(31 May 2016) Unimore (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) is the leader of the European project “Hercules” whose ambitious goal is to achieve real-time high-performance structures for autonomous next-generation systems. Modern Advanced Assistance Systems (ADAS), the active safety, and semi-autonomous driving already require real time processing of large amounts of data coming from heterogeneous sensors, such as cameras, radars, GPS, inertial sensors etc. In the near future, the autonomous driving systems will bring these demands to their full potential for computing in real time, further increasing the computational requirements of computing systems present in our vehicles, requiring more guarantees and accurateness and timeliness of operations performed instead of people. To overcome these problems, the prototype systems for autonomous driving are currently developed by the major OEM, in other words the original equipment manufacturers in the automotive sector (Mercedes, Audi, Toyota, Volvo) and new actors from diverse domains (Google, Apple, Tesla) make use of highly complex computational platforms which process trillions of operations every second (TeraFlops) based on images from dozens of cameras and expensive laser aiming devices (lidar). Besides being expensive, such systems are often bulky and occupy a significant amount of space in a vehicle’s trunk due to requiring kilowatts of power for their operation. These drawbacks have led to the decision to promote at Hercules project the European level, aiming to significantly reduce the size, cost and power consumption of such autonomous driving systems while taking advantage of next-generation computing platforms based on systems with thousands of cores, or operational units on the same chip (many-core), and while providing real-time safeguards where any failure in data processing is not only undesirable, but potentially puts lives at risk. (Red)
