News

« En route vers la voiture autonome »

LePoint

L’hebdomadaire Le Point de cette semaine sort un cahier spécial sur la ville de St Germain en Laye dans le département des Yvelines. La journaliste Valérie PEIFFER y a consacré une page à Nexyad.

« Née en 1995, Nexyad était une PME spécialisée dans la modélisation mathématique.
Reine des algorithmes, elle s’était imposée comme une société de recherche sous contrat qui travaillait
pour différents secteurs tels que l’armée, les banques, les assurances ou encore les centres d’épidémiologie. «Testés et éprouvés, nos modèles mathématiques de traitement de données, de signal et d’images tournent parfaitement pour analyser et mixer différents paramètres, offrir des solutions, valider les performances d’un produit ou encore mesurer l’efficacité d’une campagne de communication, explique Gérard Yahiaoui, cofondateur de Nexyad. Mais quand, en 2013, il devint possible de faire tourner nos modèles dans un simple smartphone, cela nous a ouvert de nouveaux horizons de recherche avec à la clé de nouveaux produits. »

Lire la suite.

Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO speaker at
Autonomous Vehicle – Test & Development Symposium 2016

STUTTGART 31 may – 2 june 2016

Test and Validation Strategies for Autonomous Vehicles Room B

june 1st – 09:30 – Building a relevant validation database for camera-based ADAS

Validation of camera-based artificial vision systems applied on open world is a very complex issue. An HD colour camera may generate more than 65 000 power 2 000 000 different images (information theory), so it is not possible to test every possible message. We propose a deterministic approach for building a validation database using the AGENDA methodology that was developed and published in the 1990s for neural network database (learn and test) design.

French National Projects : Initiative PME (ADEME)
Safety/Risk of Accident

NEXYAD is proud to announce that our project SEMACOR has been approved.

This project will help to us to accelerate applications of road safety/ risk of accident estimation
in embedded connected devices (based on the NEXYAD software SafetyNex) : new vehicles and also telematics devices (aftermarket applications for car industry, insurance companies, etc …)

Contact NEXYAD if you need to measure both safety and eco-driving onboard : (sales@nexyad.net)
Demo of SafetyNex : https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?page_id=441
NB : SafetyNex is THE ONLY module that measures road safety (correlated to accident), validated by
experts of French Accident Administration (cf. paper at congress PRAC 2010 « évaluation du risque
de sortie de route pour l’aide à la conduite ou le diagnostic d’infrastructure », J Brunet, P Da Silva Dias, G. Yahiaoui, Session 1 « caractérisation du risque routier »).


SafetyNex

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #7 available !

NEXYAD Products :
Spreading the World



Summary :
– French National Projects : Initiative PME (ADEME)
– Visibility Measurement : Release v2.0 of VisiNex Onboard
– Risk & Safety Estimation in Driving : SafetyNex Software Module
– Nexyad expertise about Autonomous vehicle : ERTS2 2016 – 8th European Congress
– Future Presence of Nexyad on Congresses & Exhibitions (ADAS, Autonomous Cars & Insurance)
– Nexyad New Customers : Focus on VeDeCoM

To read the Newsletter : https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?p=1667

RoadNex v2.2 in Online Store of Intempora

Nexyad RoadNex v2.2 is the only Road Detection module software operable in framework RT-Maps by Intempora.
It is possible to connect multiple sensors included cameras on RT-Maps, collecting data in real time and time-stampted them. Later play and replay video with all your data.

Intempora-RoadNex

ERTS2 2016 – 8th European Congress

From 27th to 29th january 2016 at Toulouse in France took place the 8th European Congress « Embedded Real Time Software and Systems », centre de Congrès Pierre Baudis.

Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO participated to a roundtable about Highly Automated Driving conducted by journalist Laurent Meillaud and organized by Louis-Claude Vrignaud (Continental); with Paul Labrogere (IRT System X), Jean-François Simeon (Akka Research), Franck Foersterling (Continental Automotive), Ernesto Exposito (CNRS Laas), David Lopez (NXP) and Gilbert Gagnaire (EasyMile).

