The mirror takes it all - Colin Barnden20 Oct 2022 16:07
Latest from me in The Ojo-Yoshida Report, with analysis of the implications for #driver and #occupant #monitoring #systems following the exclusivity agreement between Magna International and Seeing Machines.
While #automakers have overlooked the #safety benefits of monitoring the driver, highway safety agencies and regulators have not. The auto industry is faced with a flood of impending regulatory deadlines to install this critical safety #technology, which sees and understands human behavior as it applies to accident risk. #Distraction, #drowsiness and #impairment can be detected and mitigated. Roads will be safer, and it has nothing to do with #selfdriving, #lidar, or "levels."
On automotive timescales, the industry is working to incredibly tight deadlines. As discussed, packaging IR optical components, image processor and CMOS image sensor inside the rear-view mirror solves the problems of integrating driver and occupant monitoring systems #DMS #OMS to meet the regulatory requirements in one fell swoop.
The solution is breathtaking in its simplicity and owing to the proliferation of #ADAS forward camera, the mirror location often already has power and data connections, radically simplifying integration. There is no need to redesign the interior of the vehicle to integrate these components, which otherwise must be done on a model-by-model basis.
According to Magna, it already has three design-wins for its mirror solution: Fisker Inc, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., and Volkswagen AG. Many others will follow, and the trend looks to be: The mirror takes it all.
We can now see the critical design decision for success wasn’t hardware agnostic software, but a co-designed optical path that maximizes performance while minimizing power consumption. The main winners look to be Magna, Seeing Machines, OMNIVISION and ams OSRAM.
We must assume there is a next-generation design already in development, that is co-designed and fully optimized for interior sensing from the rear-view mirror. This could include a much higher resolution image sensor; replacement of LEDs with VCSELs; a completely redesigned neural processing ASIC; and algorithms trained specifically to work from the mirror.
We await the response from Gentex, which uses proprietary algorithms; and from Smart Eye, which has a focus on interior sensing but no obvious integration partner for the mirror.
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