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As the world’s leading Driver Monitoring System (DMS) supplier, Smart Eye entered Las Vegas this year with a heightened sense of curiosity about this year’s big themes on the bustling floors of the annual festival for techies also known as CES. After eight years of attendance via industry partners we now had our own booth and were able to showcase our latest and greatest tech thoroughly. But it was not the only thing that brought attention to DMS. One of the most important takeaways for DMS at CES 2020 was the momentum of the technology. With new EU legislation and safety requirements from Euro-NCAP, both requiring new cars to be equipped with drowsiness and inattention detection, it was easy to generate buzz. Another indication of mass implementation is the sheer number of upcoming cars with DMS on board, 57 of them coming from Smart Eye with six already on the road. Even though we had a private and invitation-only booth, we ended up welcoming hundreds of visitors from the automotive industry to our four-demo tour, including our very own car simulator.
As expected, CES 2020 offered a variety of new concept cars, and OEMs demonstrated what to expect for the upcoming year. Concept cars typically provide the visitor with a new perception of what the future will bring. At CES 2020 we found that the upcoming cars seemed to have one thing in common – DMS. Yet the hype around completely self-driving cars seem to be declining and the focus of this year’s show was shifted towards semi-autonomous vehicles. In this new phase driver monitoring seems to play an important part when it comes to connecting the car to the driver.
Every year we hear devastating news of children being left behind in cars with fatal outcomes. It is not uncommon that also pets are forgotten, as well as keys, computers or phones. Interior sensing technology, as the name indicates, measures the whole inside of the car and senses when someone or something is left in the car or simply out of position – and warns the driver.
As DMS tracks the driver’s eyes and makes sure the driver is watching the road when needed and not falling asleep, Interior Sensing watches over the entire cabin. Smart Eye exhibited how DMS and Interior Sensing is enhanced by being integrated on both hardware and software level. Each sub-system boosts the other through sensor fusion, on a singular cost-efficient inference platform. In combination they provide extensive safety and convenience features. There are also some great convenience features to benefit from when it comes to interior sensing; intuitive entertainment interfaces, identification and in-car delivery for example.
But all in all, the fact still stands, every year 1.2 million people lose their lives in traffic-related accidents and another 50 million are injured. A huge portion of these accidents happen due to driver inattention. We have never turned a blind eye towards this. Instead we strive to make DMS and interior sensing technology as common as seat-belts and airbags, and in our opinion self-driving cars just aren’t there yet in terms of safety. After this year’s show, shedding light not only on Smart Eye’s offer but on the technologies as a whole, our vision doesn’t seem that far away anymore. Very few companies in the world can offer safety level driver monitoring systems, and Smart Eye, with 20+ years of experience, is at the forefront.
