Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2021 - 9

Sensors
The luxury cabin of the Sony
VISION-S is expected to have
robust infotainment features
using sensor data.
At the 2021 CES, Sony announced that VISION-S
was " conceived to re-imagine mobility as we know it. "
But whether or not the VISION-S sedan prototype -
about 3.5 inches (89 mm) shorter than a Tesla Model S
- eventually will be a direct consumer product has been a
matter of speculation. Sony told us that it has no plans to
mass-produce and sell a version of the prototype vehicle.
Instead, the company will primarily use the vehicle as a
rolling showcase of its auto-ready technologies.
Jellicoe believes that the end game for Sony is to
become a Tier 2 supplier. " I don't think they want to get
stuck in the depths of qualifying automotive assemblies or
dealing with OEMs, " he said. " They sell probably billions
of sensors into mobile phones. They would quite happily
sell 100 million sensors into automotive. " Sony declined to
comment on its plans to become an automotive supplier.
Sony's extraordinary parts bin
Laszlo Kishonti, chief executive of AImotive, points to
Sony's leadership position in sensors, cameras, LCD
screens, audio systems, videogames and entertainment
as a powerful suite of technologies well-suited to
next-gen vehicles. " Sony is not a standard EV company
because they can build upon the technology they
already own to add spice to the car, " said Kishonti.
AImotive's team of around 200 engineers is located
in Budapest, Detroit, Yokohama, Japan, and Mountain
View, Calif. In 2017, the former PSA Group (now
Stellantis) announced it was working with AImotive
on an AI-based automated driving system (ADS) for
highways in France. The R&D project focused on
vision-based, so-called " Level 2-plus " systems. Kishonti
Laszlo Kishonti is the CEO of AImotive.
believes AImotive software will be used in mass-production
vehicles by approximately 2023. " Automotive
product cycles are still very long, " he reminded.
Sony owns a treasure trove of electronics devices that
could prove invaluable for automated-vehicle functions. In
March, Izumi Kawanishi, Sony's senior VP of AI robotics,
told SAE's Autonomous Vehicle Engineering about the
company's new complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor
(CMOS) image sensor for automotive applications.
He described it as " a stacked direct Time of Flight (DTOF)
depth sensor for automotive lidar using single-photon
avalanche diode pixels, an industry first. "
Jellicoe and other observers speculate that Sony
is pairing a lidar chip with its image sensor in a single
camera package. However, Sony said it provides the
image sensors as photo detectors, not as modules.
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
July 2021 9
Sony
Almotive
Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2021

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