What is a car camera module?

The on-board camera, known as the "eye of automatic driving", is the core sensing equipment in the field of ADAS system and automotive automatic driving. Mainly through the lens and image sensor to achieve the image information acquisition function, can achieve 360° visual perception, and make up for the radar in object recognition defects, is the closest to human vision sensor.

Vehicle-mounted cameras are widely used in the automotive field, from the early use of driving records, reversing images, parking around the view gradually extended to intelligent cabin behavior recognition and ADAS assisted driving, application scenarios are increasingly rich.At present, the global car camera industry CR3 is 41%, and the world's top ten enterprises occupy 96% of the market share, and the global car cmera industry concentration is at a high level.

he Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) predicts that by 2030, nearly 50% of vehicles will be equipped with ADAS technology.

According to ICVTank, by 2025, the scale of China's on-board camera industry is expected to reach 23 billion, with a five-year CAGR of 30%; The global in-vehicle camera market is expected to grow from $11.2 billion in 2019 to $27 billion in 2025, with a five-year CAGR of 15.8%.

Automatic driving includes perception, judgment and execution, and perception is the source of the entire process and an important module of the automatic driving system. In the process of vehicle driving, the perception system will collect information about the surrounding environment in real time through sensors, which is equivalent to the "eyes" of the self-driving car, and can help the car achieve the same effect as the human driver's observation ability.

In autonomous vehicles, the perception system is mainly composed of sensors such as cameras, millimeter-wave radar, LiDAR (optional, here is mainly afraid of being Tesla's fan bars). As the main environmental perception sensor, the camera plays a very important role, which can achieve 360° comprehensive visual perception, make up for the defects of radar in object recognition, and is the sensor closest to human vision. Therefore, the on-board camera is one of the key equipment in the field of autonomous driving.

The main hardware structure of the car camera includes optical lens (including optical lens, filter, protective film, etc.), image sensor, image signal processor ISP, serializer, connector and other devices.

Optical lens: responsible for focusing light and projecting objects in the field of view onto the surface of the imaging medium, depending on the requirements of the imaging effect, multi-layer optical lenses may be required. The filter can filter out the light bands that the human eye cannot see, leaving only the visible light band of the actual scene in the field of vision of the human eye.

Automotive camera process requirements

High temperature resistance: the car camera needs to work normally in the range of -40℃~85℃, and can adapt to drastic changes in temperature;

Seismic: the vehicle will produce strong vibration on the less flat road, so the car camera must be able to resist various strengths of vibration;

Anti-magnetic: the vehicle will produce a very high electromagnetic pulse when starting, which requires a very high anti-magnetic property;

Waterproof: the camera should be sealed very tightly to meet the normal use of soaking in rain for several days;

Service life: the service life is at least 8~10 years to meet the requirements;

Ultra-wide Angle: side-view camera must be ultra-wide Angle, horizontal Angle of view up to 135°;

High dynamic: the vehicle speed is fast, the light environment facing the camera changes violently and frequently, requiring the CMOS of the camera to have high dynamic characteristics;

Low noise: It can effectively suppress noise in low light, especially requiring side-view and rear-view cameras to capture images clearly even at night.

Key parameters of vehicle intelligent front video head

Detection range

Horizontal field Angle

Vertical field Angle

Resolution – The maximum number of lines that can be seen on the monitor (which has a higher resolution than the camera) when the camera takes uniformly spaced black and white stripes. When this number is exceeded, the screen can only see a gray area, and the black and white lines can no longer be distinguished.

Minimum illuminance – that is, how sensitive the image sensor is to ambient light, or the darkest light that the image sensor needs for normal imaging. It is the scene illuminance value when the illumination of the subject is gradually reduced, and the video signal level of the camera is less than half of the maximum value of the standard signal.

Signal-to-noise ratio – the ratio of the output signal voltage to the noise voltage simultaneously output;

Dynamic range – The interval within which the brightness values of the brightest and darkest objects in the same frame are normally displayed in detail. The greater the dynamic range, the greater the degree to which objects that are too bright or too dark can be displayed normally in the same picture.

