Nexyad Algorithms in Autonomous Vehicles

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #23, July 10th, 2018

 


Nexyad Algorithms in Autonomous Vehicles
 
 
Headlines :

– ISFM selected Nexyad algorithms

– SafetyNex episode 6 : Five use cases when your eyes or sensors are not enough

– Autonomous Driving Adaptative to situations with SafetyNex

– Broad Range Applications of Real Time Driving Risk Assessment

– Deep Learning for Onboard Applications: Hidden Trap

– SafetyNex and the « S » Curve Theory

– Congresses & Events

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ISFM selected Nexyad algorithms

 

NEXYAD is proud to announce that our Artificial Intelligence Algorithmes are used for Autonomous Driving Vehicles French High Tech Startup ISFM (Intelligent Systems for Mobility) selected Nexyad artificial intelligence algorithms for their Milla Smart Shuttle.

ISFM
ISFM is one of the companies selected by the Ubimobility 2018 program

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SafetyNex episode 6 :
Five use cases when your eyes or sensors are not enough
 

SafetyNex can save your life part 1: Rainy Curve


 
SafetyNex can save your life part 2: Tight Curve


 
SafetyNex can save your life part 3: Priority


 
SafetyNex can save your life part 4: Stop Sign


 
SafetyNex can save your life part 5: Pedestrians Crossing


 

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Autonomous Driving Adaptative to situations with SafetyNex

 
HOW TO MAKE YOUR AUTONOMOUS DRIVING (AD) ADAPTIVE TO SITUATIONS THAT WERE NOT IMAGINED BEFORE
 
The true function of an autonomous vehicle is to move you from a point A to a point B, as quicly as possible, in comfort and safety (road safety : without accident and even without near-misses). Let’s talk about road safety because it is the job of NEXYAD with the Artificial Intelligence module SafetyNex.
20 times per second, SafetyNex estimates the risk that the driver (Driver is your Autonomous Driving system) takes. In an open world, new situations will happen (not in the scope of your scenarios) and if your AD is not adapted, risk will rise and SafetyNex will detect it. It opens the door to new strategies :
. Simple adaptive response : « if risk too high then slow down » for instance
. Complex adaptive system with deep Learning : if the response led to risk rising it is not the proper one … well it sounds you can improve your AD and even let it learn while it is in use in real vehicles !!!
And you even can modulate easily aggressiveness of your AD (necessary in dense urban areas).
 
Adaptative Closed Loop with safetyNex

 

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Broad Range Applications of
Real Time Driving Risk Assessment

 
Driving risk is not predictable from the so called « black spots » location, or from only driving behaviour. Driving risk appears when driving behaviour is not adapted to driving context, and particular, to road infrastructure complexity. There is no inherently bad driving behaviour (it depends on WHERE you drive: a disused airport ? in front of a school ? approaching an intersection ? risk is different for all those case). There is no inherently dangerous infrastructure and all automotive projects that record « black spots » are doomed to failure : they are places where few drivers in the past had a driving behaviour that was not appropriate to infrastructure complexity, and they died in accident. Thousands, millions, of other drivers did not have any accident at this location. What will this information bring to YOU ? Nothing ! It is necessary to evaluate adequation of YOUR driving behaviour to infrastructure complexity.
An AI module does that 20 times per second: SafetyNex.
Driving risk computed by SafetyNex is a core notion with lots of different applications : car insurance, fleet management, commerce, ADAS, Autonomous Driving, Vocal Driving Assistants, …
 
SafetyNex Presentation Page

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Deep Learning for Onboard Applications: Hidden Trap

 
Now Deep Learning is used in onboard detection and pattern recognition applications. NEXYAD for instance uses Deep Learning in RoadNex (road detection without need of markings + detection of free space), and ObstaNex (obstacles detection).
But if you do not analyse your INDUSTRIAL project in detail, you may have bad surprises : everyone thinks he/she knows that the more numerous the training examples, the most accurate the KPIs. Let’s say you used 1 billion km to train and validate your Neural Network (NN) for computer vision. Now a new cam is launched on the market (32 bits per color, 10k) : If you want to use your NN, you will degrade quality of images and put them into your system. If you want to take advantage of your better camera, then you must capture 1 NEW billion km with the new cam and train a new NN.
NOT VERY INDUSTRIAL!
NEXYAD has developed a methodology to get same KPIs with a very picky compact database (easy to reshape the database with new sensors) : A.G.E.N.D.A. (Approche Générale des Etudes Neuronales pour le Développement d’Applications), published in scientific papers in the 90’s – yes – the 90’s by NEXYAD team.
 
Deep Learning Database Validation

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SafetyNex and the « S » Curve Theory

 
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DRIVING RISK AND ACCIDENT : THE « S » CURVE THEORY
 
Let’s say in a manufacture there is a very dangerous machine that may grind up your hand. If you are 10 km away from the machine, risk is « very » low. If you are 1 km away from the machine, risk is the same. If you are 10 m away from the machine … risk is still very low … but if you come closer (let’s say 10 cm), suddenly risk becomes high ! This is not linear. In road safety, the Artificial Intelligence algorithm SafetyNex estimates 20 times per second the driving risk you take, and many people ask about relationship between « risk you take » and « accident ». This relationship is not deterministic (probabilities must be used) : risk is not linked directly to accident but rather to accident frequency (or probability)… and the relationship is a non linear curve called a « S » curve as shown on the figure below. It is possible then to use it to alert human driver (Vocal Driving Assistants) or to control autonomous driving (Autonomous Vehicle) in order to keep risk under the threshold of the « S » curve or not too far after the threshold. SafetyNex was calibrated in order to have 95% of accident frequency just after the threshold (validated on 50 million km).



Click image to enlarge

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Congresses & Events

 

NEXYAD CEO on Mobility TV about Road Safety applied to AV

Use the YouTube translation to follow with your language.

Gérard YAHIAOUI, CEO of NEXYAD, participed in a TV show on Mobility TV about the Autonomous Vehicle, where he explained the value of SafetyNex for road safety applied to Autonomous Vehicle. The other guests were Jean-Pierre CARNEVALE, departement director for Ipsos, Abdelkrim DOUFENE from IRT SystemX, and Hervé GROS from SIA (automotive engineers society), the talk show was animated by Patrick ROGER for Auto K7.

First French Congress devoted to Autonomous Vehicles

Last 25-26 june, SIA and URF jointly organized the first French conference on the autonomous vehicle in order to cross the views of the whole scientific and technical communities : car manufacturers, suppliers, road infrastructures, telecommunications and transport operators in connection with the national and territorial public decision-makers.
200 experts, 4 sectors, a dozen of exhibitors, 38 interventions, keynotes by Anne-Marie Idrac (AV special adviser), Cédric Villani (AI special adviser) and Luc Chatel (President of PFA), 1 round table of industrial leaders and the public sector, or how to draw up the state of the art for the biggest technological change in mobility and transport.

The goal is to accelerate the capacity for innovation everyone to serve everyone, by bringing all stakeholders together under the aegis of the most relevant experts for the autonomous vehicles of tomorrow.

Gerard Yahiaoui, CEO of Nexyad was invited to talk about SafetyNex on a focus about Intelligent Onboard Technologies.

Gerard Yahiaoui at SIA Conference
Gérard Yahiaoui explaining SafetyNex
 

A.I. key of profitability Conference at TNP
TNP logo

 
This thursday 14th june, TNP, a consulting firm specializing in business transformation, inaugurated its new generation start-up accelerator! The audience follow interesting conference about Artificial Intelligence in Mobility field.

– Benoit Ranini, TNP : Introduction
– Philippe Giry-Deloison : Conseiller municipal de Neuilly sur Seine
– Stéphane Mallard : Artificial Intelligence, Get ready for disruption
– Juliette Girard, Renault & Adrian Pellegrini, Blue DME : Feedback on futuristic car dealership
– Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad : Intelligence on board with SafetyNex
– Demo and business dating with TNP Accelerator’s start-ups

Gerard Yahiaoui
Gérard Yahiaoui, CEO of Nexyad
 

The European Mobility Exhibition 2018
 

TP 2018

 
Transports Publics, the European Mobility Exhibition, is the not-to-bemissed biennial exhibition for all the key players in public transport and sustainable mobility from across Europe. Over 11,000 highly qualified participants come together over three days in Paris to discuss the latest innovations for urban, interurban and regional transport, as well as green mode transport.
Transports Publics is recognised as the leading European showcase for innovations in equipment, services and policies relating to the entire mobility sector, bringing together leading European decision-makers from transport and politics.

Smart-Vision

 
This year, we could see for the first time, the new technology for rear-vision on buses,coaches and trucks : the camera-based system instead of mirrors. We visited Vision Systems booth that is the first firm to propose such system with its Smart-Vision product.
Smart-Vision allows to save about 5% gas consumption, that reduces CO2 emissions; the cockpit screens for driver are much more efficient than mirrors, they eliminate sun glare or reflexion problems and of vehicles lights, and they increase visibility at night and tunnel conditions.
This solution has been integrated in Heuliez and Irizar buses as shown on the exhibition, and public transportation operators companies in Europe have already adopted Smart-Vision.
Vision Systems also shown a lidar perception system around vehicle called Savety-Front for collision avoidance.

Navya

 
The trend of 2018 was on electrification for buses in particular, and public transporation in general.
Autonomous pod or shuttle was not yet present except outside with Navya.

Lohr Pod
Cristal by Lohr
 

Autonomous Vehicle World Expo 2018 Report
 

Logo

 
For the third consecutive time the Groupement ADAS (cluster) was present to the Autonomous Vehicle Technology World Expo at Messe Stuttgart 5-7 june 2018. Intempora and Nexyad represented the french-canadian cluster sponsorised by Mov’eo Imagine Mobility.
Edition 2018 was quite good, we propose a focus on some companies we saw to the convention.
 
Nexyad_Veoneer

 
The Elektrobit
industry experts came to share their experience on how to effectively manage a functional and open HAD software architecture on an adaptive AUTOSAR infrastructure. They were keen to demonstrate how the functional software architecture with open interfaces and software modules is integrated on a high-performance microcontroller using an AUTOSAR adaptive middleware. In addition to the functional challenges, the transmission of integrity levels of automotive safety could be explained to you. EB booth visitors could appreciate why the advantage of combining an open software framework for automated driving with a reliable operating environment reduces time-to-market due to fast integration and first system-level testing.

ESI Group is a leading innovator in the field of virtual prototyping software and services. A specialist in materials physics, ESI has developed a unique skill to help industrial manufacturers replace physical prototypes with virtual prototypes, enabling them to manufacture, assemble, certify and pre-certify their future products. Coupled with the latest technologies, ESI now wants to anchor virtual prototyping in the broader product performance lifecycle concept, which addresses the operational performance of a product throughout its life cycle, from launch to disposal. The creation of a hybrid twin, based on simulation, physics and data analysis, allows manufacturers to deliver more readable and connected products.

Sigra Technologies was exhibiting its autonomous driving system, its components and services called Deep Einstein. Its products range from drive-by-wire embedded systems to decision-making based on a deep neural network. The company believes that an approach based on deep learning is the best way to handle hard-to-solve cases using traditional algorithms. During the exhibition, Sigra presented its new system for the demonstration of autonomous driving.

StreetDrone is an ambitious UK self-driving startup with a rich automotive, motorsport and entrepreneurial DNA. The streetDrone team is passionate about putting the AV revolution into the hands of the many , not just the few, providing the platform , data management system and functional safety, thereby allowing businesses and institutions to focus on their own development goals without having to worry about the cost and complication of vehicle hardware and systems engineering. StreetDrone is enabling the next generation of engineering to be involved in what is the most exciting area of technology today.

Veoneer is a leading system supplier for ADAS autonomous driving AD and advanced brake control solutions, and a market leader in automotive safety electronics products. With one of the oadest product portfolios in the larket, Veoneer is the forefront of innovation in the current revolution of the automotive industry. Veoneer takes on the challenge of automation and human-machine tion as vehicles become increasly intelligent.

Elektrobit
Vector informatik is a leading manufacturer of software tools and embedded components for the development of electronic systems and their networking with many different systems from CAN to automotive Ethernet. Vector has been a partner of automotive manufacturers and suppliers and related industries since 1988; Its tools and services provide engineers with the decisive advantage to make a challenging and highly complex subject area as simple and manageable as possible. Worldwide customers in the automotive, commercial vehicles, aerospace, transportation and control technology industries rely on the solutions and products of the independent Vector Group for the development of future mobility.

