Autonomous Cars: The Future of Automotive Lighting (Meetup #43)

How Autonomous Cars Communicate with Pedestrians

If you've ever used a hand gesture to tell a pedestrian that it is safe to cross the street in front of your car, you may wonder how an autonomous car can do this.

It could project a zebra crossing in front of the car, but how?

The demonstrator seen in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkrqNNRF9oU shows how and will be presented live. We will speak about the future of automotive lighting and about a comparable small Embedded Controller with unique graphics capabilities, the Infineon "Traveo II Cluster".
One part of the presentation will be about the tech. The microcontroller, its interfaces, and visual challenges in possible use cases.
Another part will give insights into the journey to build such a demonstrator. There were challenges, delays, and a lot of fun.
Depending on the questions and interests of participants, the needed vehicle electrical architecture can be touched as well.

This meetup will be especially interesting for developers of embedded systems and web frontends. Interestingly, the 2.5D graphics capabilities remind many experts of those in browsers. The tricks used to give a 3D appeal are the same. ;-)

Traveo II is ARM-based and in-part designed in Langen, next to Frankfurt. The firmware is programmed in Langen and the graphics driver in Munich. It is a local product presented by locals.

Speaker
Sönke Ohls is Director Applications Engineering at Infineon and heads the Customer Support for all ARM-based microcontrollers for automotive suppliers in EMEA. He has been in the automotive business for many years in various leading positions at OEMs and suppliers. In his spare time, he leads the VDI project "TechnoTHEK" to motivate children and teenagers to experiment with tech. This is a cooperation with the libraries in Frankfurt that reaches over 100 schools.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/soenke-ohls/

Please note: The meetup will be hosted via Zoom. Link will be provided shortly before the event.