NEXYAD Newsletter #34 is now available

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #34, September 29th, 2021

 

Democar Nexyad Dreamotor1

 

HEADLINES  

– Nexyad CEO Editorial

– HERE360 Article about Nexyad Cognitive AI for Road Safety

– SIA Study Day: AI Applied to AV

– Democar Nexyad DREAMOTOR1

– New Book : From AI to Autonomous and Connected Vehicles

– Chair VAC at INSA Rouen – Press about Nexyad

 

Read NEXYAD Newsletter #34

NEXYAD AT INSA ROUEN FOR PEDAGOGIC CHAIR ON INTELLIGENT CONNECTED VEHICLE

NEXYAD AT INSA ROUEN FOR PEDAGOGIC CHAIR ON INTELLIGENT CONNECTESD VEHICLE THAT BINDS INSA ROUEN AND MOVEO Groupement ADAS
This pedagogic chair is directed by the major French researcher Aziz BENSRHAIR.
NEXYAD presented yesterday the story of professors, researchers and research engineers who decided to set up a company together (NEXYAD), and the result : 3 artificial perception software components, and a unique real time Driving risk software component, all Under integration by OEMs, Tier One Companies, Final Users, … NEXYAD will describe theoretical and practical aspects of those software componants in the next courses.
The company SHERPA Engineering (also member of the MOVEO Groupement ADAS) came to present System Analysis theory and its applications to intelligent vehicles.

Thanks Aziz for this collaboration.

“We Save Lives”


Insa Rouen
Gérard Yahiaoui at front of INSA Rouen Students

Pedagogical Chair on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle at INSA Rouen Normandie

INSA Rouen Normandie has created, in collaboration with the group ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and the competitiveness cluster Mov’eo, a pedagogical chair of excellence “Autonomous & Connected Vehicle”. This type of chair is a first in the world of higher education and will allow engineering students to perfect their training through the expertise of start-ups and SMEs.

Newsletter #21 is now available

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #21, March 19th, 2018

 


Artificial Intelligence for Automotive with SafetyNex

Headlines :

– CAC Conference 2018 on Connected Car in Paris
– NEXYAD SafetyNex in Media
– The value of driving risk notion for Telematics, ADAS and Autonomous Driving
– SafetyNex and the compliance Package of CONNECTED VEHICLES AND PERSONAL DATA

Go to the Nexyad Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #21

Artificial Intelligence for Automotive with SafetyNex

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #21, March 19th, 2018

 


Artificial Intelligence for Automotive with SafetyNex

Headlines :
– CAC Conference 2018 on Connected Car in Paris

– NEXYAD SafetyNex in Media

– The value of driving risk notion for Telematics, ADAS and Autonomous Driving

– SafetyNex and the compliance Package of CONNECTED VEHICLES AND PERSONAL DATA

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CAC Conference 2018 on Connected Car in Paris

 
The Connected Automotive Conference, held March 13, 2018 in Paris, is the French reference in conference on the connected vehicle.
Several themes were discussed around selected guests:
– What is the innovation “Made in France”? Decryption of the latest advances and ongoing pilot projects that will bring major changes in the field of mobility.
– New expectations of the French. Analysis of the latest studies conducted with citizens and put in perspective with the results around the world.
Which ADAS will integrate the automobile tomorrow? After smart parking and cameras, what driving assistants will be used in tomorrow’s vehicles and for what use?
– How will AI change the lives of motorists? From GAFA to start-ups, everyone dreams of designing the intelligent assistant of the motorist. The relationship with the brand will be transformed.
Then, followed interview, key-note, startup contest and experts workshops, all day long.

Gérard YAHIAOUI, CEO of Nexyad, was invited to participate at the conference as an expert in Articicial Inteligence, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and Highly Automated Driving.

CAC Paris 2018

To know more about the conference (in French language)

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NEXYAD SafetyNex in Media

 
Here is a news in French press that talks about the Academic Chair that the cluster of startups and SMEs « MOVEO Groupement ADAS » organized with INSA Rouen.
NEXYAD is part of this cluster of high-tech startups and SMIs (on ADAS, connected car, and autonomous driving) and is quoted in this article of Journal du Net (French spoken), they interviewed Mr Aziz Benrshair, director of the “Autonomous and Connected Vehicle” Academic Chair launched by INSA Rouen :
Comment ces partenaires contribuent-ils concrètement ?