What are the advantages compared with radar technology

1) Compared with millimeter wave radar, the main advantages of the current camera are:

Target recognition and classification – At present, ordinary 3D millimeter wave radar can only detect whether there are obstacles ahead, but cannot accurately identify the size and category of obstacles; For example: all kinds of lane line recognition, traffic light recognition and traffic sign recognition;

Navigable space detection (FreeSpace) – Divides the safe boundary (drivable area) of the vehicle, mainly divides the vehicle, the common curb, the side stone edge, the boundary with no visible obstacles, and the unknown boundary;

The ability to detect laterally moving objects, such as pedestrians and vehicles crossing intersections;

Positioning and map creation – that is, visual SLAM technology, although millimeter-wave radar is also used to do SLAM, but visual SLAM technology is more mature and has more application prospects;

2) In the automatic driving system, Lidar and camera perception function is similar, but compared with Lidar, its advantages are:

Traffic light recognition and traffic sign recognition

Cost advantage, and the algorithm and technology maturity is relatively high

High object recognition rate

Image sensor: The image sensor can use the photoelectric conversion function of the photoelectric device to convert the light image on the sensitive surface into an electrical signal proportional to the light image. It is mainly divided into CCD and CMOS two kinds.

ISP image signal processor: It mainly uses hardware structure to complete the pre-processing of RAW format data of image and video source input by image and image sensor, which can be converted to YCbCr and other formats. It can also complete image scaling, automatic exposure, automatic white balance, automatic focusing and other work.

Serializer: The processed image data is transmitted, which can be used to transmit RGB, YUV and other image data types.

Connector: Used to connect a fixed camera.

Car cameras in the manufacturing process and reliability requirements are also higher than industrial cameras and commercial cameras, because the car needs to work in a harsh environment for a long time, car cameras need to work stably in high and low temperature environment, strong vibration, high humidity and heat and other complex working conditions, the requirements for process manufacturing are mainly as follows:At present, the on-board camera installed on the car is mainly divided into five categories according to the installation position of the on-board camera, which is mainly divided into front view camera, around view camera, rear view camera, side view camera and built-in camera.

Front view camera: mainly installed on the front windshield, used to achieve the visual perception and recognition function of driving, according to the function can be divided into front view main camera, front view narrow Angle camera and front view wide Angle camera.

Front view main camera: This camera is used as the main camera in L2's ADAS system. Its field of view Angle is generally 30°, 50°, 60°, 100°, 120°, the detection distance is generally 150-170 m, the camera output format is RCCB or RCCC.

Front-view wide-angle camera: The role of the camera is mainly to identify objects near the distance, mainly used in urban road conditions, low-speed driving and other scenes, the field of view Angle is 120° -150 °, the detection distance is about 50 m. After the subsequent large-scale loading of 8MP lenses, the camera is not needed.

Front view narrow Angle camera: the main role of the camera is to identify traffic lights, pedestrians and other targets, generally choose a narrow Angle lens, can choose about 30-40 ° lens. And the pixel of the lens is generally the same as the lens pixel of the front-looking main camera, the camera adopts a narrow Angle, has a higher pixel density and a longer detection distance, generally up to 250 m or even can detect a longer distance.

After the 8MP camera is installed, the FOV of the front view main camera can reach 120°, and the camera may not be needed. The detection distance is about 60 m.

Looking around camera: mainly installed around the body, generally use 4-8 cameras, can be divided into forward fisheye camera/left fisheye camera/right fisheye camera/rear fisheye camera. For the display of panoramic view function, as well as the integration of parking function of visual perception and target detection; The common color matrix is RGGB, because there is a need for color reproduction.

Rear-view camera: generally installed on the trunk, mainly to achieve parking assistance. The field of view Angle is between 120-140 °, and the detection distance is about 50 m.

Side front view camera: installed in the B pillar or vehicle rearview mirror, the camera field of view Angle is generally 90° -100 °, the detection distance is about 80 m, the main role of this camera is to detect side vehicles and bicycles.

Side-rear-view camera: generally installed in the front fender of the vehicle, the camera's field of view Angle is generally about 90°, the detection distance is also about 80 m, mainly used for vehicle lane change, into other roads and other scenarios.

Built-in camera: mainly used to monitor the driver's status, to achieve fatigue reminders and other functions.

Among them, the front view camera price is relatively high, the current market price is 300-500 yuan level; The rest of the cameras are priced at around 150-200 yuan.

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