The four algorithms products of Nexyad are now well known by automotive profesionals. Numerus companies worldwide integrated SafetyNex the on board Driving risk assessment in real time, combinable with the three camera-based modules: RoadNex for road detection (edges of road and bitumen free space); ObstaNex for obstacles detection (vehicles and pedestrians); and VisiNex for visibility measurement (fog and heavy rains detection, reliability, distance of visibility, etc.)

Groupement ADAS
 

MOV’EO Imaging Mobility Forum 2018
 

Imaging Mobility Forum by MOV’EO, June 7th 2018 at ESTACA, Campus Paris-Saclay.
« Innovation Hubs : a new deal for efficient mobility »
 

Luc Chatel - Rémi Bastien

Luc Chatel, PFA President                                             Rémi Bastien, Mov’eo President

 
– Mov’eo General Assembly – 2017 Management & Financial report
– Keynote : opening by Luc CHATEL, Chairman, French Automotive Industry & Mobilities, Former French Secretary of State for Industry
– Tech Sessions : Blockchain: the ultimate bypassing. New Eldorado for mobility or just a buzz?
Smart Grid: the key for electric mobility solutions ?
ESTACA’LAB research activities on intelligent, clean and safe transport
 
 
Conference : Innovation Hubs : a new deal for efficient mobility

 
– Introduction by Rémi Bastien, Mov’eo Chairman & Ludovic Busson, ESTACA Chairman
– Keynote : Richard Dujardin, CEO France, Transdev & Patrick Pelata, Chairman, Meta Consulting LLC
– Roundtable – European clusters :

Rémi BASTIEN, VP Automotive Prospective, Groupe Renault, Chairman of Mov’eo & VEDECOM Institute
Leo KUSTERS, Managing Director, AutomotiveNL
Maren LOUCHET, International Cooperation, e-mobil BW
Laura MORGAGNI, CEO, Torino Wireless
 

Groupement ADAS
Adaccess demo car                                             Groupement ADAS Booth
 

4 disruptive AI algorithms for automotive mobility by NEXYAD

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #22, April 17th, 2018

 


4 disruptive AI algorithms for automotive mobility by NEXYAD

Headlines :
– SafetyNex episode 4 : Driving Risk Assessment for Automotive (Driving Assistant, ADAS, Autonomous Driving)

– CNEJITA Seminar on Artificial Intelligence: who will be responsible ?

– SafetyNex : driving robot maybe will mitigate human errors, but first they have to imitate good drivers

– « Theory of Water Flush » and Impact on the Prevention of Accidents for Autonomous Vehicles

– 4 disruptive AI algorithms for automotive mobility

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SafetyNex episode 4:
Driving Risk Assessment for Automotive
(Driving Assistant, ADAS, Autonomous Driving)

 
The new video on SafetyNex, on board driving risk assessment in real time.



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CNEJITA Seminar on Artificial Intelligence:
who will be responsible ?

 
April 10th, CNEJITA (National Company of Legal Experts on Computer Science and Associated Techniques) organized a Seminar, whose objective is to determine the responsibility in terms of artificial intelligence through the understanding of technology and the dialogue with the actors of the sector.
It is therefore around this theme of topicality and future which is the artificial intelligence that the best experts in terms of computing met at the Commercial Court of Paris.

AI: concepts, technological breakthroughs and new risks
– Understanding the Concepts and Landscape of AI – Jean-Claude HEUDIN (Artificial-Creature.com – Teacher Researcher in AI)
– IA: state of play and perspectives – Jean-Philippe DESBIOLLES (IBM head of France IA WATSON)

Roundtable – Which Expertise fo AI ? was animated by Serge MIGAYRON (Honorary President of CNEJITA)
– The acceptability and limits of IA – JA CAUSSE (CNEJITA Expert)
– The Autonomous Vehicle and Traceability of IA – Jean-Louis LEQUEUX (Former President of VeDeCoM Tech)
– Auditability and risk control in the design of an IA – Gérard YAHIAOUI (NEXYAD)
– Evolution of the world of insurance, towards an objective responsibility – Nicolas HELENON (Co-manager Firm NEO TECH Assurances)

Roundtable – The Legal Challenges of AI. Animation – A MEILLASSOUX (ATM Lawyers – President of AFDIT)

– Introduction to Classical and New AI Concepts by Law: Applicable Regime and Evidence – L SZUSKIN (BAKER McKENZIE Lawyer)
– Tort liability in the face of AI: adaptation of traditional categories or creation of a responsibility specific to AI? – P GLASER (Lawyer TAYLOR WESSING)
– Contractual liability in the face of the IA: risk management during the contractualization of an IA system – FP LANI (DERRIENNIC Associate Lawyer)
– Synthesis on the current legal landscape – G de MONTEYNARD (Attorney General at the Court of Cassation)

Colloque CNEJITA
Gérard YAHIAOUI, CEO of NEXYAD

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SafetyNex : driving robot maybe will mitigate human errors,
but first they have to imitate good drivers

 
BEWARE with the statistics : « 94% of severe personal damage accidents are due to human errors » doesn’t mean that you’ll save 94% of severe accident with autonomous driving : drivers do not only make mistakes they also drive well (1 accident every 70 000 km, 3 dead every billion km – OCDE) … It is important to study also good driving and near misses (when driver has the right behaviour to avoid accident or to mitigate severity)… That’s what NEXYAD did during 15 years of research programs on road safety ^^ (that led to SafetyNex). See image (if you do not provide the « green » features, you will lose lives more than you gain with your driverless car. Our AI algorithm SafetyNex was made for this.

Example of risk tree

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« Theory of Water Flush » and Impact on the Prevention of Accidents for Autonomous Vehicles

 
« THEORY OF WATER FLUSH » AND IMPACT ON THE PREVENTION OF ACCIDENTS
FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

by NEXYAD

INTRODUCTION
Let’s suppose that the flush does not exist in our toilets, and then let’s suppose that engineers able to create complex systems or even « systems of systems » are consulted to invent it, and that they apply exactly the same method than they do in the field of ADAS and Autonomous Vehicles.

Water Flush Vs Automotive Engineers

METHOD OF SCENARIOS
We propose to apply the method of scenarios, which consists in crossing all the factors that can modify the situation, then in each case of the complete combination, propose a solution. For this, it is necessary to note the number of possible shapes for the tank, the possible volumes, all the possible locations for the water supply entry, the possible diameters of the inlet pipe, the flow rates and possible pressures of water, the possible residual water levels before filling. We can generate the combinatorial of these factors, which allows us to generate all the possible scenarios of the « flush » problem. In each case, it is possible to give a solution, namely, the duration of filling of the tank (opening and closing of the water tap).

This approach is fully compatible with deep learning, which will also interpolate between two reference cases (quality of interpolation/generalization to be controlled, of course) if characteristics had to drift over time. Of course, the tank must integrate a system of sensors to evaluate the configuration (diameter of pipe, pressure of water, position pipe, capacity of the tank, etc …). We can use a camera, lasers, ultrasounds, etc. So that this recognition of situation is as accurate as possible. For such an approach, automation/control engineers talk about open-loop (feed forward) control because the data flow is as follows:

Open Loop

COST AND ROBUSTNESS OF THE SCENARIOS METHOD
It is easy to understand that the flush thus designed will be perfectly functional (there is no reason for it does not work), but for a high cost due to the sensors to integrate. Similarly, the robustness of the system to a measurement error or to a bad situation recognition is not guaranteed : we can very good to fill too much or not enough. The accuracy of the configuration case recognition is very important.


SOLUTION OF WATER FLUSH IN THE REAL WORLD
If you have the curiosity to disassemble your flush, you will notice that it is much simpler than the system described above: A float indicates when the water supply valve should be closed. The figure is as follows:

Closed Loop

Automation engineers call this a closed loop control (servo control). The feed forward « open » control is reduced to « open the tap thoroughly without worrying about the flow of water, the volume of the tank, and turn off the tap as soon as the float asks for it « . Note that this method works regardless of the configuration of the flush : we do not even need to know the volume of the tank that can be modified (for example: by filling half of the tank with glass beads) without affecting the operation of the flush. It is a robust and cheap system.


TRANSCRIPT OF THESE REMARKS IN THE FIELD OF ADAS AND AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES:
SERVO CONTROL IN DECISION

The information processing chain of the autonomous vehicle follows the general feed forward form :
NEXYAD has developed the SafetyNex system which dynamically estimates in real time the risk that the driver (human or artificial) takes. However, the autonomous vehicle may be functionally specified as follows:

AD feeding

« transport someone from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and safely. »

The « quickly » aspect is the historical business of the automobile. The « safely » notion integrates intrinsic safety of the system (its dependability: it should not explode, sensors or power supply may not be disabled, etc.), and since it is a vehicle, its ability to move with a good road safety, that is to say by « not taking too much risk in driving ». Since SafetyNex estimates this driving risk dynamically and in real time, it can be said that SafetyNex is a dynamic indicator of « SOTIF » (Safety Of The Intended Function). SafetyNex acts as a « driving risk float » : when the risk arrives at the maximum accepted level (like the float of the flush) we stop the action that raised the risk (example: we stop accelerating or we slow down). Thus, the response of an autonomous driving system is made adaptive (at the decision level) : even if the feed forward open loop is not perfect, it can correct itself to take into account, among other things, the instruction and the measure of driving risk. This system is completely independent of the automatic driving system in terms of information processing, so it represents redundancy of processing.

SafetyNex uses to estimate risk :

. risk due to inadequacy of driving behaviour to the difficulties of the infrastructure : navigation map, GPS, accelerometers

. risk due to inadequacy of driving behaviour to the presence of other road users (cars, pedestrians, …) : data extracted from the sensors (camera, lidar, radar, etc) such as « time to collision », « inter distance (in seconds) », number of vulnerables around, etc.

. risk due to inadequacy of driving behaviour to weather conditions: in particular to atmospheric visibility (fog, rain, snow, sand, penumbra). Knowing that when visibility is low, vehicle must pay more attention (and slow down) even if this autonomous vehicle is not impacted by the decrease in visibility (if it only uses a lidar for example) because the avoidance of an accident is done at the same time by the two protagonists : if one of them (pedestrian, human driver), does not see the autonomous vehicle, then it finds itself only to be able to avoid the accident, which doubles the probabilities of a potential accident.

. other

The use of SafetyNex allows to make adaptive an artificial intelligence of autonomous driving, on the following diagram :

Adapt Closed loop AI

If you have a lean computer, then you only apply one loop between t and (t+1) as it is shown on the figure. If you have a powerful computer, you can then even simulate a big number of decisions and take the less risky one (like automaticians do with predictive control systems). Of course, SafetyNex is only ONE way to close the loop (on a crucial notion : driving risk). This figure may be extanded to other variables of contol that make sense for an autonomous vehicle. More complex adaptation rules may switch from a decision to another if risk simulation shows that finally it is less risky (ex : slow down or turn wheel ?).


CONCLUSION
SafetyNex uses the map in addition to sensors (same sensors as the driving system or parallel tracks) and does not need to accurately identify the situation but instead to estimate a risk (this is a different task). SafetyNex is a knowledge-based AI system (knowledge extracted from human experts in road safety, from 19 countries – Europe Japan USA – who validated the system over 50 million km. Total research program duration : 15 years). This technology is still being improved, of course, but it can already be integrated into autonomous vehicles and avoid a large number of accidents by its ability to make the system adaptive to unknown situations. In particular, in the case of autonomous urban vehicles (autonomous shuttles, robot taxis), the adaptation of driving behaviour to complexity of infrastructure is made possible by SafetyNex, which decodes this complexity by reading the navigation map in front of the vehicle. SafetyNex makes the autonomous vehicle anticipate more by following « rules of safety » : with SafetyNex emergency situations (that still will need emergency braking and other emergency actions) become much more rare. Autonomous vehicle acts like an experienced cautious driver. Note : if you modulate Maximum Accepted Risk, then you modulate aggressiveness of the autonomous vehicle. This might make sense not to let the autonomous vehicle trapped in complex human driving situations (where the autonomous vehicle would stopped indefinitly).

