Trends

Hey, HELLA: what exactly do you guys have to do with autonomous driving?

autonom-fahrendes-fahrzeug-bald-gegenwart

Lots of things! HELLA plays a key role in implementing the next development stages in mobility including, of course, the challenge of autonomous driving. And the part our company plays is not only that of a component supplier. You may already know this: we certainly do much more than just excellent vehicle lighting! As a technology developer, we specifically bundle together, amongst many other things, sensor and data processing solutions and thus also drive forward the trends shaping the future - such as automated and autonomous driving. How do we do that? We'll be happy to tell you...

How do the development departments at HELLA actually decide where to generate innovation?

Automated and autonomous driving, the connected car, e-mobility - these are Megatrends, on which HELLA is also focusing. And by the way: you can read about the different levels of autonomous driving here. So how do we decide which topic to tackle? In the best case, we specifically select the issues that help YOU most and to which WE can best contribute.

In a large company, how do you lay the foundations for getting started with the job of innovation?

What are currently the most important innovation subjects for HELLA in the field of automated driving?

A classic example is automated parking in multi-storey car parks using the valet parking function. Here, the vehicle autonomously covers a short distance from a certain transfer point to the parking space - it sounds simple, but it is actually technologically complex. A large number of different and sometimes complementary technologies are required: radar sensors, laser scanners and camera software, structure-borne sound sensors and environmental data.
We have been developing new radar technologies since the turn of the millennium. For classic rear-end functions such as blind spot detection or lane change assistant, a sensor, for example, with 24 GHz transmission frequency was developed. This went into series production in 2006. Today HELLA is the world market leader in the field of rear applications, having produced 20 million 24 GHz sensors.

But then we went one better: when compared to 24 GHz technology, our 77 GHz radar sensors operate at more than three times the transmission frequency and they have about five times the available bandwidth. While a 24 GHz sensor perceives two objects that are less than 1.5m apart as a single object, a 77 GHz sensor can even distinguish between vehicles that are only 30cm apart.

In addition, the sensor enables 360° perception of the area around the vehicle. And all this forms a sturdy foundation on which more advanced technologies of the future can be built. This total environment perception of a vehicle is based on laser beams. That is the reason why HELLA is focusing on developing LiDAR sensor technology and LiDAR system development for driver assistance systems and automated driving in a strategic partnership with the Californian start-up AEye.