Thermal imagery may be a second pair of eyes besides LiDAR for your autonomous vehicle. My opinion? While some systems rely on less data. I think there is a safe middle point between too little and too much.

Thermal cameras could be key to safer self-driving vehicles

The Israeli startup is only a few months old, but it's already built a thermal camera for a demo vehicle I had a chance to ride in. The device passively collects thermal data from the world, then converts it into a high-resolution video that the company drops into its computer-vision system.

From article, ([This] device passively collects thermal data from the world, then converts it into a high-resolution video that the company drops into its computer-vision system. Then whatever it sees is classified as a car, person, animal, road and so on.

That's pretty much how other sensors work, too, but during the demo, it became clear that the system could see and classify items that could be difficult to parse with the typical cameras on an autonomous car. The in-car monitor showed and classified people and animals based on their thermal signature. Even if a system like this can't immediately determine something it sees is a person, the heat signature would at least show that it's probably alive.

While a camera and LiDAR could have seen these things as well, in the sunny Las Vegas weather it was easy to imagine them getting lost in fog, dust and even direct sunlight with those vision-based sensors. Being able to see the difference in temperature, even on things like the road, is important.

The team behind Adasky is using its years of experience developing thermal cameras for the military to make the leap into automobiles. Considering how often armed forces use thermal imaging for drones, manned vehicles and on-the-ground troops, it's a good background to have.

Whether or not automakers are keen to add another sensor to self-driving cars of the future is yet to be seen. The companies would have to add another device to their cars. But more importantly, they would have to ingest and crunch even more data than what's already being done. That means faster processors, quicker in-vehicle network speeds and more storage, plus figuring out how to make it all work together.)

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