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4 disruptive AI algorithms for automotive mobility

 

. ObstaNex detects obstacles with a simple cam (a la Mobileye).
What is disruptive ?
ObstaNex runs in real time on a regular smartphone… it means it doesn’t need a big computing power to run. It can be trained/re trained on a « small database » using the methodology A.G.E.N.D.A. (Approche Générale des Etudes Neuronales pour le Développement d’Applications or General Approach of Neuronal Studies for Application Development) – important is you improve your cam !
 



. RoadNex detects drivable part of the lane borders and free space.
What is disruptive ?
RoadNex works even in the Streets of old cities as Paris, London or Roma, and it runs in real time on a regular smartphone. it means it doesn’t need a big computing power to run.
 



. VisiNex detects lacks of visibility (fog, heavy rain, snow, sand storm …).
What is disruptive ?
VisiNex is an artificial vision tool which is correlated with human perception. If there is something to see, VisiNex is able to give a score of visibility. Except Daimler, we haven’t seen such a military background-based detection elsewhere.



. SafetyNex is the only fusion Artificial Intelligence algorithm (sensor + map fusion) that estimates driving risk dynamically and in real time.
What is disruptive?
SafetyNex allows to have an explicit value of driving risk. It is a total revolution for car insurers, fleet managers, and autonomous driving engineers. These algorithms are already under integration into products for telematics /connected car, ADAS, Autonomous Vehicle.


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



* * * * *



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 at CES 2018 in Las Vegas

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #20, January 22th, 2018

 


NEXYAD at CES 2018 in Las Vegas

Headlines :

– CES 2018 Nexyad Report

– SafetyNex animated video of a use case : The Car Insurer’s Choice

– Nexyad in media

– SafetyNex can bring Artificial Intelligence into Autopilots in respect of ASIL ISO 26262

– Nexyad team wishes you an happy New Year 2018

* * * * *



CES 2018 Nexyad Report

For the second time, NEXYAD went to CES (2018) in Las Vegas (from 9th to 12th of Jan).

Paris CDG AirportArrival at Las VegasTakeoff at Paris CDG Airport                                         Arrival in Las Vegas
 
Flight to Vegas from Paris is long but it’s worth the trip for a high-tech startup like NEXYAD.

Of course, for NEXYAD, it is the year of deployment in series for our onboard software modules (Connected car/Car telematics, ADAS, Autopilots, Drive and Car sharing), and especially for SafetyNex (estimation of driving risk 20 times per second), and we had organized for a while 6 meetings per day : ADAS and Telematics OEMs that are already currently integrating SafetyNex, and of course new prospects. Very good new contacts too with qualifies prospects from the USA, Japan, Europe.
We also got some interest for RoadNex that integrates a computer vision based free space detection that works perfectly for large round abouts and intersections. We brought a real time RoadNex implementation into an android smartphone (using the smartphone cam and CPU) and we could do some real time demos that show that RoadNex works in a regular smartphone in real time (for those who care of CPU consumption) :


This year we had a barrow on the LeddarTech booth located at Central Plaza, close to Faurecia, Valeo, Google, Visteon, etc … : LeddarTech is member of the MOV’EO Groupement ADAS, and the whole Groupement was part of the « LeddarTech ecosystem » showcase area.

LeddarTech BoothGroupement ADAS DeskLeddar Ecosystem Pavillon at LVCC                               Groupement ADAS Desk

We also used some time slots to do our homeworks on Business Intelligence and visited many boothes including competitors of NEXYAD.
From this visits we could extract some heavy trends : of course, CES deals with quite EVERY subject, then we focused on mobility and what is connected to mobility issues.
First, we must notice that 2018 is THE year of Lidar :
Of course, our partner LeddarTech, but also many other solutions from Startups to Major automotive companies :

Lidar LeddarTech   LeddarTech;                                       
 
Lidar InnovizLidar Velodyne   Innoviz                                                                           Velodyne
 
Lidar QuanergyLidar Pioneer   Quanergy                                                                       Pioneer
 
Startup II-VIAEye   Startup II – VI                                                                      Startup AEye
 

Toyota
Toyota



Another heavy trend is smart cities :

Itron (Energy issues)                                                         Deloitte (Complete systems and strategy)
 
LoRa (IOT)                                                                       Ericsson (Telecom 5G)
 
Mobility was a big part of Smart Cities and Urban mobility this year in Las Vegas.
Some soft mobility solutions (electric and connected 2-wheels vehicles) :

Ujet                                                                                   Genze
 
And of course, autonomous shuttles were numerous this year :

Navya                                                                              IBM (Olli)

Toyota (ePalette)                                                            Transdev

                                         Startup ISFM (MILLA) © MILLA is an innovation from ISFM
 
As you may notice, you can find shuttles from : a pure leader player, an IT major firm, a major car manufacturer, a major operator of urban mobility, and a high-tech startup.
 
At least, another completely new trend is the autonomous flying vehicles :

Volocopter


* * * * *



SafetyNex animated video of a use case :
The Car Insurer’s Choice

SafetyNex by NEXYAD is a Driving Risk Assessment App/API for prevention (accompanied driving, young drivers, individuals, professional drivers, seniors) in every kind of 4 wheels vehicle. SafetyNex is worth for UBI (risk profiles, usage profiles) at the end of every trip; reduction of costs (lower rate of accident and in particular of personal injuries + transformation of some severe personal injuries accidents into material accidents); Detection of behaviour modifications in time and Distraction detection (mobile phone …) : under implementation.

* * * * *



Nexyad in media

Rémi Bastien interview, the new President of competitive cluster Mov’eo and also President of VEDECOM Institute and VP Automotive Prospective of Renault Group.

    For English subtitles click the button on the video

Mov’eo is a Mobility and Automotive R&D competitiveness cluster, which since 2006 has been mobilizing its energies at the service of its members to meet the objectives assigned by the State to competitiveness clusters: to foster the development of collaborative projects between members, to contribute to development in the regions of companies, in particular SMES, and to promote innovation in the sector.

Created in february 2014, VEDECOM is a French Institute for Public-Private Partnership Research and Training dedicated to individual, carbon-free and sustainable mobility.

The new MOV’EO President quote NEXYAD SafetyNex at the beginning of its intervention…

* * * * *



SafetyNex can bring Artificial Intelligence into Autopilots
in respect of ASIL ISO 26262

SafetyNex integration in the ASIL 26262.

SafetyNex Asil 26262
© NEXYAD 2017

Complex Automation MUST be ASIL ISO 26262.
Artificial Intelligence CANNOT BE ASIL ISO 26262 (by definition) and acts only on parameters of Complex Automation doing ++/– – variations, never skipping « reflexes actions » (emergency braking, etc), but allowing anticipation speed adaptation to reduce frequency of emergency situations (and then give more margin to reflexes actions and also improve comfort). Maximum acceptable Driving Risk can be changed depending on driving situation in order to set « aggressivity level» of HAV.

* * * * *



Nexyad team wishes you an happy New Year 2018

Greetings 2018

Nexyad at CES 2018 January 8-12
in Las Vegas

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #19, November 29th, 2017

 


Nexyad at CES 2018 January 8-12 – Las Vegas

Headlines :

– Come to meet Nexyad at CES 2018 in Las Vegas – January 8-12

– NEXYAD giving the award of the best Insurtech startup «prix coup de cœur des assureurs 2017»,
organized by Cercle LAB (Laboratoire Banque Assurance) at Allianz Tower in Paris La Défense

– Nexyad invited speaker at UNESCO Conference on Artificial Intelligence : use case of autonomous vehicle

– SafetyNex driving risk assessment (20 times per second while driving): anticipation of danger

– INTEMPORA and NEXYAD, members of MOVEO Groupement ADAS interviewed on BFM Business (Major French TV)

– Bitumen Free Space Detection by Nexyad RoadNex module in real time on a Smartphone

– Nexyad on Groupement ADAS booth at Equip’Auto 2017

– Validation of ADAS Nexyad Database with ground reality

– Individual driving risk assessment and car insurance : what applications ? what business models ?

– SafetyNex can bring Artificial Intelligence into Autopilots in respect of ASIL ISO 26262

– Welcome to YOGOKO, new member of « MOV’EO » Groupement ADAS cluster

* * * * *



Come to meet Nexyad at CES 2018 in Las Vegas (Jan 8-12)

CES 2018

Nexyad invite you to visit us at the Leddar Ecosystem Pavillion at East LVCC – Central Plaza (booth CP-23)
If you want to reserve a meeting slot, please contact us at nexyadCES2018@nexyad.net

CES 2018 East LVCC - Central Plaza Map

* * * * *



NEXYAD giving the award of the best Insurtech startup
« prix coup de cœur des assureurs 2017»,
organized by Cercle LAB (Laboratoire Banque Assurance)
at Allianz Tower in Paris La Défense

Nexyad CEO at Cercle Lab

Gerard Yahiaoui at Cercle Lab

Last year Nexyad won the special prize « Coup de Cœur » by french insurers of Cercle Lab with SafetyNex the driving risk assessment App in real time. For this, Gerard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad handed the 2017 new prize to the winner KAP-Code represented by Adel Mebarki. Kap-Code is dedicated to improve the care of chronic diseases and the detection of drug safety signals on social networks thruth 3 solutions : helping patients and health advisors with connected objects, Digital Health that allows profesionals to provide care for their patients and harnessing Big Data for science.

Adel Mebarki of Kap-Code
Adel Mebarki, head of innovation of Kap-Code


* * * * *



Nexyad invited speaker at UNESCO Conference on
Artificial Intelligence : use case of autonomous vehicle

Nexyad CEO Gérard Yahiaoui A.I. expert was invited to speak (invited paper) in a conference in Paris on Artificial Intelligence (JNI/IESF, Under the patronage of UNESCO, 2017 Oc 19). He talked about Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Vehicle : « Intelligence Artificielle pour le Véhicule Autonome, et exemple de réalisation : SafetyNex ». Very interesting papers during this day showing a broad range of AI applications (automotive, fashion, HR management, Legal, …). More than 400 people in the audience.

Unesco AI Congress

Gerard Yahiaoui explaning difference between A.I. and complex automation for autonomous driving


* * * * *



SafetyNex driving risk assessment
(20 times per second while driving): anticipation of danger

SafetyNex estimates driving risk 20 times per second, during driving (real time).
On the following figure, you can see risk rising when approaching a stop sign with an inappropriate car speed :

Example of driving 1
Speed of the car is quite high before the STOP sign and Risk goes to the maximum with a vocal alarm to the driver which have time to slow down or brake to stop.

This estimation is computed INSIDE the local device (inside the car). Current implementation is on smartphones (IOS and Android), then computing of risk is completely done INSIDE the smartphone : that makes SafetyNex compliant with all driver’s privacy regulations and laws in Europe.

Click to read the entire article

See here 3 more use cases

* * * * *



INTEMPORA and NEXYAD, members of MOVEO Groupement ADAS on BFM Business (Major French TV)

1st Nov 2017, the Tech & Co tv show on the subject : will self-driving car come sooner than expected ?
Nicolas du Lac & Gerard Yahiaoui

Nicolas du Lac & Gerard Yahiaoui

Nicolas du LAC, INTEMPORA, and Gerard YAHIAOUI, NEXYAD, presented their innovations and explained how the MOVEO Groupement ADAS helps to be stronger for their innovative startups.
Nicolas talked about RT-MAPS that is a software tool for R&D, making easy the task of developing applications with multiple sensors (cameras, lidar, radar, …) that of course are not synchronized and that must collaborate through algorithms of sensor fusion in order to get good objects detection and recognition.
Gerard talked about SafetyNex that is an onboard real time module that is the only module in the world that can estimate driving risk 20 times per second. Self-driving car can then know the risk it takes with and it simplifies the development of autopilot (example : « if risk too high then slow down »).


* * * * *



Bitumen Free Space Detection
by Nexyad RoadNex on Smartphone

RoadNex detects free space on road with negative detection of obstacles as vehicle on the video below.



* * * * *



Nexyad present with Groupement ADAS at Equip’Auto 2017

Equip'Auto_Groupement ADAS

Philippe Orvain, CEO of Nomadic Solutions

Nexyad was present with Groupement ADAS at Equip’Auto Congress in Paris. Groupement ADAS is a SME’s cluster : 10 companies with expertise in the field of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, Connected car and Autonomous vehicle. Philippe Orvain CEO of Nomadic Solutions and competitiveness cluster MOV’EO Vice President has responsed to journalist Laurent Meillaud on Congress TV channel.

