On The Road to a Fatality-Free Future – Qualcomm Automotive’s GM Nakul Duggal

“All major automakers today are driving towards zero crash and zero fatality goals.” That’s according to Nakul Duggal, SVP and GM of Qualcomm Automotive.

His company – known for for being one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of mobile semiconductors for smart devices – recently announced the expansion of its Snapdragon Ride Platform portfolio of automated and advanced safety features.

The platform now supports a wide spectrum of ADAS functionality – ranging from windshield-mount ADAS solutions (Level 1), to active safety with conditional automation (Level 2/2+), through to fully autonomous driving systems (Level 4).

Duggal has been talking to Auto Futures about C-V2X technology, voice activated services and more. He began our interview by explaining how Qualcomm is helping the automotive industry become safer for drivers and passengers.

“As we focus more and more on the next generation technologies and applications for the car, the fundamental goal is the virtually wrap the car and the occupants in a safety cocoon to ensure that through a combination of intelligent sensors and real-time software, a crash is prevented at all times.”

“Whether this is through application of driver monitoring and occupant detection software to ensure that distractions are averted with the right alerts, to intelligent back-up and surround camera features that are intelligent and account for vulnerable users and situations (e.g. backing out into a street with poor cross-traffic visibility), our platforms are designed for bringing these features and functions into the necessary environments across all vehicle tiers,” adds Duggal.

One specific area of focus for Qualcomm has been C-V2X – or cellular-vehicle-to-everything – which allows non line of sight communications to aid drivers and cars with making intelligent decisions. For example, an alert from an intersection through roadside C-V2X infrastructure deployed can inform a driver of the presence of a pedestrian or a car that is not in their line of sight. 

“Broadcasting inclement weather conditions, slowdowns, crashes, sudden speed changes on a freeway can all be easily and intelligently communicated from road infrastructure to vehicles preventing or reducing crashes and fatalities,” he explains.

“We design our semiconductors and software with a safety mindset, to ensure that the applications running on our platforms are certified for use in safety applications. The road to a no-crash/fatality future is long, but a number of key initiatives that make the car and the infrastructure more intelligent can allow us to accelerate this timeframe.”  

Hearing Voices

At its recent virtual event, ‘Automotive Redefined’, Qualcomm unveiled a raft of new services and developments. It announced that it’s working with Amazon to pre-integrate the Alexa Custom Assistant into its Automotive Cockpit Platforms. This new system is designed to enable automotive OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers to build customisable in-vehicle intelligent assistants.

The Alexa Custom Assistant is built on Alexa technology and can be tailored to each vehicle brand with unique wake words, voices and capabilities. Duggal explains how important voice assistance services are for the automotive sector.

“Cars already have a variety of voice assistants – for safety, convenience and comfort and context specific responses.  Functionality that is tied to the physical context of the car enmeshes with what the driver/passenger is experiencing at any time which is further correlated with the hyperlocal position of the car itself to end up creating a very rich environment for an intelligent voice assistant that can use sensor information, past historical data, the physical context of the car, the driver/passenger and the environment to offer the right onboard, cloud or hybrid assistance.”

“A combination of low latency high bandwidth links, real time artificial intelligence, advanced voice, NLP and audio processing are some of the examples of technology that will be needed to create a unique in-vehicle voice experience,” he adds.

Continuous Experimentation; Continuous Learning

When it comes to autonmous transportation, Duggal believes that it’s rapidly becoming a reality due to testing and technological advances.

“After many decades of research and several years of actual deployment, the necessary technology – whether it be high performance low power AI compute processors, high resolution sensors – cameras, radar, lidar, localization, safety grade software environments and tool chains or the amount of real and simulated world miles required to test algorithms, is now available across a variety of ecosystems – automakers, semiconductor suppliers, Tier-1s, software and cloud companies,” he says.  

Duggal says autonomous transportation requires three key drivers – broad consumer acceptance that driverless cars are safe and can be trusted; a business case, and deployment at scale.

“We expect that the ecosystem will move towards such a future quite rapidly – continuously experimenting with robotaxis or robobuses in geofenced environments, driverless delivery vehicles or long haul trucking, and of course, passenger vehicles with continuously learning software.” 

“Improvements in the collection and quality of data, continuous learning environments, higher quality sensors, redundant compute solutions, better infrastructure designed for the plying autonomous driving, clear regulatory environment around acceleration of availability of autonomous transport are some examples of what can be done to accelerate development of autonomous transportation,” he explains.

The car will be much more intelligent and safe than they are today.

As cities continue to modernise, infrastructure, smarter, safer and more efficient transportation networks will become a key focus for city planning and development, says Duggal.

“At the intersection of this mobility revolution lie high speed connectivity and compute technologies, which are critical components to the vision of safer, always-connected and more autonomous vehicles of the future,” he explains.

As for the future, he offered us his vision of urban mobility by the end of the decade. “An interconnected web of vehicles, pedestrians, infrastructure and alternative modes of transportation will lead to not only safer transportation – thanks to a 360-degree non-line-of-sight view of surroundings –  but also more efficient transportation systems that reduce traffic congestion and increase in fuel savings for drivers,” he says.

“We also anticipate the in-vehicle experience shifting dramatically within the next decade. Vehicle passengers will be able to travel on certain roads in many urban areas without really ‘driving’, since the car will be much more intelligent and safe than they are today, creating a more pleasant and passive travel experience and allowing passengers to enjoy other activities during their journey – making the car more of an office or living room on wheels,” concludes Duggal.