Commercial vehicles like trucks and buses could be among the first segments to welcome autonomous driving. In many use cases the driver is the most expensive part of the business, and replacing that human with a computer could radically rewrite the profit model. But before that can happen, these vehicles need a reliable system that can detect what’s going on in the surrounding environment and convey that information to the vehicle’ ‘brain’.
Fusion Processing is helping vehicles to do just that, either in fully autonomous or partially automated setups. As a self-described ‘systems company’, the Tier 1 supplier provides the software and the hardware for everything from collision avoidance systems and automated lane keeping to SAE Level 4 self-driving. “We have initially targeted commercial vehicles—primarily buses and trucks—as these are the areas where we feel there’s a strong need to adopt this technology,” says Chief Executive Jim Hutchinson. “The characteristics of those sectors lend themselves well to earlier deployment than passenger cars.”
