Zero roadway deaths now possible, says white paper
Achieving zero roadway deaths, says the company, is necessary for universal adoption of autonomous driving and is the objective of the recently released U.S. National Roadway Safety Strategy. In its paper, the company concludes that this goal is achievable with existing commercially scalable technology.
The paper finds that zero deaths require sensing and processing a peak data rate on the order of 100 X 1012 bits per second (100 Terabits per second) for vehicles to safely operate under worst roadway conditions. This immense requirement, says the company, is 10 million times greater than the sensory data rate from our eyes to our brains.
The paper also shows that sensing and processing 100 Tb/s can be accomplished by combining breakthrough analytics, advanced multi-band radar, solid-state LiDAR, and advanced system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology. Such an approach will allow companies developing advanced human driver assistance systems (ADAS) and fully autonomous driving systems to accelerate progress.
The company says that it has achieved pilot scale proof-of-concept of the core sensor element required for zero roadway deaths at a Northern California airfield in December 2021. One reason for this successful historic event, says the company, is the Atomic Norm – a recently discovered mathematical framework that radically changes how sensor data is processed and understood. Atomic Norm was developed at Caltech and MIT and further developed specifically for autonomous driving by NPS.
“Based on principles from physics and information theory, it is possible for sensors to see well enough to enable zero roadway deaths,” says Dr. Behrooz Rezvani, founder and CEO of NPS. “This is not wishful thinking – it’s possible today. We are solely focused on rolling out this historic technology that sees everything sooner, clearer and farther to provide autonomous vehicles with the stopping distance and time needed to reach zero preventable accidents. Henry Ford said his goal was for every working family to own a car. Our goal is to have nobody lose a loved one in a car crash.”
Dr. Babak Hassibi, founder and CTO of NPS adds, “The key question for companies developing autonomous driving systems should be ‘What must be true to get to zero roadway deaths?’ We have concluded that sensing and processing about 100 Tb/s is one of these necessary requirements and this is indeed possible.”
For more, see the paper: “Zero Roadway Deaths Means Seeing Everything Sooner, Clearer and Farther.”
