Project description
Cost- and resource-efficient sensor packaging for autonomous and self-driving cars
The use of microelectronics and sensors (such as RADAR and LiDAR sensors) in autonomous driving and self-driving cars is essential. As the market is expected to grow, the further miniaturisation and safety of such sensor packages is necessary. What’s more, the weight and power consumption of such instruments is causing a rising demand for high-value and high-performance RADAR and LiDAR systems for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and robotic cars. The EU-funded TINKER project will create a new cost-affordable and resource-efficient method for RADAR and LiDAR sensor package production for the European automotive and microelectronics industry. The method is based on additive manufacturing and inline feedback control mechanisms ensuring high throughput, flexibility, improved automation, accuracy and reliability, as well as a significant reduction in rejection rates.
Objective
The vision of TINKER is to provide a new cost- and resource efficient pathway for RADAR and LIDAR sensor package fabrication with high throughput up to 250units/min, improved automation by 20%, improved accuracy by 50% and reliability by a factor of 100 to the European automotive and microelectronic industry via additive manufacturing and inline feedback control mechanisms.
Autonomous driving and self-driving cars represent one prominent example for the use of microelectronics and sensor, most importantly RADAR and LIDAR sensors. Their respective markets have a big potential, e.g. it is estimated that the market size of LIDAR in automotive will double itself in the next two years (within 2020 to 2022). The public awareness and the industrial need for further miniaturization of such sensor packages is the main driver of ongoing efforts in the automotive sector to be able to integrate such devices into the car body like in the bumps and head lamps instead of attaching them (e.g. on top of the car in case of LIDAR device). Safety (for the driver and others) is the most important key aspect of the automotive sector. Therefore highly-value and high performance RADAR and LIDAR systems are required for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) as well as robotic cars. Current bottlenecks are relevantly large size of such sensor devices, their weight and power consumption. Since these factors are highly limited within cars, further miniaturization and improving functionality and efficient use of resources is highly demanded.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringautomotive engineeringautonomous vehicles
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technologyradar
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicsmicroelectronics
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineeringadditive manufacturing
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
4407 STEYR GLEINK
Austria