“Ils assurent environ 50% de l’enseignement. Des experts de ces entreprises viennent enseigner sous forme de TP ou de TD. Ils transmettent leur savoir faire et expliquent les projets sur lesquels ils travaillent. La société Sherpa Engineering est par exemple intervenue sur les questions d’actionneurs, de prise de décision et de commande automatique. Nexyad a abordé l’analyse du comportement du conducteur, proposée par sa solution d’évaluation des risques d’accidents SafetyNex. Des partenaires historiques extérieurs à cette chaire, comme Valeo ou Vedecom, sont également intervenus.”

Aziz Benrshair
Aziz Benrshair

Reed the entire news

Others news about the Academic Chair : Normandinamik & paris-normandie.fr


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The value of driving risk notion
for Telematics, ADAS and Autonomous Driving

 
The value of driving risk notion for Telematics, ADAS and Autonomous Driving.

by NEXYAD

Every year, more than 25.000 persons die on roads in Europe which has the safest infrastructures anyway. Brasil, Russia, USA, have more fatalities and the situation is worst in development countries. Everywhere people are aware by these risk for their health or life. Driving can be dangerous for drivers and passengers, however most of people accept these risk fairly minimal (in average three dead by billion km in OECD countries) for all advantages of fast point to point terrestrial mobility. But by the way, what is exactly what people use to call driving risk?

Let’s take an example, if someone plays Russian roulette: probability to die is one on six when one pulls the trigger. If one decides finally not to play, probability to die with a bullet in the head disappears completely. If you pull the trigger, risk to die is 100% (although probability is 1/6).
Another example: if a car is static parked into garage, then driving risk is zero. On the opposite, if a car passes a stop sign at 20km/h, driving risk taken by the driver is equal to 100%: driver takes the full risk). Probability depends on the traffic at the intersection.

More generally, driving risk taken by driver (and we talk about “the risk you take” a priori) will goes from 0 to 100% depending on the adequate of driving behaviour to driving context. This driving context has several dimensions: complexity of infrastructure, traffic of other road users, weather conditions, etc. Inadequate of driving behaviour to complexity of infrastructure can predict 75% of accident.

Read the entire article



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SafetyNex and the compliance Package of
CONNECTED VEHICLES AND PERSONAL DATA

 
In march 2018, french CNIL will publish the final version of the Compliance Package for the Connected Vehicles and Personal Data.

NEXYAD appears in the list of Bodies consulted by the CNIL (p.3). An interesting article about the collected data shows that SafetyNex is fully compliant with french law and recommendations for European Union (p.25).

Extract :

DATA COLLECTED

The data control shall only collect personal data that are strictly necessary for the processing. In the case of a contract for the provision of services, the only data that can be collected are those that are essential for the provision of service.

Concerning data relating to criminal offences:

For purpose 1 (model optimisation and product improvement) and 3 (commercial use of the vehicle’s data): except in the case of specific legal provision, data that are likely to reveal criminal offences shall not be processed by legal persons who do not administer a public service,
except to defend their rights in court. However, that data can be processed locally, directly in the vehicle, in accordance with scenario No. 1, in order to give the user control over that particularly sensitive data and limit as much as possible the consequences on privacy.

strong caracters are made by Nexyad

Reminder: onboard systems, telematics devices or smartphone Apps, which collect speed and location data, allow easily to make reconstruction of criminal offences.

Read the Compliance Package of Connected Vehicles and Personal Data

Pack de conformité véhicules connectés de la CNIL


NEXYAD SafetyNex in Media

Here is a news in French press that talks about the Academic Chair that the cluster
of startups and SMEs « MOVEO Groupement ADAS » organized with INSA Rouen.
NEXYAD is part of this cluster of high-tech startups and SMIs (on ADAS, connected
car, and autonomous driving) and is quoted in this article of Journal du Net (French spoken), they interviewed Mr Aziz Benrshair, director of the “Autonomous and Connected Vehicle” Academic Chair launched by INSA Rouen :
Comment ces partenaires contribuent-ils concrètement ?

