an NVIDIA Pascal GPU with 256 CUDA graphics cores and 8GB of memory. It has been developed as a credit card sized, high-performance embedded chip for the automotive industry. The chip is pro- vided as a development kit on a convenient board with comprehensive peripherals and interfaces. The development kit has almost unlimited digital inputs and outputs, HDMI, USB, Ethernet and CAN interfaces. Similarly, the board is flashable via a host PC by means of SSH via Ethernet with a new operating system. In this way, proprietary drivers and libraries from NVIDIA can be installed. 3D environment reconstruction close to serial production Porting of a Structure-from-Motion environment to an embedded system with graphics acceleration By Sebastian Kutter and Felix Dehn, System Engineers E/E System Design, ServiceXpert GmbH The use of more advanced sensor technologies is the prerequisite for autonomous or semi-autonomous driving. All vehicle manufacturers face the same challenges, regardless of the area of use of the vehicles - on or off the roads. Function, safety and cost factors, along with sensor fusion, play a decisive role in the selection of suitable sensor technologies. Engineering Partner