SEE extends leading DMS to Occupant Monitoring

Seeing Machines Limited

12 October 2020

Seeing Machines extends its industry-leading DMS to Occupant Monitoring

Seeing Machines Limited (AIM: SEE, "Seeing Machines" or the "Company"), the advanced computer vision technology company that designs AI-powered operator monitoring systems to improve transport safety, has announced it is formally expanding its leading automotive driver monitoring system (DMS) into an overall vehicle interior/occupant monitoring system (OMS).   The expanded offering will be available for automotive production programs starting as early as 2023.

Seeing Machines estimates that its entry into OMS opens an incremental market opportunity, worth up to a total of A$1.5 billion through to 2030, with an estimated incremental revenue opportunity for the Company exceeding A$350 million.

This expansion is consistent with Seeing Machines's "safety first" focus and leverages important breakthroughs in achieving uncompromised head, eye, and face tracking for driver monitoring with a wide field of view camera system. It will extend the Company's highly effective attention, distraction, impairment, identification, and other human state measures from the vehicle driver to vehicle passenger(s) concurrently.

The introduction of a wide field of view OMS will continue to support even the most challenging Euro NCAP DMS and semi-automated driving requirements which are traditionally achieved today with a narrow view (driver exclusive) camera system, while at the same time extending safety, comfort, and convenience features to passengers.  OMS capabilities range from enabling more reliable and cost-effective passive safety systems to fully AI enabled interiors able to anticipate and care for the needs of both the driver and passenger(s).

Further, the approach, enabled by Seeing Machines's Occula® Neural Processing Unit (NPU) technology, allows a DMS to be expanded into a wide field of view interior camera system offering an array of additional high value interior and occupant sensing features with little increase in camera, illumination, or embedded processing cost.  This can be achieved with readily available and proven automotive image sensors and other components, greatly enhancing the value of the Company's existing product offering.  

Nick DiFiore, SVP and GM Automotive commented:  "I'm proud of the methodical approach our researchers have taken toward the interior and occupant monitoring problem, avoiding the 'feature wars' in favour of system safety through continued uncompromised Driver Monitoring availability and performance while maintaining a low embedded processing cost enabled by our Occula™ NPU technology; a combination that eludes more academic oriented - brute force - deep learned network approaches.  

"We expect our automotive Tier 1 and OEM customers to be excited by the reality of a non-compromised DMS ready for any Euro NCAP eventuality, with the promise of extending safety and convenience features to vehicle passengers without inflating the overall system cost.  This is a very important step in our company vision, to truly enable automobiles to see, understand, secure, and assist its occupants."

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About Seeing Machines (LSE: SEE), a global company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Australia, is an industry leader in vision-based monitoring technology that enable machines to see, understand and assist people. Seeing Machines' technology portfolio of AI algorithms, embedded processing and optics, power products that need to deliver reliable real-time understanding of vehicle operators. The technology spans the critical measurement of where a driver is looking, through to classification of their cognitive state as it applies to accident risk. Reliable "driver state" measurement is the end-goal of Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) technology. Seeing Machines develops DMS technology to drive safety for Automotive, Commercial Fleet, Off-road and Aviation. The company has offices in Australia, USA, Europe and Asia, and supplies technology solutions and services to industry leaders in each market vertical.

www.seeingmachines.com