Search Results

The causes of deaths in traffic accidents are predominantly human factors such as careless or "heedlessness" driving; recently, accidents that are believed to be due to deteriorated physical conditions, such as heart attacks, have been reported. Non-contact electrocardiography (ECG) monitor for continuous ECG detection while driving is needed to reduce a number of fatal accident by human error like this. Recently there are a lot of papers to detect cardiac electricity using capacitance coupling between human body and electrode. This sensor system must be adopted appropriate high input impedance circuit and noise reduction technique as a function of source impedance value especially for a seat mounted sensor.

It is important that Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (AD) detect on-road objects, road vehicles and pedestrians. The typical detection devices mounted on ADAS and AD include a camera, a millimeter-wave radar and a Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR). Since LiDAR can obtain accurate distance and fine spatial resolution due to its short wavelength, it is expected that small objects such as a tire can be detected. However, the conventional LiDAR is equipped with multiple light transmitters and light receivers such as avalanche photo diodes. This causes LiDAR system to be expensive and large in size. Aiming to reduce the cost and size of LiDAR, we employed Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) which can be fabricated by CMOS process and easily arrayed. We also developed “Single Chip SPAD Array“ in which the two-dimensional array of SPAD and a signal processing block of range calculation were integrated into a single chip.

An important function of an Automated Driving (AD) system is to detect objects including vehicles and pedestrians on the road. Typical devices for detecting those objects include cameras, millimeter-wave RADAR, and light detection and ranging (LiDAR). LiDAR uses the flight time of a short-wavelength electromagnetic wave. Because of that LiDAR is expected to find even small objects such as tire fragments on a road in high resolution. The detection performance required for LiDAR depends on the operational design domain (ODD). For example, while a vehicle is travelling at high speeds, LiDAR needs to detect apparently small objects at long distances, and while it is travelling at low speeds, LiDAR has to detect objects over a wide angular range. Conventional LiDAR is developed to satisfy all requirements, providing performance including detection distance, resolution, and angle of view tends to expose issues such as cost and size when it is mounted onboard.