As part of 96boards: Autoware everywhere blog series we are starting to explore AutoCore‘s Perception Computing Unit (PCU).

AutoCore announced their PCU publicly on January 21st through this ROS Discourse post. The PCU is the first reference design of the Autoware.IO project. A full description of the PCU specification can be found here. As a summary, it features a heterogeneous architecture with a lock-step MCU and a high performance MPU. Based on the MCU-MPU architecture, different ADAS/AD or relevant functions can be integrated with different functional safety levels up to ASIL D after ISO 26262. A wide variety of interfaces are provided to support vehicle networks connection, sensors and peripherals. Furthermore, additional hardware accelerator could be connected via PCIe to provide additional computing power. The video below from AutoCore shows a car fitted with the PCU performing some autonomous maneuvers.

For the full blog post and how to start setting up the PCU just check here.