Watch Philippe Orvain interview on the congress channel with SafetyNex video demo :



* * * * *



Validation of ADAS Nexyad Database with ground reality

Etiquetage

Free space ground reality (for RoadNex) and obstacles ground reality (for ObstaNex)



The NEXYAD company is currently developing the construction of a database for the validation of systems of driver assistance and driving delegation, (ADAS and Autonomous car) using the AGENDA methodology published in the 1990s by Gérard Yahiaoui in the field of machine learning and artificial neural networks applications. Here is an example of ground reality : ground reality is needed in order to automate performance / KPIs measurement when you modify the perception system.(methodology initially intended to handle, among other things, the construction of learning databases and tests for the implementation of neural networks).

This database has two essential characteristics:

1) Real-life situations
     Indeed, the AGENDA methodology recommends describing the possible variations of signals and input images as factors of variability and their crosses.
     Example, for obstacle detection:
          . weather (dry weather, sunny weather, rain, fog)          . overall brightness (low, medium, high)
          . vehicle speed (low, moderate, high)
          . type of road (motorway, road with marking, road without marking, …)
          . coating (bitumen 1, bitumen 2, …, pavers)
          . day / night (car headlights and infrastructure lighting)
          . season (spring, summer, autumn, winter)
          . etc.

NEXYAD’s ambition is to propagate its methodological expertise and to enable everyone to evaluate the performance of vision systems for ADAS, be they systems developed by NEXYAD or others.

Click to read the entire article

References
« Methodology for ADAS Validation: The Potential Contribution of Other Scientific Fields Which Have Already Answered the Same Questions », Gérard Yahiaoui, Pierre Da Silva Dias, CESA congress Dec 2014, Paris, Proc. Springer Verlag

« Methods and tools for ADAS validation », Gérard Yahiaoui, Nicolas du Lac, Safetyweek congress, May 2015, Aschaffenburg

* * * * *



Individual driving risk assessment and car insurance :
what applications ? what business models ?

As many people know now, NEXYAD has been developing the first real time driving risk assessment system called SafetyNex.

SafetyNex is currently available in B2B :
          . as a smartphone App (Android and IOS)
          . as a real time driving risk assessment API that OEMs and Insurers may integrate into their own smartphone App or into their own telematics or ADAS device (Android, iOS, Linux, Windows).

This real time driving risk assessment module has been validated on 50 million km, and applies proven methods for risk assessment, using, for instance, the Frank E. BIRD « safety triangle » concept, and running in real time a knowledge-based system AI that has been built by NEXYAD since 2001. It took 15 years to extract thousands of road safety knowledge atoms from experts of 19 countries. Some of this knowledge is directly operational, some is deep knowledge on detection theory (a mix of Information Theory and Knowledge on Human Brain abilities). And of course, SafetyNex also applies fundamental knowledge on mechanics (braking abilities, …) including complex issues such as grip for example.

Click to read the entire article


* * * * *



SafetyNex can bring Artificial Intelligence into Autopilots
in respect of ASIL ISO 26262



SafetyNex integration in the ASIL 26262.
SafetyNex Asil 26262
© NEXYAD 2017

Complex Automation MUST be ASIL ISO 26262.
Artificial Intelligence CANNOT BE ASIL ISO 26262 (by definition) and acts only on parameters of Complex Automation doing ++/– – variations, never skipping « reflexes actions » (emergency braking, etc), but allowing anticipation speed adaptation to reduce frequency of emergency situations (and then give more margin to reflexes actions and also improve comfort). Maximum acceptable Driving Risk can be changed depending on driving situation in order to set « aggressivity level» of HAV.

* * * * *



Welcome to YOGOKO, new member of « MOV’EO » Groupement ADAS cluster

In november, cluster Groupement ADAS, from Mobility and Automotive R&D competitiveness national cluster Mov’eo, welcomed YOGOKO as new member. It makes eleven players like a football team, and we hope to score goals in the Automotive market competition.

Yogoko

YoGoKo is a startup company founded in 2014 by employees from three research institutes : Mines ParisTech, Telecom Bretagne and Inria. YoGoKo makes use of software developed in teams specialized in Internet technologies (RSM at Telecom Bretagne) and robotics (CAOR at Mines ParisTech and RITS at Inria). These research teams have been working together since 2006 on innovative communication solutions applied to Intelligent Transportation Systems. They contributed to several collaborative R&D projects related to ITS (CVIS, ITSSv6, GeoNet, DriveC2X, SCORE@F, …).

In 2012, these laboratories engaged together into the development of a common demonstration platform which comprises connected vehicles (fleet of conventional vehicles from Mines ParisTech and fleet of autonomous vehicles from Inria), roadside equipments and cloud-based services.

YoGoKo demonstration platform was finally revealed on Feb. 11 th 2014 during the Mobilité 2.0 event organized by the French Ministry of Transport. This successful demonstation and the extremely warmfull feedack gained at this occasion triggered the launch of YoGoKo as a company.

Thierry Ernst
Thierry Ernst, CEO of Yogoko


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

* * * * *



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

* * * * *



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

* * * * *



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

* * * * *



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.

* * * * *



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

* * * * *



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,…

ADAS, Driverless and Connected Car Symposiums with Nexyad

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #17, July 10th, 2017

 


ADAS, Driverless and Connected Car Symposiums with Nexyad

Headlines :

– Nexyad and Groupement ADAS at Automotive Symposium

– New Papers of Nexyad on advantages of SafetyNex

– Challenge Open Innovation Renault

– Nexyad at Imagine Mobility Forum 2017

– Nexyad presenting the driving risk solution SafetyNex to Eurapco

– Conference at « Cercle LAB » Paris

– HERE invited NEXYAD to Le Mans

– Meeting HappYnnov at Chamber of Commerce Versailles-Yvelines

– Nexyad booth to la fête du THD at Acome in Mortain (Normandy)

– NEXYAD in Media

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Nexyad and Groupement ADAS at Automotive Symposium

Symposium 2017 in Stuttgart

June 20, 21 and 22th 2017 saw the big Automotive Symposium in Stuttgart, land of Daimler, Porsche, Robert Bosch GmbH.
We present our modules based on Artifical Vision and A.I. for ADAS, Connected Cars and Driverless.
This year Groupement ADAS is represented by Intempora, New Imaging Technologies, Sherpa Engineering and Nexyad.

Nexyad booth at Autonomous Vehicle Symposium
Nexyad booth at Hall 2C

This year, we made a focus on three big engineering companies in Europe. No surprise two are germans and one is Austrian. Those companies are worldwide with offices and plants in other continents. They work for car manufacturers and suppliers.

FEV is an internationally recognised development service provider for drive and vehicle technologies, and an innovative supplier of cutting-edge software and testing solutions. Thanks to the synergy of these complementary activities, FEV is the perfect partner for providing test fields, measuring equipment and software solutions that fit with the needs of the automobile market. As a powertrain development specialist, it helps to make the development process more efficient and to transfer significant process steps from the road to the test rig and to the desktop, thanks to its leading-edge methodologies and tools. FEV’s competencies also include powertrain electronic control systems and hydro-electric engine concepts that address future emission and fuel economy standards.

Employing over 6500 members of staff, IAV is one of the world’s leading providers of engineering services to the automotive industry. The company has been developing innovative concepts and technologies for future vehicles for more than 30 years. Core competencies include production-ready solutions in all fields of electronics, powertrain and vehicle development. Clients include all of the world’s premier automobile manufacturers and suppliers. In addition to development centres in Berlin, Gifhorn and Chemnitz/Stollberg, IAV operates from other locations in Germany, Europe and Asia, as well as in North and South America.

AVL is the world’s largest independent company developing IC engine powertrains along with the associated instrumentation and test systems. It develops and improves all kinds of powertrain systems, including alternative and hybrid systems, and is an effective partner to the engine and automotive industry. In addition, AVL develops and markets all simulation methods and easy-to-use software tools necessary for development work. The company’s unique power derives from the systematic netting of single simulation results to integrated, multidimensional simulation platforms on the basis of its deep engineering expertise. Its Engine Instrumentation and Tests Systems business area produces all instruments and systems required for engine and vehicle testing.

Texting Expo Stuttgart 2017

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New Papers from Nexyad on advantages of SafetyNex
 

ESTIMATION OF DRIVER’S EXPERTISE, OF RISK TAKEN CONSCIOUSLY BY THE DRIVER,
AND OF THE LACK OF ANTICIPATION AND MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE ROAD
By NEXYAD

Lire la version Française

I – INTRODUCTION
NEXYAD has been developing the smartphonte application SafetyNex which estimates the risk of driving in real time [1]. SafetyNex is both a driver assistance system (ADAS), which alerts the driver (vocal alert) before danger (When the risk increases too much), and a telematics system that records risk profiles and usage profiles.
Warning before the danger gives the driver time to slow down and avoid the accident. Road Safety studies show that SafetyNex can reduce the number of accidents by 20% [2]. This simple functionality is of interest of car insurers, fleet managers, and to car manufacturers.
SafetyNex also rewards the driver with cups (gold, silver, bronze) that can be transformed into money incentive (vouchers, etc.) so that the safe drivers stil have a daily interest to go on using SafetyNex. Indeed, tools that are not used over a period of time rarely have a real effect on the accidentology. SafetyNex is therefore distinguished from other products, on the one hand by its real time and driving assistance, but also for its « reward » side. SafetyNex informs the driver In real time when the risk exceeds a threshold of danger, than one can say that SafetyNex gives the risk in the hands of the driver first. The driver is in control of his/her risk.
Then SafetyNex distinguishes from all telematics products that ultimately provide information to the insurer or fleet manager, but not to the driver who feels rightly spied on.
Risk and usage profiles [3] are forwarded to managers who have an interest in minimizing risk and the number of accidents. This paper presents a simple way to interpret the risk profiles constructed by SafetyNex.

Read the entire paper here
 

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Paper for French Car Insurers
 
DEPLOIEMENT DE SafetyNex DANS LE CADRE DE L’OBLIGATION DE DEPENSE
EN ACTIONS DE PREVENTION ROUTIERE CHEZ LES ASSUREURS AUTOMOBILE
Par NEXYAD

 
I – CONTEXTE

Depuis 1996, les assureurs français se sont engagés auprès de l’Etat à mener des actions de prévention routière. Ils doivent consacrer ainsi chaque année à ce type d’action de prévention 0,5% du montant des cotisations de responsabilité civile automobile perçues.
Traditionnellement, les actions menées sont des opérations de sensibilisation dans les écoles, conseils pratiques en vidéo, pistes de conduite avec moniteur, simulateurs de conduite, voiture tonneau, etc… Ces actions doivent avoir un effet à long terme sur la réduction du nombre d’accidents de la route. Récemment, les applications smartphone sont aussi utilisées, toujours en opération de sensibilisation.
C’est dans le cadre de cette entrée du numérique, dans l’action obligatoire de prévention, que SafetyNex représente une avancée très intéressante pour les assureurs automobile. En effet, SafetyNex évite les dangers liés à une vitesse inadaptée aux difficultés de l’infrastructure, ce qui correspond à 75% des accidents de la route. SafetyNex est actuellement le seul système permettant de prévenir en temps réel et de façon prédictive le conducteur afin qu’il ralentisse pour éviter l’accident. SafetyNex répond ainsi aux critères des actions de prévention à mettre en œuvre, si bien qu’il est possible pour un assureur de déployer massivement SafetyNex sans aucune dépense supplémentaire. C’est une opportunité unique de réaliser une action de prévention efficace, tout en préparant la transition digitale du métier d’assurance.

Lire l’article en entier

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Challenge Open Innovation Renault

On June 13th, RENAULT entrusted the MOV’EO competitiveness cluster with the organization of a new Open Innovation Challenge on the theme « Connectivity and services ».
Through this initiative, RENAULT wishes to detect new proposals from SMEs and innovative startups on these themes, in order to develop collaborations on the most relevant projects.
Among the selected startups were Nexyad that presented SafetyNex, and the « Groupement ADAS » cluster of 10 companies working in the field of ADAS and autonomous vehicle.

