“Software development and delivery has been a significant pain point for automotive system developers, involving resource-intensive customised packaging and full installations that typically take several days to complete,” said Naoki Yoshida, Vice President, Automotive Digital Products Marketing Division at Renesas. “To alleviate these headaches when it comes to deep learning for automotive systems, Renesas is reinventing the developer experience, offering this new single package, multi-OS software platform that is easy for customers to access, learn, use, and install, enabling customers to quick start their deep learning development.”
While automakers are increasingly turning to deep learning as they look for new ways to enable smart camera applications and automated driving systems for next-generation vehicles they are having to use deep learning solutions built on consumer or server applications, which do not operate under the same stringent constraints for functional safety, real-time responsiveness, and low power consumption.
Optimised for use with Renesas’ R-Car V3H and R-Car V3M system-on-chips (SoCs), the R-Car SDK has been built for rule-based automotive computer vision and AI-based functions.
The simulation platform is able to offer both AI and conventional hardware accelerators for highly accurate simulations in real time. Renesas said that it will continue to strengthen this virtual platform over time.
A full suite of development PC-based tools is delivered for both Windows and Linux as well as multiple libraries, including support for deep learning, computer vision, video codecs, and 3D graphics. Besides Linux, the new SDK also supports multiple ASIL-D-compliant operating systems (e.g., QNX, eMCOS, and INTEGRITY) in a single package.
Renesas is also offering a special version of its e² studio for the R-Car V series that focuses on the creation of high-performance, real-time computer vision applications for ADAS and automated driving. The open-source Eclipse-based development environment includes a full set of debug features and an e² studio GUI that allows users to customise and integrate third-party tools. It also supports bus monitoring and debug functionalities for image processing and deep learning subsystems.
The R-Car SDK also includes a full set of software samples, popular CNN networks, a workshop, and application notes, which will help Renesas R-Car platform newcomers to access the technology and enable a quick start for development.
Thanks to the automatic installer, all the software libraries and the development environment can be launched quickly on a development workstation.