Toulouse


Release v2.0 of Nexyad VisiNex Onboard

NEXYAD VisiNex Onboard v2.0 is now available on RT-Maps (by Intempora).
It comes with local Visual Quality Score (VQS) figured by colors :
Green is high, orange is medium, red is low.
See Demo film below on foggy weather condition :




The french Institute VeDeCoM purchased RoadNex & ObstaNex

The NEXYAD team is proud to announce a new customer of our Road Detection software module RoadNex and Obstacle Detection ObstaNex : The VeDeCoM Institute .

See some information about RoadNex and ObstaNex in the PRODUCTS menu above.

The VEDECOM Institute is one of the Institutes for the Energy Transition created within the Investment Plan for the Future of the French government. VEDECOM stands for carbon-free, communicating vehicle and its mobility. It is supported by the French competitiveness cluster Mov’eo and by several local communities around Paris

The objective of VEDECOM is to become an institute for mutual and co-located research on electric, autonomous and connected vehicles, and on the mobility eco-system built on infrastructures and services addressing new usages of shared mobility and energy.

To know more : http://vedecom.fr/en/

Vedecom

7 companies to launch driverless cars by 2020

New post on Nexyad-ADAS Solutions blog

NEXYAD Intelligence : trends of driverless cars in 2020

We already showed you when you will be able to buy a driverless car using predictions from research companies and futurists. Since that article was published in July, automakers have been announcing when they anticipate to release their driverless vehicles. This was mostly done to ride the viral wave after Google’s driverless car video was released. So, which company is going to be first to deliver an autonomous model to showrooms?

We’ve grouped companies into four categories:

1.Expected to launch a driverless car by 2020
2.Expected to launch a driverless car after 2020
3.Developing a driverless car, but no official launch date
4.No expected launch of a driverless car

to read more http://www.nexyad-adas.com/archives/2016/01/18/33221555.html

NEXYAD made functional analysis of driverless car and focused on reliability and robustness. Then this high-tech SME (that already developed an autonomous vehicle in 2007 with other SMEs such as Induct, for the DARPA Challenge : team « Blue Froggie ») proposes software modules that may help (available for sale) :

RoadNex for Road Detection
ObstaNex for Obstacles Detection
VisiNex Onboard for Visibility Measurement
SafetyNex for Road Safety

Please choose Products in the menu above for further information

l’Institut VeDeCoM s’équipe avec RoadNex et ObstaNex

Nexyad est fier d’annoncer que l’Institut VeDeCoM, Véhicule Décarboné et Communiquant, vient d’acquérir des licences utilisateurs des logiciels RoadNex et ObstaNex.
L’institut VeDecom monte en puissance depuis sa création et entend jouer un rôle majeur dans les domaines des véhicules autonomes, connectés et électriques. Sa stratégie d’acquisition de l’état de l’art en vision et intelligence artificielle pour les ADAS profite à Nexyad au travers de ses produits de détection de route et détection d’obstacles.

En savoir plus sur RoadNex détection de la route : https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?page_id=412

En savoir plus sur ObstaNex détection des obstacles : https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?page_id=429

VeDeCom

En savoir plus sur VeDeCom : http://vedecom.fr/fr/

NEXYAD Intelligence : The Top Five Trends For The Connected Car In 2016

Safety First — Security Will Be Big

An interesting post about Road Safety in Nexyad-Adas Blog.

To read more : http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/02/the-top-five-trends-for-the-connected-car-in-2016/

NEXYAD is waiting for that since 2010 as they’ve been developing a module that measures in real time the risk of accident and then can help to prenvent from accident (car manufacturer application) and/or monitor the driver (insurance companies application). This module is called SafetyNex and is the only one that estimates road safety correlated to accident (tested, validated, proven).

To read more and watch demos : https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?page_id=441

In-Car Sensors Put Insurers In The Driver’s Seat

By Teresa Meek

Jeff Branson, the police chief of Mattoon, Ill., has been tracking a lead-footed driver for nearly two years.

A couple of times, he’s caught the guy doing 70 in a 55. He’s confiscated the vehicle twice but never issued a ticket.