“Ils assurent environ 50% de l’enseignement. Des experts de ces entreprises viennent enseigner sous forme de TP ou de TD. Ils transmettent leur savoir faire et expliquent les projets sur lesquels ils travaillent. La société Sherpa Engineering est par exemple intervenue sur les questions d’actionneurs, de prise de décision et de commande automatique. Nexyad a abordé l’analyse du comportement du conducteur, proposée par sa solution d’évaluation des risques d’accidents SafetyNex. Des partenaires historiques extérieurs à cette chaire, comme Valeo ou Vedecom, sont également intervenus.”

Aziz Benrshair
Aziz Benrshair

Reed the entire news

Others news about the Academic Chair : Normandinamik & paris-normandie.fr

Newsletter #18 is now available

Nexyad at the forefront
of ADAS for road safety

Headlines :

– Road accident and driving risk are two different notions
– Nexyad at AutoSens Brussels 2017
– Enova Symposium Paris 2017
– Connected & Self-driving Car Meetup #9
– Academic chair at MOV’EO with INSA Rouen
– Sensor fusion and data fusion with SafetyNex
– SafetyNex : Understanding the Concept of Risk
– NEXYAD : the story
– Navigation Based ADAS : use SafetyNex to build ACC and anticipation (predictive) brake systems

Go to the Nexyad Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #18

Nexyad at the forefront
of ADAS for road safety

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #18, September 26th, 2017

 


Nexyad at the forefront of ADAS for road safety

Headlines :

– Road accident and driving risk are two different notions

– Nexyad at AutoSens Brussels 2017

– Enova Symposium Paris 2017

– Connected & Self-driving Car Meetup #9

– Academic chair : effective collaboration between MOV’EO groupement ADAS and INSA Rouen

– Sensor fusion and data fusion with SafetyNex

– SafetyNex : Understanding the Concept of Risk

– NEXYAD : the story

– Navigation Based ADAS : use SafetyNex to build ACC and anticipation (predictive) brake systems

* * * * *



Road accident and driving risk are two different notions

A lot of professionals that must cope with road safety observe accident through statistics : it seems to be normal to think that safety is low where there are a lot of accidents and that safety is high where there are few accidents.
This reality tends to make people confuse the two notions : risk and accident.
And since you stay at the statistic level, then it works : if 99% of people that played russian roulette more than 50 times have died (accident), then you can say that russian roulette is risky (risk).
Insurance companies, fleet managers, have taken into account those statistics, in order to estimate their future costs, and compute their pricing.
But now, digital connected devices are available at the very individual and local level : telematics (professional devices installed into cars), smartphones, connected car, can estimate the driving behaviour in real time and they know exactly where you drive.
Then, what this new technology brings to risk assessment ? and can you still apply at the individual level the ideas that was set at a population (statistics) level ?
That question was studied in 1969 by an American University Professor that was also a researcher for the company “Insurance of North America”, Frank E. BIRD, and a key notion was then used : the “incident” or “near miss accident” or “quasi accident”. It was shown that the risk you take does not lead to accident but to “quasi-accident”. Indeed, even in very risky situations, accident can be avoided most of the time at the very last second ! Frank E. BIRD worked on what was called “The Triangle of Risk” or “Safety Triangle”
Sometimes, you do not have luck … and then you have an accident instead of having a quasi-accident.

Pyramid of Risk Example of Statitical Relationship in Risk Assessment : from Behaviour to Fatalities


