Member Info for TheLongestShot

I suppose that for a long time we thought that Seeing Machines made driver monitoring systems. It turns out that Aptiv have stolen that away from under our noses.

How could we let that happen?

Well don't worry, their claims for making a DMS - step one get signal from driver monitoring sensor. Step 2 compare with some thresholds and other stuff.

This is like a recipe for boiled eggs that says, first get some boiled eggs then put them on a plate with a slice of toast. Keep an eye on them JC!

Air Traffic Control operations
Airservices Australia has 29 air traffic control towers and two air traffic control centres based in Brisbane and Melbourne. Australia has two Flight Information Regions which are managed by these centres. All airspace to the north of the dividing boundary (YBBB) is controlled by Brisbane Centre and all airspace to the south of the boundary (YMMM) is controlled by Melbourne Centre. These centres cover the whole of Australia with the exception of Perth and Sydney Terminal Control Units as well as the towers at major airports. In addition, Melbourne Centre is responsible for managing traffic handovers from South Africa, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Indonesia and New Zealand. Brisbane Centre manages traffic handovers from neighbouring flight information regions including East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and United States.

En route controllers located in Brisbane and Melbourne are responsible for all aircraft flying at upper levels above 25 000 ft. (7620 metres). These controllers are responsible for the majority of air traffic over the Australian mainland and on oceanic routes within Australia's flight information region.

In 1999, the agency commenced using The Australian Advanced Air Traffic System (TAAATS), a computerised air traffic control system covering all sectors of Australian air space.

...
OneSky
Since 2015, Thales Australia has been contracted to provide a replacement for TAAATS. The program will be a joint civil-military air traffic management system, called OneSKY, based on the Thales TopSky system.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airservices_Australia

https://www.airservicesaustralia.com/wp-content/uploads/OneSKY-Brochure-Detailed-Overviewp-web.pdf

Thales Australia and New Zealand chief executive Chris Jenkins described Onesky – which will be based on the company’s TopSky system that is currently used in 130 air traffic control centres around the world – as a “critical piece of national infrastructure”. https://web.archive.org/web/20190526162306/https://australianaviation.com.au/2015/02/work-on-onesky-to-begin-as-airservices-signs-forward-services-contract-with-thales/

How often have you been asked to go back and turn off the light because you were wasting electricity? When you were growing up, electricity was “free” and there was a power station supplying the power so what was the problem? But, if you left your torch on then you knew that you would need to buy new batteries and you would be without your torch until then – that hurt a bit, so you always turned your torch off.
Fast forward to today, the range of your car is limited by the charge in your battery but that is not the only constraint in automotive. Components need to last a very long time in automotive, especially in safety systems, there are temperature issues and constraints in cooling, so reducing the time that a component is used and the keeping its power consumption down is crucial. So turning down the brightness and turning off a little LED that illuminates your face so that the DMS camera can see your eyes is a tiny thing, but also a massive thing. If the life is compromised they need to add more LEDs, if the cooling is compromised, they need to add more space around the component, more space in a constrained ****pit constrains design never a good idea in a class A surface that is literally in the face of the driver at all times!
There is one other place where power consumption (and heat) is even more relevant – mobile devices, this patent is also applicable to eye and face tracking on a mobile phone, tablet (or any other screen).
LOW POWER EYE TRACKING SYSTEM AND METHOD (Thanks JC)
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/inpadocPatentFamily?CC=EP&NR=3042312A1&KC=A1&FT=D&ND=4&date=20160713&DB=&locale=en_EP

https://register.epo.org/application?number=EP14842026&lng=en&tab=doclist
Just to show how important this is, the original Australian patent was applied for in 2013. The European patent application was submitted in 2014 – it was only granted a few months ago.
Now that the patent is granted, does that open the door for licensing Seeing Machines in mobile devices?
Are any of our competitor’s now liable for some license fees for infringement? Or is this just one of the many moats that is protecting our position?

Incidentally, I used to worry about abandoned patents, but now I am more pragmatic. The original Aussie application is only used to show Priority in later patent applications in the major regions. Once an application is granted in one of the major regions, there is less need to progress in every region as automotive is global, there are costs to develop and time to bring to market. A potential infringer may see that the patent is not valid in one or more regions, but knows that they are limiting themselves geographically. If you try to infringe on more than one patent, often with different geographical footprints your wriggle room is tiny - yes you could sell your car in Australia and Africa, but not in any major market.

Your right, we can sell them FFS for their flying cars!

Shallwe, I expect there will be multiple product lines

Car rearview mirror with DMS/OMS, no data upload (but recoverable physically after an accident)

Truck side mirror (trucks don't normally have a central rear view mirror because they have no rear window!) with potential for upload to central monitoring.

