Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) today announced the  availability of its new informational advanced driver assistance systems (InfoADAS) software development kit (SDK). The new SDK delivers an automotive-ready InfoADAS framework for integrating ADAS algorithms into existing in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems. A growing industry trend, InfoADAS adds non-active safety information content such as surround view, pedestrian and lane detection and more to traditional IVI features to enhance the driving experience. TI’s InfoADAS SDK enables developers to:

· Extend investments in infotainment with the addition of innovative
InfoADAS use-cases to enhance the driver’s awareness of the conditions inside and
outside the vehicle, without compromising the performance of either IVI or InfoADAS
systems.

· Reshape traditional infotainment architectures by integrating additional
functions on TI’s DRA7xx “Jacinto 6” infotainment
processors.

Differentiation to support modern automotive cockpit mega-trends
With the increasing deployment of cameras and sensors in vehicles to make the
driving experience safer, there is a need to collect, analyze and display further
information to the driver without significantly increasing overall R&D investments
or bill-of-materials (BOM). The InfoADAS

SDK provides scalability across high-level operating systems (HLOS) and “Jacinto 6” devices for reuse of existing designs and resources. It can also be used as a pluggable InfoADAS subsystem to existing head unit applications. To act as a reference for customer’s
productized algorithm development, the InfoADAS SDK includes sample vision
algorithms to demonstrate the framework capabilities, and also includes hooks to
extend the framework for higher-level application features (such as park guide
overlays). In addition to the existing HLOS SDK supported on the “Jacinto 6”
platform and Vision SDK dedicated to control safety functions supported on the TI TDAx  processors, the delivery of the  infoADAS SDK unifies the software architecture across TI’s automotive processors, “Jacinto” and TDAx, for easy integration and scalability.
TI’s “Jacinto 6” family of processors

The DRA7xx family of processors provides a hardware- and software-compatible
platform capable to augment existing infotainment products with informational ADAS
features. To enable InfoADAS, there is no hardware change required besides upgrading
the system to route cameras to the processor. This allows customers to leverage
cameras both inside and outside the vehicle together with existing infotainment
platforms. Up to four dedicated accelerators, including TI’s C66x Digital Signal
Processor (DSP) and Embedded Vision Engine (EVE), and other “Jacinto 6” family
capabilities allow for concurrencies of head-unit features and emerging analytics
and image manipulation not previously possible on a single device.
Pricing and availability

The DRA7xx processors, intended for high-volume automotive manufacturers, are
available for mass-production and not available through distributors. Access to
InfoADAS SDK is through a TI representative.