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TRW Conekt: Driver Safety

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Xilinx FPGA accelerates integration of customer hardware and many different processor/logic configurations.

TRW Conekt was tasked with providing embedded processing electronics for the “Foot-LITE” project led by MIRA Ltd. and sponsored by the U.K government-backed Technology Strategy Board, the Department for Transport, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The project provides feedback to drivers about their driving habits from the perspective of both safety and fuel economy.

Forward- and rear-facing video cameras are installed in vehicles, and a variety of algorithms process the images to detect vehicle dynamics, objects, and other vehicles. The team had available to them a processing system, already under development in another project, to perform the image-processing tasks. This system is based around a single Xilinx device connected to four independent blocks of DDR memory, an architecture that allows users to implement many different processor/logic configurations.

FPGAs provide huge flexibility, which meets the needs of evolving projects much more easily than a fixed hardware platform. The ability to mix in custom hardware for intensive applications (for example, video) is also beneficial. If you use Linux to gain the huge benefits of ready-made high-level access to peripherals such as Ethernet, you don’t need to compromise on real-time performance, as you can push those critical tasks into their own microprocessor. Finally, if a large, geographically distributed team is developing the software, having a hardware architecture that matches the functional split provides benefits in development and integration. 

- Martin Thompson, Principal Product Engineer, TRW Conekt
(consultancy arm or TRW Automotive)

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