Qualcomm is leveraging automotive connectivity for assisted and autonomous driving, digital cockpit, and extra
As Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon mentioned throughout CES, the corporate is “all in on auto.” With its Snapdragon Digital Chassis, a platform designed to facilitate the transition to software-defined automobiles by way of digital cockpit, driver help and enhanced security options, Qualcomm is presently serving to automotive OEMs navigate main modifications to the business with a powerful give attention to life security and car-to-cloud connectivity.
When it comes to how the sector is altering, Qualcomm’s Shailesh Patil, senior director of expertise, advised RCR Wi-fi Information, “The automotive business goes via a transition each in electrification and turning into extra autonomous.” As extra sensors are added to automobiles and infrastructure, “understanding how the car is behaving and what it’s doing and accumulating that sensing information, the connectivity can assist rather a lot there,” he mentioned. “That could be a key helpful factor which is there that 5G connectivity affords.”
The idea of always-on car-to-cloud connectivity speaks once more to this transfer away from static {hardware} to extra dynamic, software-defined automobiles. Patil mentioned car-to-cloud connectivity helps over-the-air vehicular software program updates which, in flip, can unlock new options and performance. Monitoring vehicular well being for predictive upkeep functions is one other main profit.
Looking on a three- to five-year time horizon, Patil sees ongoing enhancements to car-to-cloud connectivity and security, which he mentioned is Qualcomm’s “primary precedence” within the automotive area. Moreover, he mentioned R&D is targeted on adapting mobile modem and attendant applied sciences designed for smartphones to an automotive kind issue “which can allow extra connectivity and, subsequently, extra providers.”
Defending weak highway customers (VRUs) with cloud connectivity
In a demo proven throughout Cell World Congress 2023 in Barcelona, Qualcomm centered on defending VRUs, together with pedestrians and bicyclists. In a state of affairs the place pedestrians and automobiles are anonymously sharing location information from smartphones or automobiles, respectively, to the cloud, “The cloud can inform whether or not a pedestrian or a bicyclist and a car are on a collision course or not,” Patil mentioned. “Simply realizing that behind a constructing there’s a pedestrian makes you slightly extra conscious.”
This switch and evaluation of knowledge is enabled by APIs for Snapdragon Automotive-to-Cloud Companies. This suite of options gives safe communications to and from automobiles to assist customization all through a car’s lifecycle. The improve path permits OEMs to constantly rollout security and different digital providers to automobiles.
Automotive is a serious driver of Qualcomm’s diversification technique
Qualcomm goes via a serious diversification technique that primarily leverages applied sciences developed for cell comms and applies that experience to high-growth sectors like IoT, PCs and automotive.
As Amon advised CNBC throughout CES in January, “We’re all in on auto. We have now been very dedicated to diversifying the corporate. Auto is a kind of vectors.” There are presently round 250 million automobiles utilizing Qualcomm merchandise, and Amon estimated that determine will develop 10-fold by 2030 as automakers go additional down the trail of electrification and autonomy.
Watch this video for a demo of superior 5G auto connectivity.
