Crystal (Booth AV132), a manufacturer of ruggedized computer equipment, has been showing its range of embedded computers and solutions for AI and autonomy at this week’s Autonomous Vehicle Technology Expo in Novi, Michigan. Faced with the growing complexity of vehicles and the increasing number of sensor inputs on AV and ADAS development vehicles, the company is explaining how it is putting more power in the same size devices.
Brian Hamed, program manager, says, “The industry as a whole has been trying to put more and more brains and computing power into cars. Computers haven’t really been designed to be put in cars. We turn that around and take data-center-class servers that can take a lot of data with a lot of GPUs for processing sensor and camera inputs. This gives the car the ability to look at its surroundings, make decisions and not kill people – we’re not on any of the platforms that have caused accidents.
“Every customer that we deal with says that the finished product needs to be about the size of an iPad and cost $200. That’s the goal and no-one is anywhere close to that. Our products are for the development stage – they’re not for use in a lab, they’re for use on a vehicle, in the real world, in harsh environments getting bumped and shocked and vibrated and exposed to extreme temperatures and doing real-time processing. About every single quarter, we put more processing power in the same shape.”