The speed demon just happens to be his 18-year-old son Chase. Branson monitors his son’s driving habits with a device provided by auto insurance provider State Farm that plugs into the car’s data port and collects information on mileage, braking, turns, acceleration, and what time of day Chase is driving. The device uploads the data to the company, which uses it to rate drivers and offer them a possible discount under the company’s “Drive Safe & Save” program. Information about Chase’s specific location and speed is sent to Branson through an optional monitoring program associated with the device but is not sent to the insurance company.

In-car sensors, or telematics, have become business as usual for major auto insurance carriers like State Farm, Progressive PGR +0.00% and Allstate ALL +0.00%, which say customers appreciate the opportunity to review their performance online and receive discounts on their insurance. The palm-sized devices plug into a car’s data port, the same spot mechanics use for vehicle diagnostics. (All cars made since 1996 have the ports.) The devices record information about mileage and speed, which is then used to calculate data about acceleration and braking trends. Some systems also have GPS capability that is relayed to insurance companies for research purposes — or to owners like Branson who opt for driver monitoring.

to read more : http://www.nexyad-adas.com/archives/2016/01/13/33197670.html

Background of NEXYAD on artificial vision-based ADAS

Among the few companies that worked on ADAS and Autonomous Vehicle since a long tima, NEXYAD is one that have the most cumulated experience.
1993 : scientific paper by Gerard Yahiaoui (Founder of NEXYAD with Pierre Da Silva Dias) with a researcher of the Automotive Company PSA Peugeot Citroën : « Texture-based Image Segmentation for Road Recognition with Neural Networks », G. Yahiaoui, M. de Saint Blancard, Sixth international conference on neural networks and their industrial & cognitive applications NeuroNîmes93, EC2, Nîmes, 1993,
2007 : participation of NEXYAD to the DARPA Challenge (Autonomous Vehicle) in the team « Blue Froggy » (with INRIA and INDUCT).
2016 : road detection, obstacle detection, road safety estimation, visibility measurement, available on smartphones (in March).

Experience matters !

What your company was doing in 1993 in the field of ADAS ?

What your company was doing in 2007 about Autonomous Cars ?

NEXYAD accumulated work on artificial vision based ADAS since more than 20 years, even when nobody believed that one day it will be camera inside cars.

You must need our know how…

Nexyad wrote a paper in the book
Energy Consumption and Autonomous Driving

METHODOLOGY for ADAS VALIDATION :
Potential Contribution of Other Scientific Fields Which Have Already Answered the Same Questions
By Gérard YAHIAOUI & Pierre DA SILVA DIAS

Livre Jochen

This volume by Jochen Langheim collects selected papers of the 3rd CESA Automotive Electronics Congress, Paris 2014. CESA is the most important automotive electronics conference in France. The topical focus lies on state-of-the-art automotive electronics with respect to energy consumption and autonomous driving. The target audience primarily comprises industry leaders and research experts in the automotive industry.

To buy the book : http://www.springer.com/jp/book/9783319198170

Mesure du comportement de conduite des conducteurs : SafetyNex

Les Compagnies d’Assurances, les Constructeurs Automobiles et leur équipementiers ont tous des raisons pour mesurer le comportement du conducteur. Cela a déjà commencé, avec les boîtiers des assureurs dans le cadre du fameux « pay how you drive » : l’idée des compagnies d’assurance automobile est de moduler les tarifs en fonction de la dangerosité des conduites : un boîter embarqué dans le véhicule (ou une App sur le smartphone du conducteur) note le style de conduite (en utilisant les accéléromètres intégrés dans l’électronique), et lui attribue un degré de risque d’accidents.

Or, le style de conduite (exemple : freinages sévères, ou au contraire conduite coulée) n’est pas corrélé au risque d’accidents. Cela a été démontré formellement au travers de programmes de recherche collaborative (en particulier dans le cadre du programme national PREDIT sur la Sécurité Routière), et cela correspond aussi au « bon sens » : quelqu’un qui grille un stop sans faire de freinage sévère, sans accélérer comme un fou, tranquillement, à 40 km/h, est extrêmement dangereux et son comportement de conduite est fortement accidentogène, alors qu’il conduit « calmement ».
De même quelqu’un qui ne tient absolument pas compte des passages piétons (y compris lorsqu’un piéton est engagé) et le passent tranquillement sans freiner on un comportement, d’une part interdit par le code de la route, et d’autre part très accidentogène (avec des accidents mortels car il s’agit d’accident « véhicule vs vulnérable »).
Tous les boîtiers automobiles actuels qui utilisent le style de conduite comme clé de dangerosité sont donc absolument inefficaces et remontent une information fausse.
Tant qu’on ne rapproche pas le style de conduite du contexte géométrique, géographique, météo, état du conducteur etc …, on ne peux absolument rien conclure d’un style de conduite, à part pour la partie dite « Eco » (plus on conduit brutalement, moins on conserve l’inertie du véhicule, plus on consomme de carburant, et donc plus on rejette aussi de CO2).

