BlackBerry QNX and Renesas Electronics America Collaborate to Develop an Automotive-Grade Technology Platform for Autonomous Driving

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA--(Marketwired - Jan. 4, 2017) - Las Vegas, International CES 2017, LVCC North Hall, Booth 7029 - BlackBerry Limited (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSX:BB) and Renesas Electronics America Inc. put its joint autonomous driving technology platform in motion today on a test track at CES 2017. Based on the 2017 Lincoln MKZ car model, the self-driving prototype vehicle demonstrates Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Level 4 capabilities and uses integrated hardware, software, and various sensors to detect obstacles on the road, recognize stop signs and cross traffic at intersections, and perform automatic lane changes, all in a safe and secure manner.

The autonomous driving Lincoln MKZ is powered by BlackBerry QNX's Neutrino® Realtime OS and QNX Platform for ADAS, running on the Renesas R-Car H3 system-on-a-chip (SOC) platform, showing that it is possible to build autonomous drive solutions on currently available hardware and software.

"The collaboration with Renesas supports BlackBerry's mission to accelerate the commercial realization of connected and autonomous driving vehicles by developing production-ready software independently and in collaboration with partners," said John Wall, senior vice president and head of BlackBerry QNX. "BlackBerry's QNX Neutrino Realtime OS and QNX ADAS technology, along with the Renesas R-Car H3 SoC provides a foundation on which secure and safety-certifiable applications can be built. Customers now have a credible path from the research environment to ISO 26262 safety-certified production systems."

The Lincoln MKZ is equipped with key autonomous driving sensors such as LiDAR, radar, cameras, global positioning systems (GPS), and inertial measurement units (IMU), and makes use of an advanced sensor input framework, middleware, as well as sophisticated sensor fusion and control algorithms. The QNX Platform for ADAS processes data generated from the sensors in realtime, and also records and plays back the data off-line for feature development and testing.

The autonomous driving vehicle features centralized decision making, fail-operational use cases and runs on three Renesas R-Car H3 SoCs configured to implement a triple redundant voting scheme for high system reliability using QNX OS for Safety. A fourth R-Car H3 SoC is used for front-facing camera algorithms along with BlackBerry QNX's multi-camera framework. These features demonstrate that a production-oriented OS and ADAS platform from BlackBerry QNX can be used for SAE Level 4 autonomous drive scenarios today.