In-cabin innovation
Davor Kovačec founder and CEO of Xylon, discusses with ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International how to accelerate in-cabin app innovation toward the future.
What will you present at this year’s show in California?
Our demo setup will include several products and technologies that help automotive companies accelerate in-cabin applications.
At the function level, we will demonstrate our latest RGB IR video processing pipeline. The RGB IR sensors are the latest emerging technology for in-cabin automotive applications. These sensors generate RGB and IR images at the same time, which enables maximum visibility in all lighting conditions. This technology is so new that even the sensor makers don’t have all the processing elements for it – the ISP pipeline needs new and specific processing elements. Xylon is standing by, ready to provide a solution.
At the SoC/embedded level, we will demonstrate the benefits of RGB IR in in-cabin apps. We will have the complete Xylon-made Driver Monitoring and Body Pose Estimation system – based on an RGB IR video camera – on display.
At the test/validation level, our Xylon Quattro datalogging and HIL system enables full datalogging of all sensors within the cabin and the sensors looking outside of the vehicle, for the purpose of collecting data for development and validation of in-cabin systems. It can also do HIL injection of either raw or synthetic test data, enabling thorough and fast validation.
What makes it different from other solutions?
With our demo setup, we will demonstrate benefits of FPGA technologies on several levels, including the implementation of the missing function that is not widely available in existing chips’ RGB IR pipeline.
FPGA fabric is a great material for super-fast neural network applications. At the expo we will show a driver monitoring system (DMS) that exploits several neural networks and offers features that surpass rudimentary offering of the first must-have DMSs in the market.
Embedded HW and FPGA technology also enables a customizable HW platform that can be used for logging/HIL in many new and innovative approaches, as required by our customers – Tier1s and OEMs. They do not have to wait for years until test equipment manufacturers are able to meet their requirements.
To develop this solution, Xylon – an AMD premium partner for adaptive computing – drew on almost 30 years of experience as a programmable FPGA/chip design house. This experience enables us to make custom chip devices years before new apps are standardized enough for ASIC implementation in app-specific chips.
How has it helped improve ADAS/AD development?
Confidentiality agreements prevent us naming customers, but I can say our RGB IR ISP is used by customers in industrial, automotive and space applications. Several customers are already using our RGB IR for POCs and experimenting with this new technology.
For example, it is already known and there are published works about non-contact monitoring of vital signs with RGB and infrared cameras that involve the monitoring of breathing and heart rate and can recognize fatal states. Such features enable new ADAS applications. Obviously, such information can be used together with visual parameters for an even better detection of the driver’s state.
Since we run the RGB IR within the FPGA chip, it also enables us to make direct datalogging of all video data, as our RGB IR processing engine can be embedded directly in our datalogger. Consequently, you can move your work from the test vehicle to the lab in one seamless step.
Visit Xylon at Booth 4015
