Intel's Mobileye demos autonomous car equipped only with cameras, no other sensors

Intel Corp on Monday released a video of its Mobileye autonomous car navigating the streets of Jerusalem for about 20 minutes with the help of 12 on-board cameras and, unusually, no other sensors.

The development comes as chipmakers and machine-vision system manufacturers compete to provide the brains and eyes of automated vehicles.

Intel showed part of the unedited video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kNUVM8s0nc&feature=youtu.be at a news conference at tech show CES in Las Vegas. The chipmaker's demo is notable as self-driving car technology companies generally pair cameras with other sensors like radar or lidar to help the vehicle "see" its surroundings.

The video showed the car navigating through four-way intersections with no traffic lights, and changing lanes to weave into traffic and avoid pedestrians.

In the video, Mobileye, Intel's Israel-based autonomous driving unit, said its technology can create 3D models from 2D camera images to help an autonomous driving system better sense the environment. It said the processing is done with two of its latest autonomous driving EyeQ5 chips.

Mobileye also said it can merge the information from its camera-only system with that from radar and lidar systems to use together on self-driving cars.

By Jane Lanhee Lee