Then accident is the confluence of “risk you take” and “bad luck”. It is interesting to notice that, if you do not study the individual and local (in space and time) level, so if you consider a large population of drivers during a long duration, then “bad luck” automatically disappears… and so risk can be measured by observation of accident. But at the individual and local levels, risk cannot be measure by observing accident.
It is interesting to read about Safety Triangle and then have a clear idea of links between RISK, ACCIDENT, SEVERE PERSONAL INJURIES.
In road Safety concerns, researchers and experts have been working during 50 years on this concept of quasi-accident and they accumulated data and knowledge about this key notion. Let us resume the russian roulette comparison : pulling the trigger is the quasi-accident … and sometimes you die (accident). But even before playing such a “game” you KNOW that it is risky.
The knowledge of risk is represented by a collection of cause-effect relationships.
There is a knowledge-based artificial intelligence system that gathered the knowledge from road safety experts and researchers (that work mainly on road infrastructure) and that is now available in order to assess driving risk in real time : SafetyNex developed by the company NEXYAD. SafetyNex is the “thermometer” of driving risk and it alerts the driver BEFORE the dangerous situation, letting time to slow down and then potentially to avoid accident, to reduce severity (less personal severe injuries), …
Obviously, markets are :
. car insurance (prevention, severity, UBI)
. fleet management (prevention, reduction of costs, fit in regulations and laws)
But even the automotive can take benefit of suche a real time driving risk assessment module :
. intelligent navigation with risk vocal alerts
. automatic triggering of braking for ADAS (if risk too high then slow down)
. driverless cars : giving to the artificial intelligence that drives the car the perception of the risk it takes…
SafetyNex opens the door to a new generation of onboard applications for every field of automotive sector that is concerned with risk and safety.
Read more

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Nexyad at AutoSens Brussels 2017

AutoSens took place at the AutoWorld Museum in Brussels September 19-21.
To answer the issues of Connected Cars and Autonomous Cars, engineers need first to give eyes, ears and A.I. to future vehicles. Sensors will play this crucial and difficult role of replacing the human senses.
Engineers and sensors providers met for three days of conferences and workshops.
Groupement ADAS was present with Leddartech the lidars canadian company that rose 100 M$ funding, New Imaging Technologies with their unique high dynamic range camera sensors, Intempora that provide famous RT-Maps, and of course Nexyad presented his three camera-based software modules for Road Detection – RoadNex, for Obstacles Detection – ObstaNex, for Visibility Measurement – VisiNex and SafetyNex – the Road Safety system with sensors fusion and data fusion (digital map, accelerometers, GPS, cameras, lidars, radars, ultrasounds, weather data, traffic data, etc.).
New players appeared as Crowdflower or Mighty Ai, they are plateforms that help you process your data or images very quickly by dividing the workload with very many people registered online.
Autosens

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Enova Symposium Paris 2017

Round Table at ENOVA symposium in Paris, on the subject of self-driving car
(see from left to right)
. Vincent ABADIE, Vice-President Expert Leader Autonomous Vehicle and ADAS, PSA Group
. Jochen LANGHEIM, Vice-President advanced systems R&D programs, ST MICROELECTRONICS
. Jean-François SENCERIN, Autonomous Driving NFI/PFA Program Director
. Gérard YAHIAOUI CEO, NEXYAD
. Guillaume DEVAUCHELLE, Vice-President Innovation, VALEO
. Alain PIPERNO, Expert Safety & Autonomous Vehicle, UTAC
The audience could listen to this experts panel and ask questions about connected and driverless cars.
Journalist : Laurent MEILLAUD
ENOVA, Paris, Porte de Versailles

Enova

3 days of exchanges and conviviality at the service of Innovation + Business Meetings driven by THE NEW NEEDS OF CONNECTIVITY.
Read more about the Event

* * * * *



Connected & Self-driving Car Meetup #9

Nexyad was invited to the Connected & Self-driving Car Meetup #9 at Le Square (Renault’s innovation lab in Paris), on september 13.
Thanks to the perfect organisation of Laurent Dunys and Bruno Moncorge.
A large audience listened presentation about vehicles and data security with Nabil Bouzerna of IRT SystemX. Finally, Jean-François Menier, lawyer at Elyos Avocats gave a very interesting wrap-up about the potential responsibility of a driver in the case of a connected / self-driving car accident and of course about driver and passengers safety with SafetyNex App : real time driving risk assessment.

Meetup

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Academic chair : effective collaboration between MOV’EO groupement ADAS and INSA Rouen

MOV’EO Groupement ADAS built an academic chair with INSA ROUEN (option Intelligent Transportation) on ADAS and driverless cars.
The first course was given by Gérard YAHIAOUI, CEO of NEXYAD, the 13th of September 2017 in Rouen : presentation of key notions (near missed accident, driving risk), and presentation of SafetyNex (real time driving risk assessment) and applications to car insurance, fleet management, ADAS, and driverless cars.

