Safer Driving Through Sophisticated Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Ana­log Devices, a semi­con­duc­tor, and See­ing Machines, an advanced com­put­er vision tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny that designs AI-pow­ered oper­a­tor mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems to improve trans­port safe­ty, announced a col­lab­o­ra­tion in sup­port of high-per­for­mance dri­ver and occu­pant mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem (DMS/OMS) tech­nol­o­gy on Jan­u­ary 3, 2023.

Long-haul dri­ving and con­gest­ed traf­fic are two sce­nar­ios where dri­ver fatigue and dis­trac­tion often occur and fre­quent­ly cause acci­dents, result­ing in injury or worse. New and sophis­ti­cat­ed advanced dri­ver assis­tance sys­tems (ADAS) are rapid­ly evolv­ing to sup­port safe­ty across increas­ing, var­ied lev­els of autonomous capability.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion pairs ADI’s advanced infrared dri­ver and high-speed Giga­bit Mul­ti­me­dia Ser­i­al Link (GMSL) cam­era con­nec­tiv­i­ty solu­tions with See­ing Machines’ arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) DMS and OMS soft­ware to sup­port pow­er­ful eye gaze, eye­lid, head, and body-pose track­ing sys­tem tech­nol­o­gy that more accu­rate­ly mon­i­tors dri­ver fatigue and dis­trac­tion. The com­bined solu­tion will read­i­ly meet Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Gen­er­al Safe­ty Reg­u­la­tions (GSR) and Euro­pean New Car Assess­ment Pro­gram (Euro NCAP) require­ments. It is also con­ducive to enabling future occu­pant mon­i­tor­ing fea­tures and a range of in-cab­in cam­era place­ment options, pre­vi­ous­ly unwork­able due to chal­lenges relat­ed to pow­er effi­cien­cy, func­tion­al safe­ty, hard­ware foot­print, and image quality.

Semi-autonomous dri­ving sys­tems rely on in-cab­in DMS and OMS to rec­og­nize and address dri­ver fatigue and dis­trac­tion. These sys­tems must oper­ate in all light­ing con­di­tions and require prop­er infrared light­ing to ensure image qual­i­ty on a frame-by-frame basis nec­es­sary for eye track­ing in real time. The com­bined solu­tion from ADI and See­ing Machines lever­ages ADI’s indus­try-first infrared dri­ver for DMS and OMS, capa­ble of deliv­er­ing up to 100W of peak pow­er in a com­pact and func­tion­al­ly safe solu­tion. This allows for a non-intru­sive, small­er cam­era mod­ule in a vehicle’s cabin.

See­ing Machines’ AI soft­ware inter­prets sig­nals from the opti­cal hard­ware, mon­i­tors and diag­noses the prob­lem, and com­bines with ADAS fea­tures to enable out­put sig­nals to warn dri­vers and vehi­cle occu­pants when necessary.

“See­ing Machines exists to get peo­ple home safe­ly, and our work with ADI aims to sup­port semi-autonomous dri­ving with increased safe­ty lev­els to deliv­er what we call ‘super­vised automa­tion’,” said Nick DiFiore, SVP and GM of Auto­mo­tive at See­ing Machines. “ADI’s proven auto­mo­tive-grade, near-infrared dri­vers and GMSL devices enable a sophis­ti­cat­ed opti­cal path to pro­vide crit­i­cal illu­mi­na­tion and high-speed video band­width for real-world and real-time pro­cess­ing of inte­ri­or cab­in environments.”

“Cab­in mon­i­tor­ing is com­plex and requires care­ful inte­gra­tion of infrared illu­mi­na­tion, image cap­ture, data pro­cess­ing, and algo­rithm lay­ers to achieve a real-time response,” said Yin Wu, Direc­tor of Auto­mo­tive Prod­uct Line Man­age­ment at Ana­log Devices. “Togeth­er with See­ing Machines, we are sup­port­ing the auto­mo­tive indus­try with prag­mat­ic solu­tions to help reduce col­li­sions and save lives.”

ADI’s MAX25614 IR LED dri­ver and GMSL seri­al­iz­er and dese­ri­al­iz­er (SerDes) con­nec­tiv­i­ty solu­tions are sup­port­ing See­ing Machines’ FOVIO DMS and OMS solutions.

ADI’s Auto­mo­tive Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and Cab­in Expe­ri­ence Solutions

ADI’s inno­va­tions are mak­ing a pos­i­tive plan­e­tary scale impact in auto­mo­tive elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence. By lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy syn­er­gies across Auto­mo­tive and Sus­tain­able Ener­gy, ADI aims to accel­er­ate the trans­for­ma­tion of mobil­i­ty and the grid towards Net Zero emis­sions. ADI is also enabling the Dig­i­tal Cab­in and Safe Mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion through its tech­nol­o­gy lead­er­ship in Audio Pro­cess­ing, Data, and Video Con­nec­tiv­i­ty plat­forms which are advanc­ing con­sumer appli­ca­tions and safe­ty-crit­i­cal ADAS in the vehi­cle. Our lead­er­ship in Bat­tery, Pow­er, and Ener­gy Man­age­ment solu­tions enables high per­for­mance, reli­able, and safe oper­a­tions across the entire elec­tri­fi­ca­tion ecosystem—including EVs, Ener­gy Stor­age Sys­tems, the Clean Ener­gy Grid, and more. With a focus on mea­sur­ing and advanc­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty at every step, our inno­va­tions in soft­ware and wire­less tech­nolo­gies allow for local­ized real-time mis­sion-crit­i­cal deci­sions to enable Intel­li­gence at the Edge.