ZF Establishes Level 2+ ADAS

Cost-effective technology solutions to meet diverse customer needs are what the “new pragmatism” in driver-assistance tech is all about. Senior VP Aine Denari explains.

March 1, 2020

Lindsay Brooke

The wall of hype surrounding the self-driving future has given way to a new pragmatism, and engineers are breathing a collective sigh of relief. The industry, for the most part, has come to grips with the myriad challenges of making autonomous vehicles perform with utmost safety, in all driving scenarios and weather conditions. Cost sensitivity remains a significant factor, particularly in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) whose development is closely aligned with NCAP safety requirements.

Tier 1s that are driving both innovation and systems integration in this dynamic space have been adjusting their strategies accordingly.

A new realism has emerged, asserted Wolf-Henning Scheider, CEO of tech supplier ZF. During the 2020 CES in Las Vegas, he said his company’s developments are currently focused on two parallel tracks: ADAS that ZF calls ‘Level 2+’ for passenger vehicles, and SAE Level 4 systems for commercial-vehicle applications and people/ cargo movers in defined use cases.

ZF’s new “coAssist” system is its first Level 2+ play. It offers capability between standard SAE Level 2 and Level 3 and is claimed to meet projected Euro NCAP 2024 test protocols. CoAssist will use Mobileye’s latest EyeQ chip and ZF’s new Gen21 medium-range radar when it enters production with “a major Asian OEM” later this year.

“The range of needs is so diverse across the customer sets. The way one [customer] defines Level 2+ might be very different from the way another defines it,” explains Aine Denari, senior VP for ADAS at ZF. “Although the majority of the volume of the market will remain GSR or NCAP-focused, we think the largest portion of the AD-focused passenger car market will be Level 2+, which essentially relies on cameras and radar. Some, however, want solutions that are scalable up to Level 4” — the common architectures help minimize having to test and re-validate across product lines.

“We’ve seen some customers deliberate the tradeoff of having a scale-up solution to meet the high-end niche that’s maybe five percent or less of the total market, versus having the most cost-optimized solution for maybe 80 percent of the market,” she noted. “As a full-systems supplier, we need to be able to offer everything.”

Lidar at SAE “Level 2-plus”

Does lidar—which many engineers still consider an immature and expensive technology—play a role in ZF’s Level 2+ plans? CEO Schieder hinted that some advanced full-range radars now under development may deliver much of lidar’s imaging capability.

“Level 2+ systems still require drivers to have their eyes on the road,” Denari stated. “But when you move into Level 3 and beyond, you must have a third redundant sensor.” She noted that some customers might want the additional performance that a lidar provides for enhanced safety, particularly in their technology-leading flagship vehicles: “We definitely see customers putting lidar into Level 2+ vehicles to enhance availability and reliability.”

The more an ADAS architecture can be scaled up, the more it will inherently cost. This can lead to optimizing for the lowest-cost, mass-market solution. ZF’s new coAssist package, including software and functionality, is priced “well under $1,000” per vehicle. Denari revealed that increased efficiencies across ZF’s validation process, using more AI-based tools in simulation, have helped reduce development costs that can be at least a million dollars per platform, per region.

Technology partnerships are increasingly vital to ZF’s automated-driving strategy. Cameras are a collaborative effort with long-time partrner Mobileye. Lidars developed with Ibeo Automotive Systems enable, along with long-range radars and 360-surround vision, will help enable Level 4 functionality. Hella is the short-range radar partner. ZF’s powerful ProAI compute platform can use a range of SOCs including a scalable Nvidia chip, or those from Xylinx and Qualcomm, to process signals from the sensor suite that can also include ultrasonics.

“In terms of our decisions to invest in a technology or partner, we’re focusing on the places where we have a long-term, sustainable, competitive advantage,” Denari said. “We look for where we can have a USP [unique selling proposition]. There are both new sellers and new customers breaking into the market, and we won’t invest in anything that just makes us a ‘me too.’ We’ll only invest where we can bring something to the table that’s better than everybody else’s.”

A technology that ZF has decided not to invest in, for the short term at least, is vehicle-to-infrastructure [V2X]. Denari acknowledges that V2X is an important part of an overall ADAS and autonomous-driving ecosystem. “We looked at the market landscape and what the other players can do, at what the potential pricing is and what the real differentiation ability is. We concluded that in that [V2X] space it makes more sense for us to partner with somebody.”

Taking the Cubix approach

HD mapping and driver-monitoring are technologies that ZF is watching closely. The former “will become more ubiquitous as its resolution increases,” Denari said. And she anticipates driver-monitoring is “not unlikely” to become mandated as the more-capable ADAS systems such as coAssist gain popularity.

“If we’re going to allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel—and some customers looking for Level 2+ will want that for sure — it’s going to be a requirement,” she said. Incumbent Level 2 systems now in use that don’t have driver monitoring present a danger to their drivers as well as to other road users, she believes.

ZF’s central-compute initiatives are centered around use case. The basic NCAP solutions require no SDE (safety domain electronic controller), with sensor fusion done on the camera or radar. With many OEMs moving to all-new electrical architectures, ZF is preparing for the widespread move to centralized domain controllers.

“Our goal is to offer a range of solutions,” Denari said. “For example, we can offer a ProAI that’s purely for ADAS and AD and a ProAI that houses the Cubix [ZF’s new software that integrates numerous chassis systems] in which we can incorporate the powertrain function, too.”

Throughout AVE’s interview with Denari, she continued to stress ZF’s focus on executing “what will have the biggest impacts in the most cost-effective way,” delivered flawlessly within a business and technology space where cost + value is the holy grail.