Ford Works to Stop Bugs from Hitting AV Cameras
Ford Motor Company Autonomous Vehicle Systems Core Supervisor Venky Krishnan starts off his recent article on Medium with an interesting rhetorical question: “When was the last time you thought about how insects affect your driving?” Setting aside living in constant fear of bad insect drivers — how do bugs get licensed to drive anyway? — Krishnan is referring to the impact (literal and figurative) of bugs splatting against your windshield and, more to his point, self-driving vehicle sensors.
Turns out that bugs splattering on LiDAR sensors become the stuff of science for Krishnan and the team behind Ford’s autonomous vehicles. He says that they even went so far as to build “a makeshift ‘bug launcher’” that would shoot bugs at sensors at high speeds to learn how to best keep them clean.
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The ultimate answer come from yet another rhetorical question: “Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we just kept our self-driving sensors from getting hit with bugs in the first place?” This led to the optimization of the “tiara” that sits atop driverless cars and houses the cameras, sensors, and radar with the idea of using air to keep bugs from hitting in the first place.
“Here’s how it works: As the car is driving, the tiara funnels air out through different slots near the camera lens. This creates an ‘air curtain’ that actually deflects bugs away from the sensor itself. So anytime bugs are making a bee-line for a camera lens, the air flowing out of the tiara pushes it aside so it doesn’t make contact with the lens. It’s like changing the course of an asteroid on a crash-course with Earth.”
Heh. Bee-line.
Though the air curtain proves quite successful, the sensors also include a fully integrated cleaning system that allows for the lenses to be cleaned whenever necessary. Science!
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News Source: Medium
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