Challenge Open Innovation Renault

Gérard Yahiaoui, CEO Nexyad – Nicolas Dulac for « Groupement ADAS »
 

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Nexyad at Imagine Mobility Forum 2017

The 1st of june, Nexyad and Groupement ADAS shared a booth at Imagine Mobility Forum 2017. This event organized by the competitivity cluster MOV’EO is located in the Engineer school ESTACA at Montigny le Bretonneux.

Imagine Mobility Forum 2017
Interview of Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO

* * * * *

Nexyad presenting the driving risk solution SafetyNex
to Eurapco

The 31th of May, Nexyad has presented SafetyNex to Eurapco (European Mutual Insurance Companies).
Gérard Yahiaoui, CEO of Nexyad
Gérard Yahiaoui
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Conference at « Cercle LAB » Paris

Several times a year, the « Cercle LAB » organizes conferences giving the opportunity for Startups to present innovative products or services to insurers. Last April 24th, thema was Internet Of Things or with others words Connected Objects as SafetyNex by Nexyad.

SafetyNex is a real time driving risk assessment smartphone App that warns (vocal alert) the driver before danger, letting time to slow down and avoid accident, and that records risk profiles and usage profiles on the NEXYAD cloud.
Road Safety studies show that SafetyNex can reduce by 20% accident rate (ref)
This smartphone App is disruptive, as it lets insurance companies and fleet management teams decrease the number of accident before they try any new digital pricing or strategy.
Of course, UBI is easy with SafetyNex because :
. usage is completely described
. risk profiles give : risk that the driver agrees to take, extertise level of the driver, lacks of anticipation of the driver
This conference at Cercle LAB (Laboratoire Assurance Banque) in Paris was very interesting and led to questions and new contacts with insurance companies (SafetyNex is under deployment and testing worldwide).

Gerard Yahiaoui
Gérard Yahiaoui presenting SafetyNex

* * * * *

HERE invited NEXYAD to Le Mans

HERE the famous digital Map drovider is sponsor of Alpine Racing Team. As costumer and Partner of HERE, Nexyad has been invited to see the essaies. HERE provides maps for SafetyNex. Many Thanks to Jacques-Etienne Grandjean and Patrick Jean for the spectacular show!

Le Mans 24H 2017
Le Mans 24H Alpine run at night

Gérard Yahiaoui and Pierre Da Silva Dias
Heads of Nexyad: Gérard Yahiaoui and Pierre Da Silva Dias

* * * * *

Meeting HappYnnov at Chamber of Commerce
Versailles-Yvelines

The International Chamber of Commerce Versailles-Yvelines, via its community of innovation Open’Ynnov, with its partners – engineers school Estaca, competitiveness cluster Mov’eo, Institute Vedecom, the Ravi, the car manufacturer Renault et Engie – proposed june 7th a special « Mobilities of the future » meeting.HappYnnov

After the introduction of Gérard Bachelier – President of the CCI, Stéphane Masson – development manager of the Estaca presented the book « Mobility of the Future ». A round table moderated by Stéphane Parpinelli brought together Philippe Orvain – Vice President of Mov’eo for the IDF; Luc Marbach – Managing Director of Vedecom and Ghislain Delabie Mobility Connector for OuiShare. Dominique Levent, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Mobility for Renault, presented the latest advances in the manufacturer’s innovation strategy, before Lucie Ruchon, Assistant to the Delegate Director of Ile-de-France of Engie, explains the axes of innovation of the energy group.

Three Startups of the Yvelines presented their product :
. SafetyNex, the road safety App for Nexyad
. Electrical scooters for Pink Mobility
. A solution of shared mobility by Ecov

HappYnnovPresentation of SafetyNex at HappYnnov
HappYnnov Round Table and presentation by Nexyad of SafetyNex App

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Nexyad booth to la fête du THD at Acome in Mortain (Normandy)

The « Fête du Très Haut Débit » or (Very High Speed Festival), organized by Acome on its French industrial site in Normandy in partnership with Mov’eo the competitiveness cluster in mobility and automotive R & D, is a UNIQUE event in France that brings together actors Deploying Ultra Broadband and facilitating the sharing of experiences both for telecom infrastructure networks and for building wiring, communicating vehicles and intelligent transport systems.
The 2017 edition (the 9th) opened up to the automotive industry in view of the obvious synergies that are developing with the telecom industry.
It is in this capacity that Acome invited Nexyad Automotive & Transportation and its partner Nomadic Solutions of the Groupement ADAS to attend the event and present their products.

Fête du THD chez ACOME à Mortain
Nexyad through these products such as the embedded and connected software SafetyNex, , helps to make the road safer for its users and others.
Acome is a manufacturer of cables, fiber optics and synthetic tubes. Specialist and market leader in networks. It is the leading European manufacturer of environmentally friendly and halogen-free high-tech automotive wires and cables approved by European manufacturers and its markets are expected to continue to grow rapidly with the advent of the connected vehicle.

Acome
 

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NEXYAD for FRANCE INFO

Before Imagine Mobility Forum 2017 Nexyad CEO, Gérard Yahiaoui, was interviewed by Gérard Feldzer for the national radio network France Info.

Gérard Yahiaoui
Gérard Feldzer and Gérard Yahiaoui

Achieving of real time risk assessment in car telematics with Safetynex

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #16, April 11th, 2017

 


Achieving of real time risk assessment in car telematics with Safetynex



Headlines :

– New Rating of Nexyad by Early Metrics

– BIKER ANGEL Project selected for Government funding (FUI23)

– Conference on Machine Learning organized by SNCF

– Nexyad Paper at 1er European Conference on Connected and Automated Driving

– Meeting Mov’eo, Systematic and Cap Digital

– Nexyad has visited 6th « les Rencontres Flotauto »

– Nexyad in Media

– SafetyNex available on stores for testers (Apple and Google)

– Groupement ADAS welcomed New Member NIT New Imaging Technologies

– Articifial Vision Products of Nexyad

* * * * *

New Rating of Nexyad by Early Metrics

NEXYAD has just been rated again by the rating agency Early Metrics and got the score of 81/100 which puts us in the top 2% of companies rated by Early Metrics. This rating is primarily for investors.

Early Metrics is an European rating agency of startups and SMEs.

Nexyad 5 stars rating by Early Metrics


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BIKER ANGEL Project selected for Government funding (FUI23)

The FUI23 French collaborative research program published the list of projects that are approved : The project BIKER ANGEL (adaptation of the real time driving risk assessment module SafetyNex to motorbikes) is selected !
Biker Angel Project led by NEXYAD was already labelised by Competitiviness Cluster FINANCE INNOVATION.

Le programme de recherche collaborative FUI23 (Fond Unifié Interministérielle) a publié la liste des projets approuvés : BIKER ANGEL est sélectionné (adaptation du logiciel de mesure du risque en conduite temps réel SafetyNex pour la moto).
Le projet BIKER ANGEL porté par NEXYAD avait déjà été labelisé par le Pôle de Compétitivité FINANCE INNOVATION.

Read HERE

Biker Angel


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Conference on Machine Learning organized by SNCF

Very interesting conference on Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
SNCF RESEAUX welcomed a large audience last tuesday 28th march in Saint Denis.

French experts of A.I. field were introduced by Claude Solard SNCF réseau Chief Operating Officer and Jean-Jacques Thomas Director of Innovation.
Christophe Garcia, Full professor at INSA Lyon, deputy director of the LIRIS laboratory, gave an introduction to Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence and answered to the audience’s questions.
Then, Gérard Yahiaoui, CEO of Nexyad, Vice President of the MOV’EO Cluster, explained the Criteria for use and Methodology for implementation: the methodology AGENDA.

SNCF Conference Gerard Yahiaoui
Gérard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad


From CEA List, Jean-Marc Philippe presented « from the Neural Network Tools to the Optimized System ». The conference continued with a roundtable about the SNCF Cafeine Project or how to go from the industrial need to the applied solutions in SNCF Réseau; animated by Alain Rivero, SNCF Réseau Director of Cafeine Project; Xavier Roy, Head of Innovation of ITNovem; Michel Paindavoine, co-founder of Global Sensing Technologies and professor at University of Bourgogne; and Jean-Jacques Thomas Director of innovation of SNCF Réseau.

The CAFEINE Project proposes to use the Artificial Neural Networks to detect the defects of pantographs on moving trains, and also to read the number of each wagons, oars and containers.

Another roundtable was organized about Startups and A.I. with Kunthirvy Collin-Dy, Head of relationships with Startups of SNCF Réseau Robot Lab; and Yannick Gérard, Head of Project of DAVI.
Patrick Bastard, Director of Driving Assistance Systems engineering of Renault, ended the conference with a presentation on an opening to other fields of application : vehicles electrification, ADAS and autonomous driving.

Conference SNCF 3 speakers
From the left : Jean-Marc Philippe, Patrick Bastard et Christophe Garcia


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Nexyad Paper at 1er European Conference on Connected and Automated Driving

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Intelligent Connected Car : The Validation Issue.
A paper by Brahim Yahiaoui, Pierre Da Silva Dias and Gérard Yahiaoui

First European Conference on Connected and Automated Driving
3-4 april 2017 – European Commission, Charlemagne Building, Brussels

– How to concile high complexity of A.I. with ASIL standard that needs a system to be fully predictable ?
– How to make sure that machine learning based behaviour will be adapted to new cases ?
– A Conception AND Validation methodology : « AGENDA »


* * * * *

Meeting Mov’eo, Systematic and Cap Digital

A networking event took place at Cap Digital in Paris, the 16th of march. In the presence of Christophe SIRUGUE, Secretary of State for the Digital and Innovation Industry, the goal of this meeting was to bring together SMEs or startups offering innovative technologies or services for the connected vehicle.

Jean-Luc Moullet, Director of the competitiveness program, industrial and transport , Investment advisory services for the government, introduced the support mechanisms available under the Investments Program of the Future. Jean-Luc BROSSARD, R&D Director of PFA spoke about the Dynamics of innovation and needs of the automotive sector and mobilities. Anne Laliron, Director of Business Lab for PSA, gave a car manufacturer vision for the future. Gérard Yahiaoui, CEO of Nexyad and vice-president of Mov’eo, Michaël Fernandez, CEO of Drust, and Thierry Ernst, CEO of YoGoKo, advocated view for SME’s and Startups. Then Marc Charlet, Managing Director of MOV’EO, Patrick Cocquet, General Delegate of Cap Digital Hub, and François Cuny, General Delegate of Systematic Hub, discussed about Hub contributions. Christophe Sigure concluded this information-sharing.

Meeting at Cap Digital
Thierry Ernst on the left with the mic, Michaël Fernandez and Gérard Yahiaoui on the right

* * * * *

Nexyad has visited 6th « les Rencontres Flotauto »

On Thursday, March 9, the « Rencontres Flotauto » or Professional fleet meeting were held in Paris.

This important event brings together all players of the fleet sector.
Suppliers of telematic equipment such as Nomadic Solutions, a French eco-driving specialist. Pure fleet management as Fleetmatics a French SME recently acquired by the American giant Verizon . New mobility startups such as OpenFleet which offers car sharing solutions for professionals. Almost all the European and Japonese car manufacturers were also represented by their Fleet subsidiary such as Volkswagen Group Fleet Solution.

Flotauto Fleetmatics
Fleetmatics booth


https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Flotauto-Nomadic-Solutions-CarteCarburant.jpg
Nomadic Solutions on the right and Carte Carburant Leclerc on the left


* * * * *

Nexyad in Media

Logo Le Parisien

Saint Germain en Laye : This App promises to Secure your Driving, by Jeremy Denoyer.

« C’est une application dont certains conducteurs ne pourraient plus se passer. SafetyNex, actuellement en phase de test auprès de 3500 utilisateurs, permet de déclencher des alertes en fonction de la dangerosité des aménagements fixes (croisements, ronds-points, virages) et des excès de vitesse. Développée par la société Nexyad, basée à St Germain en Laye, cette application devrait être disponible sur les plates-formes de téléchargement mobile d’ici deux mois. »

Read the entire news / Lire l’article ici

SafetyNex Onboard
SafetyNex App Onboard on smartphone


* * * * *

SafetyNex available on Stores for Testers
(Apple and Google)

To test SafetyNex in your car, send your iTunes email if you use iOS smartphone or your Google account email if your smartphone is an Android one, to this adress obenel@nexyad.net

Today SafetyNex works on four continents :
– Europe : Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Nederland, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom
– North America : Mexico, United States
– South America : Chile
– South Asia : India, Singapore
We’ll integer new countries as soon as possible and on demand.

