OREANDA-NEWS. Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it will expand its TMPV760 series line-up of image recognition processors for automotive applications with the launch of “TMPV7602XBG”, which is suited to monocular cameras in the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) applications. Sample shipments of TMPV7602XBG will start in March 2016, with mass production scheduled for January 2018.

The TMPV7602XBG provides high-speed, low-power image recognition of images captured by an on-vehicle monocular camera. It recognizes information necessary for safe driving, such as nearby pedestrians, vehicles, traffic lanes, traffic signs, road markings, and traffic lights.

The European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) has released an updated roadmap for safety ratings, and the section on test items requires adoption of the following items by 2018: “pedestrian detection and collision avoidance systems in daylight and obscure lighting conditions” and “pedal cyclist detection and collision avoidance systems”. Toshiba’s new image recognition processor targets ADAS applications that need to cope with these new requirements.

While inheriting the high night-time object recognition performance of the TMPV760 series, TMPV7602XBG achieves low-power consumption and package downsizing (17.0mm×17.0mm, 521 balls, and BGA0.65mm pitch) by optimizing the circuits providing a single video input channel for monocular cameras. The TMPV7602XBG helps to inhibit heat generation in the on-vehicle camera and also contributes to a reduced package size.

ADAS, which includes autonomous braking and lane-keeping assistance, is now widely implemented in vehicles, from compact to luxury cars. Toshiba will continue to develop image recognition processors that deal with increasing deployment of systems for safe driving support.

Key Features of the New Product

1. Higher Recognition Accuracy, Especially at Night

The TMPV7602XBG inherits the high night-time object recognition performance of the TMPV760 series. Toshiba’s color-based feature descriptor, the Enhanced CoHOG[1] accelerator, is integrated into the TMPV7602XBG and supports four sets of feature descriptors[2], such as the image feature descriptor CoHOG and color-based image feature descriptor Color-CoHOG. This provides higher recognition accuracy [3], especially at night and at times of low luminance difference between objects and the background.

2. Downsizing the Camera Module by Miniaturizing a Package and Reducing Power Consumption

Package size of the TMPV7602XBG has been reduced (17.0mm×17.0mm, 521 balls, and BGA0.65mm pitch) by optimizing the circuits to downsize the ADAS monocular camera module. Its power consumption is expected to be 50% [4] lower than that of the existing TMPV760 series product, TMPV7608XBG. In addition to this, the newly-incorporated power management unit allows efficient power management by controlling each functional block when it switches to or from sleep mode.