In between, above and below there are options for extra expansion with selfie mode cameras, extra external video feeds (forwards and backwards and interior)

So the tender was published on Saturday and will slam closed on Friday 2nd. This was published just as CAE get clearance to buy L3Harris's military wing, open just long enough for them to submit.

We already have a MoU with L3Harris and work with CAE, we have Simulators from both companies with our eye tracking kit and software running

Such a shame that experienced companies like Smart Eye with their US office don't have any suitable partnerships. Perhaps, Smart Eye Pro v9.2 isn't what the USAF is looking for.

Wonder how many sims the US has?
"Military Simulator Census 2020 | Report | Flight Global" https://www.flightglobal.com/reports/military-simulator-census-2020/141458.article#:~:text=Simulation%2Dbased%20training%20is%20a,the%20devices%20in%20use%20 worldwide.

"The USA (military) is by far the dominant customer for simulation-
based training equipment, accounting for 54% of all listed devices: some 1,515 units."

CAE have retained L3H US offices and appointed some ex-Generals to that board. (if I can find that link...) They now have highest clearance required for that segment of the company. It is as though the military industrial complex has pre-approved everything

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/f5768deb#/f5768deb/131 from PMcG and Seeing Machine's LinkedIn posts 2 weeks ago https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulamcglone_vol-27-iss-2-activity-6809088642225704960-rsDr

I don't think this is a "new" story for us - that may be to do with "Al-Bahar has launched new Cat excavator machines in the middle east".

He quotes https://www.constructionweekonline.com/article-40130-cat-facial-recognition-tool-tracks-driver-fatigue from 2016 - but he has adjusted the number of trucks globally from 38,000 to 50,000

Good to see that the top end trims at over $102k are selling so well, makes this tiny upgrade seem like a bargain -

SUPER CRUISE™ DRIVER ASSISTANCE FEATURE

Super Cruise™ Driver Assistance feature
$2,500
A driver assistance feature that allows hands-free driving under compatible highway driving conditions1
While you're using the feature, it helps prompt you to pay close attention to the road so you're ready to take control
May require additional optional equipment
1 Even while using the Super Cruise driver assistance feature, always pay attention while driving and do not use a hand-held device. Visit cadillacsupercruise.com for compatible highways and more information. Requires properly equipped vehicle, active Super Cruise subscription, working electrical system, cell reception, and GPS signal.

JC, interesting development. I would have thought it had died, but there must be some good reasons to push through with this one. Perhaps there is a product waiting to go, or they are close to licensing to someone who is ready to produce?

As this scales out the guaranteed recurring income will grow from 10s to 100s of millions per year. That growth is available with little development cost or installation costs for SEE. CAE (et al.) fund the growth and rollout costs.

These revenues are there for the long term just for borrowing a bit of our auto tech. Now revalue aviation business on its own!

Tesla may have inflated ego and inflated share price, but in 2020 they only shifted 500k cars, so a fraction of the F-150 annual sales. No Tesla are not a major and I doubt they ever will be

No matter which 2020 Ford F-150 you're sizing up, it will have automatic emergency braking.
The Car Connection reported Thursday Ford expanded the active safety technology to even the base F-150 XL. Before, buyers had to step into the F-150 Lariat trim at a minimum to nab AEB. A Ford spokesperson confirmed the feature to Roadshow

https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/ford-f-150-trims-automatic-emergency-braking-standard/?__twitter_impression=true

Thanks JC, it's not often that one of these DMS patents can be seen to be working, but here, the camera module physically moves up and down the A-pillar so that it can measure your height! Completely bonkers and unnecessary as this could be done with a fixed camera and a bit of machine learning.

I think Colin has concluded that Seeing Machines are in the Mercedes Benz EQS - we have seen the flashing LEDs in the instrument panel are the same as in the S-Class. This will support DMS and some other features in the car.

But it appears that the Cerence Look implementation is separated and does not communicate with the DMS eye gaze tracking and so has its own independent system. I presume that this is not always on and is when required.

The two systems can co-exist as long as the DMS is running on 940nm and the Cerence Look is running at 850nm (or vice versa)

Of course you may be screaming WHY at the screen. Well, it is partially down to how MB divided up the work to different Tier 1s. You can test a motor without access to the wheels and wheels without access to the motor. But relying on something new like eye tracking when you don't have access to the implementation is putting your eggs in someone else's basket where you can't see them for another 3 years of the development cycle. I am sure that as this space matures, this will become a standard interface and this will happen less often.

