Time-of-Flight 3D imaging for mixed-critical systems

Computer vision is becoming more and more important in the fields of consumer electronics, cyber-physical systems, and automotive technology. Recognizing and classifying one´s environment reliably is imperative for safety-critical applications, as they are omnipresent, e.g., in the automotive or aviation domain. For this purpose, the Time-of-Flight imaging technology is suitable, which enables robust and cost-efficient three-dimensional sensing of the environment. However, the resource limitations of safety- and security-certified processor systems as well as complying to safety standards, poses a challenge for the development and integration of complex Time-of-Flight-based applications. Here we present a Time-of-Flight system approach that focuses in particular on the automotive domain. This Time-of-Flight imaging approach is based on an automotive processing platform that complies to safety and security standards. By employing state-of-the-art hardware/software and multi-core concepts, a robust Time-of-Flight system solution is introduced that can be used in a mixed-critical application context. In this work we demonstrate the feasible implementation of the proposed hardware/software architecture by means of a prototype for the automotive domain. Raw Time-of-Flight sensor data is taken and 3D data is calculated with up to 80 FPS without the usage of dedicated hardware accelerators. In a next step, safety-critical automotive applications (e.g., parking assistance) can exploit this 3D data in a mixed-critical environment respecting the needs of the ISO 26262.