September newsletter

AutoSens show report: 5 things we learned at this great conference

This was the first AutoSens show ever, but it sure didn’t show. The organizer Robert Stead from Sense Media is a veteran at running technical conferences, and combining Rob’s experience and network with the very hot field of sensing and processing for autonomous cars was sure to result in a great show.

With more than 330 attendees and over 20 exhibitors, all focusing on automotive sensing and processing, we ran into many of our business contacts. We presented a talk titled “Visual processing crucial to ADAS: applications, architectures and algorithms”.

Here’s five things we learned from the show:

• Self-driving cars are hard
• Deep learning is hard
• Image quality is hard
• We need more sensors
• Surround view replacing rear view

Read our report for more details on each topic

New articles on VR and drones

Drones and virtual or augmented reality are two emerging technologies with tremendous potential. Together with other members of the Embedded Vision Alliance, we co-authored two articles on these exciting two applications last month, focusing on how computer vision technology adds functionality, improves the user experience and reduces system cost.

Vision processing opportunities in virtual reality
VR is quickly gaining traction in the market, largely thanks to the popularity of the Oculus Rift HMD (head-mounted display) and more recently joined by HTC’s Vive, Sony’s PlayStation VR, Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Cardboard (and upcoming Daydream) platforms. Continue to the full article.

Vision processing opportunities in drones
Tractica forecasts that worldwide consumer drone unit shipments will increase from 6.4 million units in 2015 to 67.7 million units annually by 2021. Most of the computer vision technologies for drones today are cloud-based, with imaging data transmitted from the drone via a wireless connection to a backend server where the relevant data is extracted and analyzed. Based on computer vision, drones are quickly adding capabilities like self-navigation, obstacle avoidance, and object tracking. Continue to the full article.

Driverless cars in the movies

Movies are often great predictors of the future. At least since the 1960s, there have been several movies that featured autonomous vehicles. At first these cars were more human than machine. Both Herbie and KITT had personalities and minds of their own. Since the 1990s, this aspect went away and the cars became purely machines that just take you places. This article gives an overview of the very different driverless cars that feature in the movies.

If there’s one thing that the industry agrees on it is that these cars need lots of sensors, and that at the heart of these machines there is an electronic device that processes the huge amounts of captured sensor data into actionable information to control speed and direction.

Read our article

Industry news

Video’s new form factor is round
Snap, the makers of the popular Snapchat app, recently introduced their new product: Spectacles, a pair of sunglasses that captures 10 seconds of video at the press of a button. The Spectacles’ camera uses a 115-degree-angle lens, wider than a typical smartphone’s and much closer to the eyes’ natural field of view. One key new thing is that the video it records is circular, more like human vision.
Read the article

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM join forces on future of AI
“We’ve seen a very fast development in AI over a very short period of time,” said Prof Yoshua Bengio, from the University of Montreal. “The field brings exciting opportunities for companies and public organisations. And yet, it raises legitimate questions about the way these developments will be conducted.” Amazon, Google’s DeepMind, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft will work together on issues such as privacy, safety and the collaboration between people and AI.
Read the BBC article or go to the Partnership on AI’s website.

Upcoming events

Schedule a meeting with us by sending an email to sales@videantis.com. We’re always interested in discussing your video and vision SOC design ideas and challenges. We look forward to talking with you!