NOTICE : SafetyNex is now also available for integration in any Smartphone App and Electronic Devices through an API.


Click to enlarge


* * * * *

Groupement ADAS welcomed New Member NIT
New Imaging Technologies

Groupement ADAS is a Team of innovative companies (cluster) with over 20 years experience in the field of technologies used in assistance driver systems (design, implementation and integration of ADAS in vehicles for safety features, driver assistance, partial delegation to the autonomous vehicle).
Last month, a new member joined the cluster to make ten companies !

NIT logo

New Imaging technologies (NIT) offers CMOS and InGaAs imaging sensors and cameras operating over an extraordinary dynamic range of more than 140dB. Our sensors are particularly useful for machine vision, automobile and autonomous driving, biometrics, security and surveillance. NIT delivers from large volume production down to small numbers and custom products. Our facility is fully ISO9001 accredited.

More about NIT

The other members are :
Adaccess
CAR&D
GlobalSensing Technologies
Intempora
LeddarTech
Nexyad
Nomadic Solutions
Sherpa Engineering
Transpolis

To discover Groupement ADAS


* * * * *

Artificial Vision Products of Nexyad

– RoadNex is a functional bloc (software) for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) : detection of the road shape/contours and lane in front of the vehicle.

– ObstaNex is a functional bloc (software) for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems).
ObstaNex detects obstacles (a car, a pedestrian). Definition of an obstacle: object that is not plane
(or that is « enough » vertical), and/or that has a movement that is not due to the movement of the camera.

– Visinex Onboard is a functional bloc (software) for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems).
VisiNex Onboard measures the visibility on a region of interest (visual quality score and distance of detection).



2017 Year of mass deployment for Nexyad Products

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #15, February 13th, 2017

 


2017 Year of mass deployment for Nexyad Products

After three years of Nexyad products development, 2017 will see the start of mass deployment of its products. An Automotive EOM has integrated RoadNex & ObstaNex for road detection and obstacles detection on special vehicles and an Infrastructure EOM has integrated Visinex for visibility measurement on highways. Beside, we’ll soon announce our first customers for SafetyNex.

Headlines :

– Nexyad Review after the CES 2017 in Las Vegas

– Example of SafetyNex Risk Profiles Data

– SafetyNex App Risk Profiles Analysis

– Nexyad invited to the 4th « Les rencontres du Fleet Management »

– NEXYAD new award: Champion SME (PME championne) of the French cluster MOV’EO

– Interview of Mov’eo and Nexyad by AutoK7

– New Update for Nexyad Modules RoadNex (Road detection) & ObstaNex (Obstacles Detection)

* * * * *

Nexyad Review after the CES 2017 in Las Vegas

Thanks to Business France, the DGE « Direction Générale des Entreprises » and « les Pôles de Compétitivité » (competitivity cluster) for having organised this CES mission. The « connected and autonomous vehicles » Mission brought together the four french pôles de compétitivité automobiles : LUTB, MOV’EO (Thanks too for the sponsoring), ID4CAR and cluster Pôle Véhicule du Futur; the Mission goal was to organise meetings and visits of big companies present at the CES and some top french Automotive SME’s in Las Vegas.

Nexyad was part of the Mission and took the opportunity to meet its partners, customers and future customers in Las Vegas. The show is bigger than everybody has told us before. There is thousands of boothes in several places in Las Vegas. It is impossible to see everything in four days long. This year, French Tech was well represented in the Venetian Hotel and at the Convention Center near the Westgate Hotel. Thursday January 5th, Nexyad was invited to a networking reception sponsored by Orange with the presence of Mr Stéphane Richard, chairman and CEO of Orange. The event took place at the Air Bar on the top of the Strastosphere Tower in Las Vegas.

Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas.


Special interests seen about ADAS & Autonomous Driving at CES in Las Vegas

Abeeway already present at CES 2015 presented this year its new solution for autonomous geolocalisation with great duration (one year).

Giant Alphabet announced process of finalizing its autonomous car business through spin-off Waymo. Is Google will be car manufacturers or just embedded technology platforms and in the cloud technology for manufacturers ?

The GENIVI industrial alliance provides an open source system initiative for automotive manufacturers and their suppliers in connected car field. It collaborates with the Open Connectivity Foundation for connectivity between vehicles and smart homes. The alliance includes manufacturers such as PSA60, Renault Nissan, BMW and Daimler.

HERE Indoor Positioning brings precision to the industrial IoT.

Here at CES 2017
HERE Indoor Positionning demo

The NEXYAD team present in Las Vegas was invited by officials on the HERE booth at Convention Center Central Plazza.
When we entered the booth, we saw a table with mini robotic forklifts in a warehouse, all built with real technology. The robots moved around a simulated environment picking up and delivering containers based on high-accuracy positioning, bringing the real-world applications to life.
It was one of the numerous technologies presented by HERE at CES this year.
More about HERE here


LeddarTech has showcased three innovative 2D and 3D high-resolution LIDAR « solid state » solutions for autonomous driving applications based on next-generation LeddarCore ICs and developed with the collaboration of leading-edge suppliers and partners from the newly-established Leddar Ecosystem.
Nexyad hat a « summit » meeting with Leddartech (top of the Westgate Hotel on the booth of the canadian company). Both companies spoke about various future projects within the Groupement ADAS.
LeddarTech in Las Vegas

Gérard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad and Pier-Olivier Hamel Product leader at Leddartech.


Quanergy Systems rised $90m in 2016 to built Autonomous cars sensors with US Partner Sensata Technologies.

REVA2 participated for the first time to CES and present a vehicle that is both autonomous and traditional. It is in fact a complete automotive system that ambition to create the French startup.




robotTUNER (An automated vehicle that looks like the french one NAVYA).

Twinswheel has presented its autonomous droid for parcel delivery services in urban area.


New ADAS demos by VALEO

Valeo onboard demos area at Golden Lot was completely crowed during the four days of the Convention. But we were lucky happy few to test Valeo XtraVue and Valeo 360AEB Nearshield.

Valeo XtraVue is a system based on a set of connected cameras that eliminates visual obstacles. It takes two vehicles equipped with the system. The driver of the vehicle B, which follows the vehicle A, can see on its control screen what happens in front of the vehicle A by seeing through it.

Valeo at CES 2017
VALEO XtraVue demo car

Valeo 360AEB Nearshield (Autonomous Emergency Braking) is an innovative technology to protect nearby pedestrians when vehicles perform low-speed maneuvers. With a full 360 degrees system of cameras and ultrasonic sensors, this ADAS helps the driver to avoid accident due to blind spots around large vehicles such as SUV and pick-up trucks.
Read more about Valeo at CES


Verizon (fixed and mobile telecom) was updating 2.0 of its Go90 video streaming application for iOS and Android which now supports Apple TV and Google Chromecast. It will allow the sharing of video links with other users via social networks. Verizon Digital Media acquired Volicon, which manages video distribution back-ends and analytics with its Media Intelligence Platform. Another acquisition is Fleetmatics for $ 2.4B. It is a fleet tracking service via GPS, a deal to get into the automotive sector.
The sugar on the top was Yahoo !, acquired for only $ 4.8B. the top is its billion unique monthly users including 60% on mobiles, and its advertising network. This complements the acquisition of AOL, Yahoo being intended to integrate it.


Visteon Demonstrates Augmented Reality Driving Experience and Latest Head-Up Display Technology at CES® 2017.

Complementing the vehicle’s HUD, embedded front-view and driver monitoring cameras trigger “smart alerts” in the form of lights and sounds when the driver is not paying attention to the road, if the vehicle strays from its lane, or if the vehicle is at risk of potentially hitting an object. For example, when a pedestrian or bicycle is present on the side of the road, an LED light projects onto the windshield within a 90-degree angle of the driver’s line of sight, giving a visual alert without the driver needing to turn his or her head.

Read more about Visteon here

VISTEON at CES 2017
Two onboard cameras look at the front of the car (a video for the demo),
detect obstacles and alerts the driver via a HUD.

* * * * *

Example of SafetyNex Risk Profiles Data

See below an example of Risk Profile Data Nexyad is able to give to their customers. SafetyNex provides Eco Driving profiles data, and usages profiles (Kms, date, hours, kind of roads, etc…) all of these can be crossed with Risk Profiles.

SafetyNex Risk Profile

Look at the entire SafetyNex User Manual

* * * * *

SafetyNex App Risk Profiles Analysis

Risk profiles estimated by SafetyNex: Analysis of profiles, and possible use to detect fatigue and hypovigilance of driver.

SafetyNex is a nomadic real-time risk estimation system. The system has been described in detail in previous publications [1] and uses the key concept of « near-accident » or « quasi-accident », and is a result of 15 years of collaborative research with road safety experts and researchers.
The main competitive advantage of SafetyNex is that it allows, since the risk is estimated in real time,
to warn the driver (vocal alert), and thus to allow driver to avoid accident. Studies show that SafetyNex can reduce accident rate by 20% [2], which represents for insurers and fleet managers a consequent increase in margin [3].
But of course, SafetyNex also records usage and risk profiles. These profiles provide the behavior of the driver, or more precisely, his/her ability to regulate driving task consistently with danger. No need to record large volumes of data (accelerations, etc…) which in reality are not data (these are signals) for a possible back-office analysis, SafetyNex provides exactly the interesting data [4].
Below are examples of usage profiles and driver risk profiles.

. Read the entire paper
. Analyse des profils de risque en conduite estimés par SafetyNex (version française)

* * * * *

Nexyad invited to the 4th « Les rencontres du Fleet Management »

Last thursday 26th of january 2017, Gérard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad participated to a panel debate in Paris near Les Champs Elysées. He was invited as road safety telematics expert. Marie-Amélie Fenoll journalist at Decision Achats animated the discussion between other speakers : Jean-Yves Marie Rose of Ademe, Julien Honnart of Wayzup, Didier Blocus of ALD Automotive France, Edwin Colella and Alain Sinquin of Octo Telematics.

Fleet Management faces numerous problems and stakes in terms of safety, monitoring of drivers, training and loss costs. Gérard Yahiaoui presented SafetyNex App risk assessment in real time, that warns the driver before danger and gives individual and global risk profiles and usage profiles. An API of SafetyNex will be available very soon to integrate in any device. SafetyNex use allows to reduce accident rate by 20%.

Les rencontres du Fleet Management partners are ALD Automotive France, Ayming, Codes Rousseau, La carte carburant pro E. Leclerc, Octo Telematics and Phoenix development.

Gérard Yahiaoui Nexyadfrom the left Marie-Amélie Fenoll, Edwin Collela and Gérard Yahiaoui

* * * * *

NEXYAD new award :
Champion SME (PME championne) of the French cluster MOV’EO

NEXYAD is proud to announce that MOV’EO selected NEXYAD to be one of their CHAMPION high tech SMEs
(PME championne du pôle de compétitivité MOV’EO).

« We are very proud to get this award from MOV’EO that works hard for high tech SMEs development » said Gerard YAHIAOUI, CEO of NEXYAD. « We participated to the MOV’EO mission at CES 2017 in LasVegas, with Business France, and for us, it is already a success ». « This new award will give us more exposure and for a High-Tech SME it is always a good thing ».

Moveo

« Nous sommes très fiers d’obtenir cette récompense de MOV’EO qui œuvre pour le développement des PME de hautes technologies dans le secteur de la mobilité. Nous avons participé à la la mission CES 2017 à Las Vegas, avec Business France, et pour Nexyad, c’est déjà un succès. Cette nouvelle récompense nous apporte plus d’exposition et pour une PME de High-Tech c’est toujours une bonne chose. » a déclaré Gérard Yahiaoui le P-DG de Nexyad.

