Modern autonomous vehicles are getting pretty darn good at seeing the world around them. That is, assuming that lighting conditions are ideal. Once rain, snow, or sudden bursts of bright light from first-response vehicles enter the equation, things start to get a bit dicey. A tiny new sensor component that is roughly the size of a grain of sand, could help solve that problem.
Called a photomemristor, the new sensor was engineered by researchers at Penn State. It breaks from the traditional approach to computer vision sensors, and instead takes inspiration from good old-fashioned human eyeballs. In essence, it is akin to extra artificial eyes. In testing, the device adjusted between bright and dark lighting environments faster than contemporary methods.
Human eyes easily and innately transition between light and dark. Building that same ability in future autonomous vehicles could make them more reliable, even in inclement weather. That extra help could go a long way, especially as robotaxi companies like Waymo and Zoox prepare to put more and more of their driverless cars on public roads in the United States and abroad. The findings were published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
“By mimicking the way the eye works, we can create photomemristors that work much more reliably for applications in mixed lighting environments,” Larry Chang, an engineer at Penn State and a study co-author, said in a statement.
Where computer vision falls short
Driverless car vision models (and all computer vision systems, for that matter) are only as good as the data that they’re trained on. Though there’s been considerable effort to improve performance in bad weather and odd lighting environments, a quick look at the cities where driverless services are currently available tells a familiar story. Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin all are known for their long, sunny days.
