At CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Sony has unveiled a driverless, electric concept car designed to flaunt the Japanese company’s expertise in a range of mobility technologies. Sony engineers have created the Vision-S prototype vehicle as a way of showcasing its advanced electronics technologies that aim to contribute to “safer and more reliable autonomous driving”.
A total of 33 sensors including CMOS image sensors and ToF sensors are embedded within the vehicle, in order to detect and recognize people and objects inside and outside the car, and provide highly advanced driving support.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that mobile has been the mega-trend of the last decade. I believe the next mega-trend will be mobility,” said Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida as he revealed the concept vehicle.
To support autonomous driving, the car uses a type of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) called Solid State, which uses highly accurate distance measurement to gain a precise 3D grasp of real-life spaces.
Other safety features include sensor fusion technology which merges the capabilities of sensors of varied attributes to enable early and accurate recognition, even in challenging conditions such as fog, backlight and night-time driving.
Sony’s Vision-S prototype features Time-of-Flight (ToF) in-cabin sensing solutions which use distance measurement technology to detect and recognize people and objects inside the car. This information is used to provide an optimized infotainment system with intuitive interfaces such as gesture control and improve safety and comfort inside the vehicle.
The car also incorporates an array of electronics technologies that aim to offer comfort and an “unprecedented in-car entertainment experience”.
This includes a panoramic screen spanning the dashboard and the company’s 360 Reality Audio, which provides a deep and immersive audio experience through speakers built into each seat to encapsulates passengers in sound.