Chaire pédagogique

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Sensor fusion and data fusion with SafetyNex

SafetyNex is a real time driving risk assessment system. Of course, Driving Risk makes everyone think of car insurance and fleet management. And it is a natural application (deployment has already started). But it is important to note that Driving Risk is also a key notion for ADAS and Driverless car.

SafetyNex Data Fusion System

Indeed, Driving Risk happens when there is no adequation between Driving Behaviour and Driving Context. ADAS and Driverless act on Driving Behaviour :
. ADAS modifies Driving Behaviour : braking when the human driver did not, etc …
. Driverless car creates Driving Behaviour : there is still a driver called “artificial intelligence”.

Driving context is measured :
. Map Electronic Horizon
. GPS
. Accelerometers
. Times to collision (front and rear)
. Number of vulnerables around (even on sidewalks)
. Atmospheric visibility / weather condition (fog, pouring rain, etc.)
. X2Car Data Streams (accident, weather alert, construction area, etc.

So you can now imagine that if you have the opportunity to ESTIMATE adequation between Driving Behaviour and Driving Context, then you can build much more relevant ADAS and Driverless Artificial Intelligence (adequation or inadequation).

You may notice that Driving Context is measured through heterogenous sensors and data streams. It brings no difficulty to SafetyNex that uses Fuzzy Sets and Possibility Theory to estimate adequation, givin a Driving output called Driving Risk (that you should want to minimize under constraints of mobility efficiency).

Then SafetyNex is actually a sensor and data fusion system (high level fusion), much more efficient than every fusion systems that you ever developed, because it generates a variable (Driving Risk) that is a KEY NOTION for driving and is EASY TO UNDERSTAND AND USE.

NEXYAD implemented a low cost version with only the first 3 inputs (more than 5,000 road safety rules to cope with the infrastructure dangers …) and is now implementing simple rules to take into account mobile context. Example: “the shorter the time to collision, the higher the risk”. And that’s it ! The knowledge based artificial intelligence of SafetyNex automatically does the fusion with the 5,000 rules. There is no need to “weight” the rules, as possibility theroy allows a fusion with every rule competing with the others … Elegant applied maths to a problem that most engineers describe in a so complicated way that it becomes impossible to solve.

We really encourage ADAS and Driverless engineers to come to us and simply integrates SafetyNex (low CPU consumption, easy real time, etc.) and then get NOW a proven sensor fusion and data fusion system that works. This gives ONE dimension of Driving Systemic Analysis items: Driving Risk, in real time.

Of course, if you do the systemic analysis you will find other dimensions of interest (we let you do that, we’ve done it for ourselves, trace of the military research past of NEXYAD founders).

SafetyNex is now under implementation by big ADAS OEM companies. Series deployment will start in 2018. We will be glad to help you being a part of it.

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SafetyNex : Understanding the Concept of Risk

SafetyNex App is a real time driving risk assessment. We present below 3 videos to explain as simply as possible the concept of driving risk.

Luck doesn’t change the risk that the driver takes. It means that risk taken by the « lucky risky driver » is exactly the same than risk taken by the « unlucky risky driver ». It is possible then to detect risky drivers before they have accident (anticipation of costs). Once detected, it is possible to train them (prevention program).

Because SafetyNex driving risk assessment is done in real time, it is possible to alert the driver (when risk is higher than an acceptable value), and if driver slows down, then risk never rises at the red level. It is an onboard prevention system (ADAS).

Observation of accidents on a short period of time (3 months for instance) may not show any difference between « cautious driver » and « lucky risky driver » (both of them may not have accident). It is a big problem for UBI, and SafetyNex brings the solution as it anticipates accident (sooner or later the « lucky risky driver » will have a severe accident).

The Risky & Lucky Driver



The Risky & Unlucky Driver



The Cautious Driver



More info : http://www.safetynex.net

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NEXYAD : the story

All you have to know about the french High Tech company.

