TDK offers Coursa Drive positioning software for autonomous vehicles

TDK’s booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is in South Hall 3, Booth #30306, and offers a look at sensors, passive components and more from TDK and its group companies. (Photo: TDK)

TDK Corporation has launched its InvenSense Coursa Drive software, an inertial-aided positioning solution for autonomous vehicle platform developers.

A high-performance extension of the InvenSense Positioning Library (IPL) that has provided sensor-aided positioning to more than 50 million devices worldwide, Coursa Drive enhances inertial-only vehicle positioning to <0.2 percent of distance traveled. These precise levels of accuracy are critical to maintaining decimeter lane-level vehicle positioning in challenging GNSS/perception system environments.

Coursa Drive’s inertial navigation system (INS) calibrates using absolute position inputs from either high-accuracy GNSS receivers or from perception-based systems (camera, radar, lidar) with high-definition (HD) maps.

In real time, Coursa Drive provides high-rate, 100 Hz delta positions and orientation to the autonomous vehicle (AV) system, complementing the lower-rate position references from GNSS and perception systems.

For improved system fault-tolerance, Coursa Drive can provide decimeter position precision for short periods when the GNSS or perception systems are uncertain or unavailable.

For non-real-time applications such as HD map creation and maintenance, Coursa Drive’s offline mode reprocesses INS data at two to three times higher accuracy than real-time mode, providing HD map companies alternative position references to verify HD map accuracy, even without GNSS, for up to 60 seconds.

“Coursa Drive delivers vehicle dead reckoning accuracy equivalent to high-end systems costing thousands of dollars,” said Mike Housholder, senior director of the TDK InvenSense Location Software and Services Business. “Our cost-effective software solution will help AV platform and Tier 1 vehicle manufacturers scale beyond prototype vehicles to high-volume mass production.”

Coursa Drive provides autonomous vehicle platform developers with maximum flexibility for system integration. The solution is platform agnostic and can operate on Cortex-M4F-class microcontrollers, or higher, and supports most dual-frequency GNSS receivers. The Coursa Drive API specifications are available upon request.

Coursa Drive is thoroughly tested and characterized using the InvenSense line of automotive-grade IMUs, including the IAM-20680 and IAM-20680HP, as well as several industrial grade IMUs. Coursa Drive is available now for select early partners and customers.

TDK and its group companies offering a comprehensive portfolio of sensors, electronic components and solutions for mobile, wearables, AR/VR, automotive, IoT and industrial applications will be at CES 2019, showcasing the Coursa Drive solution, along with additional innovative sensor solutions, in Booth #30306, Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 3, Jan. 8-11, Las Vegas.

Main applications

• Level 2 to Level 5 advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS)
• Robotaxis
• Trucking
• Precision agriculture

Key features

• World’s first high-precision inertial-aided positioning software for AVs
• Inertial-only decimeter precise positions provided during short GNSS or perception system outages/uncertainties
• High-rate, 100 Hz position and orientation updates supplied to the AV system
• GNSS-agnostic software solution offers flexible integration for full-stack AV solution providers
• Unique offline mode further enhances accuracy by two to three times for HD map building and maintenance applications.