SafetyNex

To read more : http://www.nexyad-adas.com/archives/2016/01/05/33130831.html

Economic Intelligence presentation on Nexyad-ADAS blog

NEXYAD always looking at surveys about ADAS and driverless cars market … Here is a relevant study about Automotive Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Market (2015-2025), by ReportBuyer.com

The Next Step Towards Autonomous, Self-Driving & Driverless Cars

LONDON, May 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Report Details

In many ways, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are the first step on the road to semi-autonomous or fully-autonomous self-driving and driverless vehicles. In 2015, Park Assistance, Surround-View Cameras, and Adaptive Cruise Control applications dominate the ADAS market; however, the penetration into passenger cars is relatively low despite the increasing rate of installations into the premium car segment manufacturers.
Often these are fitted in isolation, and even where multiple systems are fitted in a vehicle, great care is taken to ensure that these systems are perceived only as assisting the driver (who must remain fully alert) rather than taking over his role. As the number and abilities of these systems increases, the situation will move further along a continuum from driver assistance to in effect driver substitution, meaning that the driver would no longer be required to be alert and instead the onus would fall on the vehicle to warn the driver when his input was required, bringing him back to a state of full alertness.

To read more : http://www.nexyad-adas.com/archives/2015/12/31/33118647.html

ROBUSTNESS OF NEXYAD SOFTWARE MODULE
FOR ROAD DETECTION : RoadNex

ROBUSTNESS OF NEXYAD SOFTWARE MODULE FOR ROAD DETECTION : RoadNex

By NEXYAD

Detection of the road, detection of the lane, in front of the vehicle is now a « must-have »
for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and of course for Autonomous Cars too.
Every R&D team is able to show cases of good detection. The difference between different
modules is robustness : ability to work in many cases (almost every cases).

For instance, robustness consideration led many big Automotive firms to interger the MOBILEYE
detection system : jus because MOBILEYE is more robust than detection systems developed by
those big firms. And robustness is not a matter of deployment : you won’t get a more robust
module is you put 10 000 developers on the project. You need time, big amount of data, and
« smart ideas ».

Note : This robustness definition leads to question on ADAS validation (« almost » every case is
not that well defined … how could we put some maths on those words). NEXYAD has been
developing an applied maths-based methodology for ADAS validation and is currently
recording a validation data base that will be soon available for free worldwide on the internet.

But let’s go back to road detection modules comparison.

There is another difference between road detection systems : do they need white markings
or are they able to work even without markings ?

NEXYAD founders has been working on road detection since the beginning of the 90’s and never
stopped (*). The NEXYAD team is one of the moste experienced team in the world about road detection.
That actually makes the difference, and RoadNex is a module that would take long to develop by
other teams. RoadNex is currently available on PC (windows, Linux) in the real time framework
RT-MAPS. RoadNex will be soon available :
. on electronic device of an Automotive Tier One Company
. on smartphones (so it works in real time on a smartphone usual processor ! try to compare to other modules)
(*) publication at a scientific congress in France in 1993 :
« Texture-based Image Segmentation for Road Recognition with Neural Networks », G. Yahiaoui, M. de Saint Blancard,
Sixth international conference on neural networks and their industrial & cognitive applications NeuroNîmes93, EC2,
Nîmes, 1993,

In order to have an idea of what robustness means, here are some case used to test RoadNex :
RoadNex01
RoadNex02
https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/RoadNex03.jpg
RoadNex04
RoadNex05
RoadNex06
RoadNex08
RoadNex07
RoadNex09
RoadNex10

How many kilometers should you drive to sample those few road scenes variations ?

For more information : https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?page_id=412