The other reason is that the EQS still has multiple computers in different parts doing different tasks. They have different levels of reliability. Having your brakes fail is serious, losing DMS and risk falling asleep is a level lower. But being unable to ask your car to explain what that building is not a safety system, so it can be built to a lower quality and reliability failure - therefore must be kept separate from higher level safety functions.

The final part - Mercedes are moving everything over to the Nvidia Orin platform which is a monster in terms of computing power it will support levels of virtualisation to separate safety levels so that different safety levels can run on the same hardware and will be able to communicate with each other and be developed and run together or separately. DMS interfaces will be standardised across the system so they could all use the same DMS. SW is software, so it will not be optimised for hardware acceleration - Hence, the need for a massive computing power. Finally, Colin expects the RFQ to select the DMS is already out

https://www.autonews.com/Shift-Podcast-051720

Christophe Marnat, executive vice president of electronics and advanced safety systems at global supplier ZF, discusses the evolution of driver monitoring into occupant monitoring, clarity in naming assist systems and new advances on the sensor front.

Glandor, I think the keyword for me in that piece is that it was a "showcase" not a saleable product. Mobileye COULD host a DMS, but I think it would not perform well.

Whatif - Jigsaws are so much easier when you can see the full picture. But we like a challenge

Best to concentrate on the pieces we can identify.
Veoneer gives us this https://vp283.alertir.com/sites/default/files/report/vne_q320_ec_slides_no_notes_web.pdf

Ford F150 (delay of 6 weeks)
•AVV ~690K
•RCS, DMS
AVV - Average Vehicle Volume are primarily based on the IHS vehicle volume planning assumptions over vehicle life-cycle,
RCS -Restraint Control System

So Veoneer didn't do the full ADAS stack, just the DMS and (Airbags/Seatbelts?)
This can be done separately from the Blue Cruise, DMS is just one part of Blue Cruise and the interfacing is probably minimal here.

Also, Veoneer haven't announced any other Ford DMS yet. Their next DMS is here
https://www.veoneer.com/sites/default/files/VNE%20Q1.2021_Presentation_FINAL2.pdf
Grand Cherokee
•AVV ~630K (Note it was unnamed but just ~590K in the previous quarter!)
•NiVi4, RCS, DMS, Pos. system

NiVi4 = Gen4 Thermal Sensing Night Vision
Pos. system = Positioning System

As Colin has said before, Mobileye didn't see DMS coming. So they do a great job with external cameras and yes they can merge that with radar to produce an excellent ADAS platform to monitor the outside of the car. But they don't have a decent DMS system (they do have a spare ARM core - but it is not real time or accelerated so it can do software only DMS, but poorly).

That leaves the road clear for either a standalone DMS - Xylinx based or one of the new Rear View mirrors. Or one embedded in the Infotainment unit, we shall see.

Whatif,
Patents are a minefield, got to be careful where you step. Often there is an uncharted route through. We are already the best using Dark Pupil in automotive, the downside is that you need to install either a larger unit, or in more locations which means fighting for space in the ****pit. But it will give the best accuracy on eye gaze. Bright Pupil reduces the real estate that is required in the critical area but it is still not inconsiderable. Of course, it all comes down to the ideas that are claimed and the words that are used to differentiate them. Of course, Tobii don't compete with us in Automotive. Automotive is a moat in itself

It is always nice to read one of "our own" patent applications. It tells us more about the evolution of our solutions. Until now Seeing Machines have normally used "dark pupil" eye tracking where the illumination is away from the camera and it uses the geometry of the bulge in the front of the eye and how it moves the "glint" of the illumination as the eye moves.

However, that needed a fair bit of real estate in the car, either in the instrument cluster or on the steering column (and lights on the wheel). We got complacent about spotting SEE, this patent shows how a smaller area is required and changes the method and form factor. By having the illumination closer to the camera we can exploit the side effect of mammalian eyes in that we reflect light which is close to the optic axis. We experience this as red-eye in photographs (we will miss you Victor) or as the reflected light from deer or cats that are caught in our head lamps. This can give a strong signal which is easy to pick up. In the examples given SEE may use one or two (single or pairs) of LEDs spaced as close as 7mm and as far as 50mm from the camera. So now we have a new form factor to look for - it could be camera, LED1, LED2 in as little as 30mm. These LEDs may both be used, or just one, probably not together. As ambient lighting changes, the intensity of the LED may change or its flashing pattern.

Here is a link to the good pictures (SEE need to resubmit them as they don't come out well when converted to black and white) https://register.epo.org/documentView?number=AU.2020051214.W&documentId=id00000059918114