International. The ZF Annotate technology group has developed the cloud-based and AI-enabled validation service, all this to further advance the development of these ADAS and AD solutions.
These innovations are due to the fact that modern automated driver assistance systems require a large number of sensors to accurately analyse the vehicle's surroundings and derive safe driving manoeuvres. The group presented fast, cost-effective and market-ready service for passenger cars and commercial vehicles for the first time at the ZF Global Technology Day on June 27, 2024 in Jeversen, Hannover.
Accurate and reliable data is essential for the development of advanced vehicle assistance systems. Cameras, radars, lidars or ultrasonic sensors continuously supply information from which the vehicle creates a three-dimensional image of its surroundings. Systems must recognize a wide variety of objects in real time, such as vehicles, people, lanes, or traffic signs, for example.
This sensor data must be digitally processed correctly so that the vehicle always receives the "absolute truth", known in the industry as "fundamental truth", in order to calculate and implement a driving function based on it. Comparing the information collected by the sensors with a reliable, high-precision reference sensor array increases accuracy. This is where ZF Annotate comes in.
"ZF Annotate combines the advantages of a robust, standalone reference sensor suite with a scalable cloud service using intelligent 2D and 3D tracking algorithms," says Dr. Holger Klein, Chairman of the Board of Management.
Previous comparable systems relied primarily on 2D annotation for the validation of reference data, and thus represented the environment in terms of distance and horizontal angle. ZF Annotate, with 3D capability, adds height information to the data. "This makes our solution a unique intelligent 'cloud factory' in the industry, which optimizes a previously labor-intensive and expensive service in several ways," Klein explains.
Accurate and reliable data from ZF Annotate reference measurements can significantly speed up the development and tuning of complex ADAS and AD systems. Until now, validating these systems involved a lot of work and therefore a lot of time and money, as traditionally reference data was manually annotated by people.
"Thanks to artificial intelligence, we can speed up the validation process by up to ten times and therefore reduce the annotation time from twelve to two months. This saves our customers time and money," Klein explains. "With ZF Annotate, we can generate a 'basic truth' in the shortest possible time," says Klaus Hofmockel, Head of Research and Development at the Driver Assistance Systems and Electronics division. "With the ability to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, our cloud-based service completes the validation of reference data in a remarkably short time compared to the market, without any loss of quality."
Depending on the customer's requirements, the reference sensors are used in the test vehicle itself or in "Pursuit" mode, i.e. a sensor array mounted on a separate reference data vehicle. The "Pursuit" mode can be used without making major modifications to the vehicle being tested, for example when evaluating parking scenarios in public spaces.
This application flexibility allows ZF Annotate to be independent of specific sensor manufacturers. In addition, there is no longer a need to modify customers' otherwise costly high-tech test vehicles. In this way, customers can also include the service in development projects that have already started. In this way, ZF Annotate supports the validation process in the most effective way and thus the goals of each developer on the way to a perfect product.
ZF is known for developing new technologies for various application areas. ZF Annotate can be used in all vehicle classes, both in the passenger car and commercial vehicle sectors.
"Reliability and efficiency are important factors in validating reference data in the development of increasingly popular advanced driver assistance systems," Klein said. "ZF Annotate offers both in one scalable system. With our solution, ZF brings another critical element on the road to the software-defined vehicle."
