ZF TRW to supply advanced cameras to European OEM in 2018

ZF TRW has announced the initial contracts for its next-generation camera system – the S-Cam4 family – with a major European manufacturer.

"This fully scalable family of cameras is designed to meet the increasingly stringent regulatory requirements for advanced driver assist system (DAS) technologies while supporting the evolution toward automated driving," said Peter Lake, ZF TRW executive vice-president of sales and business development. "We are very pleased to begin supplying these advanced cameras to a premiere European vehicle manufacturer beginning in 2018."  

The S-Cam4 family includes a single lens, mono-camera version based on a standard housing and mechanical package designed to help meet test protocols such as EuroNCAP pedestrian triggered automatic emergency braking (AEB) and new potential requirements including a crossing bicycle AEB test. The innovative camera family also includes a premium three lens TriCam4 version to support advanced semi-automated driving functions.

The next-generation single lens unit builds on the recently launched S-Cam3 mono camera, while the three lens camera adds a telephoto lens for improved long distance sensing, and a fish-eye lens for improved short range sensing. This combination is ideal for semi-automated driving functions such as Highway Driving Assist and Traffic Jam Assist. The S-Cam4.x family will be equipped with Mobileye's Eye Q4 image processor and object recognition algorithms together with ZF TRW's longitudinal and lateral control algorithms to further enhance performance in premium DAS and semi-automated applications.

"By offering the most advanced processing and algorithm developments the S-Cam4 mono camera will represent the best of both worlds for affordability and performance, while the TriCam will offer best-in-class camera performance for semi-automated driving functions," Lake concluded.

Top pic: The right half of the image shows the field of view of ZF TRW's current S-Cam 3 technology. The left half, by comparison, illustrates the enhanced capabilities of TRW's next generation TriCam multi-lens camera. In addition to utilizing the standard lens featured in the S-Cam 3, the TriCam adds a fish-eye lens for a wider field of view at short range as well as a telephoto lens for detecting objects at longer ranges (up to 300m).