* * * * *

Interview of Mov’eo and Nexyad by AutoK7

Nicolas Dattez from french competitivity cluster MOVEO and Gérard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad talk about their experience of CES in Las Vegas with Christophe Bourroux for RadioK7 « Voice of Mobility »

« We are stronger at ten to push heavy doors ! »

Interview of Gerard Yahiaoui on RadioK7

(Click to play)

* * * * *

New Update for Nexyad Modules RoadNex (Road detection) & ObstaNex (Obstacles Detection)

Nexyad development team work hard to give updates and new functionnalities to its ADAS modules. See Below an example of road detection with the last update on RoadNex:

RoadNex on RT-Maps

NEXYAD Best Wishes end of 2016 Newsletter !
Check NEXYAD Technologies for New Mobility Applications

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #14, December 23th, 2016



NEXYAD Best Wishes end of 2016 Newsletter
Check NEXYAD Technologies for New Mobility Applications

Nexyad Best Wishes

Headlines :

– Demo video of SafetyNex : Smartphone App Onboard Real Time of Driving Risk Assessment

– Cercle LAB Symposium : new digital technologies for Insurance and Bank

– FinTech Community Symposium

– New Release of SafetyNex : Real Time Driving Risk Assessment for Car Industry and Insurance Companies

– Nexyad Technologies for Car Industry and New Mobility : SafetyNex – RoadNex – ObstaNex – VisiNex

– R&D project BIKER ANGEL(Driving Risk Assessment for Motorbikes) has been certified by the pôle FINANCE INNOVATION

– Business Trip to CES at Las Vegas

* * * * *

Demo video of SafetyNex : Smartphone App
Onboard Real Time of Driving Risk Assessment

Voir la version française de la démo

* * * * *

Cercle LAB Symposium : new digital technologies for Insurance and Bank

30th Nov 2016, seven high-tech startups had to pitch in front of almost all French Insurance Companies. This was organized by the Cercle LAB (Laboratoire Assurance Banque), at ALLIANZ tower (Paris La Défense) : « colloque prospective annuel du cercle LAB ».

NEXYAD was introduced to Cercle LAB by the competitiveness cluster FINANCE & INNOVATION.
It was an interesting challenge and the jury had to pick only ONE startup from seven talented ones, to give the special prize « coup de coeur des assureurs » (special « crush » prize from the French insurers community).

Cercle LAB Crush to Nexyad SafetyNex
             Gérard Yahiaoui pitching at Allianz Tower                       « Coup de Cœur des Assureurs » Diploma


NEXYAD had to pitch and convince the audience, among 7 talented startups.
NEXYAD presented SafetyNex : a smartphone App for real time onboard driving risk assessment (with vocal alerts that warn the driver before a potential danger), that can reduce accident rate by 20% and cost loss by 5%, making SafetyNex a unique tool for Road Safety. SafetyNex gives also risk profiles and usage profiles.

Winner : NEXYAD !!!

We thank all the insurers that came to this high tech day that gave a broadchurch view on research and development for Insurance applications (artificial intelligence, deep learning, iot, blockchain, telematics, …), we thank Pôle FINANCE INNOVATION & Cercle LAB.

NEXYAD is member of MOV’EO, and FINANCE INNOVATION.

Read more about SafetyNex

The other talented startups were :
. Blue DME : a smart data lake with bige data analysis
. DreamQuark : Artificial Intelligence as a service, for insurers
. KMS : HICP « Augmented insurer » with artificial intelligence
. Minalea : Artificial Sales Assistant
. Stimul : e-Health applications
. Utwin : digitalisation of insurance processes

All startups are members of pôle FINANCE INNOVATION

* * * * *

FinTech Community Symposium

FINTECH COMMUNITY 4th edition in Paris on December 7th, the greatest bi-annual meeting union of funders and innovative technology companies. Nexyad, through the real-time application of measurement of driving risk: SafetyNex, received the Label Finance Innovation 2016 by the global competitiveness cluster Finance Innovation.This label means that SafetyNex was detected as « useful » for insurance (car insurance).

Label Finance Innovation - SafetyNex

Later in the morning, Gérard Yahiaoui, CEO of Nexyad, pitched for Fintech Insurance category and received biggest amount of invoices from the audience, and he won a second prize that will give SafetyNex a larger exposition.

Gérard Yahiaoui - Pole Finance Innovation

Gérard Yahiaoui in the top middle

FinTech Community symposium organised by pôle FINANCE INNOVATION

* * * * *

New Release of SafetyNex : Real Time Driving Risk Assessment for Car Industry and Insurance Companies

Major release of the Real Time Onboard Driving Risk Assessment smartphone App SafetyNex.
Version 2_208 is available.
New functionalities and new HMI :

HMI SafetyNex

Read more : http://www.safetynex.net

Become ALPHA-tester of our smartphone App SafetyNex
Contact : Olivier Benel

* * * * *

Nexyad Technologies for Car Industry and New Mobility : SafetyNex – RoadNex – ObstaNex – VisiNex

. SafetyNex : intelligent navigation that alerts the driver before encountering a
dangerous situation + may monitors risk taken by the driverless function too.

See : http://www.safetynex.net

. RoadNex & ObstaNex (road and obstacle detection using camera(s)):
See :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oQSIDvI-7c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woMd8QBkM50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZG531G_D14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyP3fxDPTA4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA7VThllziQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoEJUmQVJ70

. VisiNex onboard : visibility measurement
This technology (coming from military research) could have help avoiding TESLA accident
as VisiNex can tell when visibility conditions are not compatible with camera-based detection.
See :

* * * * *

R&D project BIKER ANGEL (Driving Risk Assessment for Motorbikes) has been certified
by the pôle FINANCE INNOVATION

R&D project BIKER ANGEL has been certified by the pôle FINANCE INNOVATION.
This project consists in making SafetyNex available for motorcycles.
Partners of this project are : HERE, IFSTTAR, NEXYAD, POINT CORE
NEXYAD is the project leader.
Submission of this project has been sent to FUI (Fond Unifié Interministériel – France).

Biker Angel - Label Finance Innovation

Le project BIKER ANGEL a été labellisé par le Pôle FINANCE INNOVATION.
Ce projet consiste à adapter SafetyNex pour les motards.
Les partenaires de ce projet sont : HERE, IFSTTAR, NEXYAD, POINT CORE
BIKER ANGEL est porté par NEXYAD.
Ce projet fait l’objet d’une demande FUI.

* * * * *

Business Trip to CES at Las Vegas

NEXYAD is part of the France Business mission at CES in LAS VEGAS (Jan 2017).
NEXYAD tech will be present inside tier one companies demos : ADAS and Driverless.
NEXYAD already took meeting dates with major car industry companies and GAFAs
to show their efficient modules.

CES Las Vegas

Inscription to this Business France mission was made by the pôle MOV’EO (imagine mobility)


ADAS Technologies of Nexyad about to be deployed Worldwide

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #13, November 25th, 2016



ADAS Technologies of Nexyad
about to be deployed Worldwide

Headlines :

– New Release of SafetyNex : Real Time Driving Risk Assessment for Car Industry and Insurance Companies

– Update of RoadNex & ObstaNex : Road Detection and Obstacles Detection for ADAS and Driverless

– CESA Automotive 2016 : Symposium on Automotive Innovation

– First issue of ADAS Morning on ADAS for Road Safety

– New white paper : ROI Evaluation for Car Insurance Companies with SafetyNex (Real TimeDriving Risk Assessment)

– Vision Systems presented their ADAS Solution Smart-Vision at Automotive Techdays 2016 and announced their partnership with Nexyad

– Nexyad in Media

* * * * *

New Release of SafetyNex : Real Time Driving Risk Assessment for Car Industry and Insurance Companies

Reminder :
. SafetyNex App gives risk of accident
. No Big Data on Cloud, but risk is fully calculated inside driver’s smartphone
. The App warns the driver in case of high risk able to generate dangerous situation
. With 4 secondes anticipation that let time to reduce speed or to brake
. Risk construction implements concept of near accident invented by searchers in accidentology
. Near accident is explainable by cause/effect relations
. Regularity of this concept ensures the perfect correlation of calculated risk by SafetyNex with accidentology
. Nexyad work since 2001 and work basis used came from scientific publications

General ergonomics of SafetyNex has changed and after each run you have immediate results of your driving score with Gold Cup if you are safe.

SafetyNex Screenshots
SafetyNex comprehensive HMI

http://www.safetynex.net

* * * * *


Update of RoadNex & ObstaNex : Road Detection and Obstacles Detection for ADAS and Driverless

Nexyad realised a major update of RoadNex v3.0 & ObstaNex v3.1


Obstacle Detection with ObstaNex by Nexyad: this run was made with a single camera


Obstacle Detection with ObstaNex by Nexyad : city traffic

* * * * *



CESA Automotive 2016 :
Symposium on Automotive Innovation

Nexyad on the booth Groupement ADAS at CESA Automotive 2016

Vehicle ADACCESS

Gérard Yahiaoui & Jochen Langheim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RENAULT ZOE of Adaccess on Groupement ADAS booth at CESA Automotive 2016.

 

 

 

 

 
 

Gérard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad and Jochen Langheim Vice President of ST microelectronics and Chairman of CESA Automotive 2016 on Groupement ADAS booth at CESA in Versailles.



Nexyad Presented SafetyNex at CESA 4.0 2016

Gérard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad presented SafetyNex Real Time Onboard Driving Risk Assessment for Car Telematics at the Conference « Highly Automated Driving New Sensors » of CESA 2016 in Versailles.

Groupement ADAS booth shows top technologies and competences of 9 companies dedicated to ADAS and  sponsored by MOVEO.

. ADACCESS is a French engineering company specialized in embedded measurement and vehicle prototyping.

. CAR&D : Creative Automotive Research and Development (Car Dynamics)

. GLOBALSENSING Technologies : pattern recognition and embedded electronic system specialist

. INTEMPORA : MultiSensor Software Solutions, editor of RT-Maps

. LEDDARTECH : Mastering Lidar Sensor Technology

. NEXYAD: your host

. NOMADIC Solutions : Mobility Creator, electronic devices

. SHERPA Engineering is a company specialized in modeling, simulation and control design

. TRANSPOLIS : Exploring innovative Urban mobility solutions (tracks)

gy_cesa1

gy_cesa2

* * * * *
 

First issue of ADAS Morning on ADAS for Road Safety

Cluster « Groupement ADAS » Launched the october 18th first ADAS Morning co-organized with MOVEO in Paris. Thema was ADAS and Road Safety : to discuss challenges, solutions and opportunities with many specialists personalities in the field in front of a large audience.

Les enjeux
Les enjeux humains
ADAS et véhicules autonomes quels enjeux pour les personnes ayant des besoins spécifiques –  Claude Dumas – CEREMH 
Les chiffres de l’insécurité routière : Christophe Ramond – Prévention Routière
ADAS et facteurs humains : Apports des sciences cognitives- Franck Techer – IFFSTAR
Les enjeux économiques
Risque routier lié au travail: quel coût pour les entreprises ? Patrick Oberto – Promotion et Suivi de la Sécurité Routière en Entreprise
ADAS et TIC, outils de disruption de la chaîne assurancielle :  Philippe Caton – COVEA
Diminution de la sinistralité responsable : Jean Zermati – ORANGE

Les solutions actuelles 
Les systèmes de sécurité active et les ADAS
Evolution technique de l’accidentologie et de la problématique d’estimation du gain des ADAS  : Philippe Chrétien – CEESAR 
Nouvelles mobilités et sécurité routière : quelles  évolutions pour l’infrastructure ?  : Eric Violette – CEREMA 
Assistant nomade à la conduite sûre et responsable : Gérard Yahiaoui – NEXYAD

Les Perspectives 
Le défi de la sécurité routière : l’intégration des facteurs humains dans les cas d’usages d’expérimentation des ADAS :  Stéphane Barbier – TRANSPOLIS
Véhicule autonome, une révolution de la mobilité  – Rémi BASTIEN–RENAULT 

Eric Violette – Cerema

Jean Zermati – Orange

Philippe Caton – COVEA

Gérard Yahiaou – Nexyad

Franck Techer – IFSTTAR
Christophe Ramon – Prévention Routière

Rémi Bastien – Renault

Nicolas du Lac - Intempora

Nicolas du Lac – Intempora

Stéphane Fernier - Transpolis

Stéphane Fernier – Transpolis

You’ll find all the videos of presentations HERE

NEXYAD presented SafetyNex Driving Risk Assessment Smartphone App
Download the presentation of SafetyNex by Nexyad
 

* * * * *

New white paper : ROI Evaluation for Insurance Companies with SafetyNex

New Nexyad paper :

Real time App for onboard driving risk assessment SafetyNex used by Insurance Companies
(onboard telematics with smartphone for car insurance)
Evaluation of return on investment (ROI)
INTRODUCTION
European and American car Insurance Companies are all currently testing onboard telematics systems (on professional electronics devices or on Smartphones), in order to study new opportunities provided by digital technologies in the evolution of their business and business models [1].
We also can see now some experiments in Asia. Indeed, digitization of the economy has an impact on insurance industry too, as new competitors such as GAFAMs (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) come to their car insurance market with new approaches, always ready to capture value.
The main idea behind testing telematics is that it would be nice to adjust at best pricing of insurance depending on the driver. Onboard telematics is expected to « measure » usage (kind of road, day/night, number of km, et …) and to estimate risk taken by the driver.
Read the entire paper

* * * * *

Vision Systems presenting Smart-Vision
at Automotive Techdays 2016

Friday, november 4th, at Automotive Techdays in Lyon (Rhône-Alpes), Vision System announced its new technology Smart-Vision. This ADAS innovation is fully developed by the firm from Brignais in partnership with Nexyad.
Techdays 2016
Smart-Vision is a unique and complete rearview and surround view system replacing traditional mirrors with HD digital cameras and interior screens.This system informs the driver :
. When a vehicle is coming from the back 80 meters away
. When a vehicle, bicycle or pedestrian enters the blind spot area, each with a specific signal, regardless of the speed of the vehicle or the external environment.
. When they can safely change lane (for example, after overtaking).
Smart Vision
Smart-Vision reduces power/fuel consumption significantly, enhances ergonomics and improves safety.
Both hardware and software are tailor-made by Vision Systems.

