ZF Acquires Stake in StradVision to Expand Automated Driving Perception Software

Date:2022-03-30 Author:Alice Source:chinaspv.com

Friedrichshafen (Germany), Seoul (South Korea). Safe autonomous vehicles need to reliably detect and identify other road users, road markings or traffic signs, even in harsh weather conditions or poor lighting. High-performance software for recognizing the vehicle environment plays a central role in this.

The technology company ZF has acquired a 6 percent stake in the South Korean software company StradVision, a pioneer in artificial intelligence based vision processing technology for autonomous vehicles and ADAS systems.

“The partnership with StradVision considerably extends our autonomous driving perception and sensor fusion capabilities,” said Marc Bolitho, head of Engineering of the Electronics and ADAS division at ZF Group. “Together with our sensors, middleware platform and high-performance computing solutions, this vision perception software expertise from StradVision can provide a key component of our environmental sensor fusion for shuttles, commercial and light vehicles that can be optimized for centralized electrical architectures.”

“We are proud to count ZF as one of our strategic investors,” said Junhwan Kim, CEO at StradVision. “Together with the global mobility specialist ZF, we will strive to speed up the market for autonomous driving with leading perception solutions.”

A safe eye on the vehicle’s environment

The StradVision software allows vehicles to detect and identify objects accurately, such as other vehicles, lanes, pedestrians, animals, free space, traffic signs, and lights, even in harsh weather conditions or poor lighting. 

The software relies on deep learning-based perception algorithms, which requires a relatively small amount of memory and has low power consumption. The software supports a wide variety of hardware platforms and can also be customized and optimized for other hardware systems.

The StradVision software is currently used in high volume models of ADAS and autonomous driving vehicles.

ZF as system provider for autonomous driving

Autonomous driving and vehicle software are among the strategic technology fields within the ZF product portfolio. ZF’s AD system solutions for the automotive and mobility sectors include high-performance computers such as the ZF ProAI, automotive software supporting ADAS and AD functions, sensors like camera, radar and LiDAR, and smart actuators.