Monitor for Safety-Critical Mirror Drivers of MEMS Micro-Scanning LiDAR Systems

In future, more and more cars will be equipped with Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) like Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Collision Avoidance System and many more. Currently, the driver is responsible by law to perceive the environment and take over control if it is required. But in foreseeable future highly automated vehicles or even fully automated vehicles will appear on the road; where the vehicle is responsible for perceiving the environment, operating the vehicle and intervening in hazardous situations. At the latest then it will be necessary that systems shall not fail unnoticed. Therefore, it is mandatory to monitor safety relevant components. For instance, also Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Systems like the 1D Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) Micro-Scanning LiDAR, which will be part of intelligent sensor fusion in ADAS. Due to the fact that highly automated vehicles often have various safety monitors installed, our novel Monitor for the Safety-Critical MEMS Driver is an alternative approach to the well-known Built-In Self-Test (BIST). In this publication, we introduce a novel system architecture that is able to verify the correct functionality of internal control systems in MEMSbased LiDAR systems. To evaluate the effectiveness of our novel monitoring approach, we have implemented the procedure on a 1D MEMS Micro-Scanning LiDAR prototype platform.