NEXYAD is a “fake startup” (much older than it seems ^^) set up in 1995 by maths research engineers (Pierre DA SILVA DIAS & Gérard YAHIAOUI + other shareholder : researchers, finance executives, engineers). Founders came from military research (anti-tank missiles), with a strong culture of computer vision, machine Learning, artificial intelligence, signal theoy and processing, stats and data analysis.
During years we were the extended maths team of famous big firms in many fields : defence, automotive, banking, insurance, energy, cosmetics, agri-food, glass, railways, … Customers were research departments first, and then product and marketing departments, sales departments, industrial labs, manufactures, actuaries, etc.
In the automotive sector, we’ve been involved in a lot of different high level maths works such as :
. production/manufacture (work for PSA Group, Charleville),
. industrial Lab (work for PSA Group – Belchamp,TOYOTA Europe – Brussels, Robert BOSCH GmbH, Bühlertal, VALEO, La verrière – SAINT GOBAIN, … etc.)
. research & development for PSA Group, RENAULT, NISSAN, IEE, DAIMLER, FAURECIA, LE LAB (PSA RENAULT), on perception by camera, radar, capacitive sensors, ultrasound, infrared, etc … , vehicle dynamics (active control), sensorial analysis (touch smell perception of texture by vision), human factor analysis, detection of passengers on seats, odor gas sensors, artificial intelligence, epidemiologic analysis (pollution, particles, …), etc.

Read the entire article.

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Navigation Based ADAS : use SafetyNex to build ACC and anticipation (predictive) brake systems

Nexyad SafetyNex

Imagine a robotized car that would slow down automatically when approaching a tiny curve, or an intersection or a priority, of a stop sign, etc … if needed (i.e. if and only if the current speed and acceleration of the car is not appropriate to the driving context). Sounds interesting ?
It would be then “smooth anticipation braking” (from 0.1 to 0.3 g) instead of “emergency braking” (so easier to do and not that disturbing for driver and passengers comfort in the car). Doing this, the car dramatically decreases the probability to be kept in a dangerous situation and it let much more margin to emergency brake if still needed.
Finally, it would mean that the car follows road traffic code plus safety rules (anticipation).
This is easy to achieve using NEXYAD real time driving risk assessment module SafetyNex : SafetyNex reads “Electronic Horizon” (reading POIs and decoding shape and dimensions of the infrastructure ahead), “GPS“, “accelerometers“, and can accept additional inputs such as “time to collision“, “size of free space“, “position in the lane“, “atmospheric visibility“, alert data streams (weather, accident, traffic, …). All those heterogenous data are used (data fusion) to estimate driving risk in real time : Driving Risk (t)
Then everytime that Driving Risk(t) comes higher than an acceptable threshold value, the robotized car slightly slows down … and that’s it !
SafetyNex is the result of 15 years of collaborative research and it works.
Markets : Car insurance and fleet managers (for real time alert and risk profiles recording), ADAS (for automatic predictive/anticipation brake), and Driverless car (Automated car that follows Road Traffic Code).
SafetyNex is Under deployment, please feel free to try it and put it into your own products (available as an API).
Keywords : Adaptive Cruise Control, ACC, Intelligent ACC, Intelligent Cruise Control, navigation-based, navigation-based ADAS, NB ADAS, ADAS, Advances Driver Assistance Systems, Anticipation brake, Predictive Brake, SafetyNex, Risk, Driving Risk, Real time driving risk assessment, road traffic code, SafetyNex, electronic horizon, GPS, accelerometers, time to collision, free space, size of free space, position in the lane, lane departure, visibility, atmospheric visibility, data stream, weather, accident, traffic, data fusion,…

Adademic chair at MOV’EO with INSA Rouen

MOV’EO Groupement ADAS built an academic chair with INSA ROUEN (option Intelligent Transportation) on ADAS and driverless cars.
The first course was given by Gérard YAHIAOUI, CEO of NEXYAD, the 13th of September 2017 in Rouen : presentation of key notions (near missed accident, driving risk), and presentation of SafetyNex (real time driving risk assessment) and applications to car insurance, fleet management, ADAS, and driverless cars.

Chaire pédagogique