* * * * *

Nexyad in Media

Article de la PFA (Filières Automobile et Mobilités) citant Nexyad :

Retour sur le congrès du CESA 4.0 – « Automotive Electronic Systems »

un article de la PFA qui cite Nexyad

Pitch of Nexyad at CESA Automotive 2016 in Versailles
Pitch de Nexyad au Congrès CESA Automotive 2016 à Versailles

SafetyNex the Revolutionary App of Road Safety

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #12, October 6th, 2016



Headlines :

– Nexyad on BMW booth at the Mondial de L’Automobile

– The SafetyNex Revolution for everyone

– Papers about SafetyNex

– Visit of BMW Startup Garage

– Important Release of ObstaNex : our Obstacles Detector for ADAS

– French Minister Ségolène Royal congrats SME’s

– Nexyad researcher speaker at Brussels

– Nexyad in Media



Nexyad on BMW booth at the Mondial de L’Automobile

NEXYAD was invited by BMW on BMW booth at Mondial de l’Automobile Paris 2016, october 5th, .
After have been choosen as one of the three winners of BMW Techdate Challenge 2016.
BMW booth
Up left: presentation of SafetyNex by Nexyad; up right: Serge Naudin, CEO BMW Group France, Gérard Yahiaoui, CEO Nexyad. Down left: the fabulous BMW i8


Thanks to BMW for this amazing event
BMW gave the opportunity for three innovative french startups to present their technologies on the business lounge on BMW booth. Serge Naudin, CEO of BMW Group France made a speech that remains the goal of the challenge BMW techdate that bring the winners to BMW Startup Garage in Munich (two weeks ago). He congratulated Nexyad, Oridao and Sentryo and introduced each of them to a bench of selected journalists.
Gérard Yahiaoui presented SafetyNex (that reduces accident rate by 20%) Nexyad onboard App of Risk assessment for driver, then he answered the questions and received several invited customers and partners.

Reminder : BMW Techdate wished to push ahead the french innovative high tech and identify new partners for technology matters. After a picky skimming, 20 startups were selected to present their project in front of a professional panel of Automotive, mobility, and connected car experts.
The quality of SafetyNex impressed the jury and the 9th june, BMW France announced Nexyad as part of the 3 winners of the first Techdate Challenge with Oridao and Sentryo.

Read more

Interview of Nexyad CEO, Gérard Yahiaoui, by Laurent Meillaud at Mondial de l’Auto TV



The SafetyNex Revolution for everyone

SafetyNex, une App SmartPhone qui révolutionne le monde de l’automobile : véhicules intelligents, assurance auto, gestion de flottes, utilisation du digital pour le retail

SafetyNex is a Samartphone App developed and sold by NEXYAD, it’s allows to reduce Accident Rate by 20% [1]. This App has a straight applied interest for several users.

– Driver
– Insurance Company
– Car Manufacturer
– Fleet Manager
– Big Retailer

Read Full Paper



Papers about SafetyNex

SafetyNex is the ultimate SmartPhone App for real time onboard driving risk assessment.
See how it works and how SafetyNex can reduce accident rate by 20% with respect for driver’s privacy.
Just read all the papers (available both in English and En Français) and feel free to contact NEXYAD for any question : sales@nexyad.net
Note : NEXYAD will present SafetyNex on the BMW booth at MONDIAL de L’AUTO, in Paris, the 5th of October (*)
SafetyNex Card 1SafetyNex Card 2
(*) SafetyNex was selected by BMW during the BMW Tech Date Challenge in Paris in June 2016.

En Français :

. SafetyNex réduit de 20% le nombre d’accidents de la route

. Modification profonde du métier de l’assurance auto : apport de SafetyNex

. Estimation du risque d’accident par télématique embarquée dans le véhicule, et respect des libertés individuelles grâce à SafetyNex

. Présentation de SafetyNex : LA solution d’estimation temps réel embarquée du risque de conduite

In English :

. SafetyNex reduces road accident rate by 20%

. Deep changes in the business of Car Insurance : SafetyNex can help

. Car telematics for onboard real time driving risk assessment, and respect for privacy using SafetyNex

. SafetyNex presentation : the ultimate solution for real time onboard driving risk assessment



Visit of BMW Startup Garage

NEXYAD was received by BMW in Munich last week.
From an initiative of BMW France, we were invited in the heart of BMW with two other Laureats of BMW Tech_date : ORIDAO and SENTRYO.

BMW headquarter Munich

The BMW Startup Garage is a special department of BMW that seek for innovative SME’s to work with.
The program was pretty complete with presentation of SME’s and their products to an audience of chosen BMW teams, visits of BMW Welt (show room), BMW Museum, and BMW plant.
We were very impressed by the welcome of everybody, specialy from Startup Garage !
We want to thank again Carolina, Gregor and Matthias.

Next meeting october 5th on BMW Booth at Mondial de l’Automobile Paris 2016.

BMW Startup GarageBMW Techdate Winner Teams
BMW Techdate Winner Teams, Nexyad, Oridao and Sentryo



Important Release of ObstaNex :
our Obstacles Detector for ADAS

New Release of Nexyad ObstaNex v3.0

This new version included pattern recognition and tracking, and new management of camera model of with a special component that allows multiple camera models on a same RT-Maps diagram.
Applications are ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and Driverless Car, but also Road Safety.


ObstaNex v3.0 : Obstacles Detection for ADAS (here filter on vehicles detection)



French Minister Ségolène Royal congrats SME’s

September 28th, in Paris, Madame Ségolène Royal, french Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy gave « Initiative SME’s » Prices from ADEME (French Environment & Energy Management Agency).

Voir la liste ici

Nexyad concourrait dans le cadre du projet SEMACOR (portage de SafetyNex sur les smartphones).

Merci à l’ADEME.
Ademe IPME 01
the laureates of « Innovative SME’s »


Ademe 02
French Minister Ségolène Royal, Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO


Diplome SEMACOR



Nexyad researcher speaker in Brussels

Smart Systems for the Automobile of the Future Brussels, 22-23 September 2016

Nexyad researcher Grégoire Julien, Dr Physics at Ecole Normale, presented a scientific publication at 20th International Forum on Advanced Microsystems for Automotive Applications (AMAA 2016).

« FUNCTIONAL SAFETY: ON-BOARD COMPUTING OF RISK OF ACCIDENT »
Grégoire Julien, Pierre Da Silva Dias, Gérard Yahiaoui

Read the Paper

One can also find the paper in « Advanced Microsystems for Automotive Applications 2016 » published by Springer 2016

AMAA 01



Nexyad in Media

autoactu

Ces trois start-up françaises qui ont séduit le groupe BMW
Trois start-up françaises, sélectionnées parmi 80 dossiers de candidatures, se sont vu ouvrir les portes du groupe BMW à Munich.

Lire la suite

Cnet

BMW Connected : une mise à jour importante pour le Mondial de l’Auto 2016
Des start-up françaises pour aller plus loin

Lire la suite

CCFA

Trois start-ups françaises ont séduit le groupe BMW

Lire la suite

SafetyNex the Driving Force of Nexyad Onboard Products

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #11, August the 24th, 2016



Headlines :

– Future Events

– Accident fatalities in Tesla car : NEXYAD modules might prevent accident.

– White paper « Vehicle Telematics, Measurement of Risk in Driving, Respect of Individual Privacy » (Auto Insurance and ADAS applications)

– A scale model car to test ADAS (ADAS validation)

– SafetyNex available on App Store and Google Play Store end of october



Future Events

NEXYAD at the Mondial de l’Automobile 2016, october 5th.

NEXYAD will be on Mondial de l’Automobile 2016 at Paris, october 5th invited by BMW on BMW booth.
After have been choosen as one of the three winners of BMW Techdate Challenge 2016.
Mondial Nexyad

Reminder : BMW Techdate wished to push ahead the french innovative high tech and identify new partners for technology matters. After a picky skimming, 20 startups were selected to present their project in front of a professional panel of Automotive, mobility, and connected car experts.
The quality of SafetyNex impressed the jury and the 9th june, BMW France announced Nexyad as part of the 3 winners of the first Techdate Challenge with Oridao and Sentryo.

BMW Techdate winner
Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO

Reporter Stephane Soumier invited Serge Naudin CEO of BMW Group France and Gerard Yahiaoui CEO of Nexyad at « Good Morning Business » on the major french TV Channel BFM Business.

BFM Business
From left to right : Serge Naudin, Stéphane Soumier, Gérard Yahiaoui


NEXYAD will visit Automotive major companies in Germany

Four french competitive clusters, Mov’eo, ID4CAR, LUBT and Véhicule du futur organized a new mission for their members : The International Partnership Approach. NEXYAD will take part of it.

Onboard Systems for the Connected and Smart Car – 28th november / 1st december 2016

The delegation will visit BMW, AUDI, CONTINENTAL, DAIMLER, BOSCH, PORSCHE, and the University of Nuremberg… in the cities of Munich, Regensburg, Nuremberg and Stuttgart.
Mission Germany

More information here


NEXYAD at the next CES in Las Vegas 5-8 January, 2O17
CES 2017


All lights are green for SafetyNex App on Smartphone
Four french Insurance companies are currently testing SafetyNex.

Since end of june 2016, it is possible to ask NEXYAD for a test (30 days) of SafetyNex App on Android Smartphone.

Do not hesitate to request.
TRY IT !
SafetyNex for IOS (Iphone) will be available at the end of september.



Accident fatalities in Tesla car : NEXYAD modules might prevent accident.

Accident fatalities in a TESLA car might have been avoided by using software modules of NEXYAD : the time for monitoring circuit has come.
By NEXYAD

Processing circuit, informing auto-pilot systems, control, etc … from perception, data fusion, decision-making, and automatic control of actuators, are usually very well designed, and based on high-performance modules. But unfortunately, this is not enough to void the risk of accidents. Indeed, for the treatment of this risk, it lacks a parallel circuit (parallel and independent) called « monitoring » circuit.
To understand this need for a monitoring circuit, one must first understand the level of complexity of a road scene viewed from a camera.

The variability of road scenes is actually much more than what a normal person comes to imagine. Indeed, a color image, which has eight bits for each colors (then, 24-bit, as there are 3 colors) may encode 224 different color levels per pixel (more than 65,000 different possible values). HD video has more than 2 million pixels.
This means that the matrix of HD 8-bit color image may encode more than 65 0002 000 000 images !
This huge number is simply unimaginable.

Read the entire paper

Accidented Tesla
http://www.nextinpact.com/news/100804-accident-mortel-tesla-model-s-roulait-trop-vite-enquete-se-poursuit.htm



White paper « Vehicle Telematics, Measurement of Risk in Driving, Respect of Individual Privacy » (Auto Insurance and ADAS applications)

SafetyNex for Insurance

« Vehicle Telematics, measurement of risk in driving, respect of individual privacy » is the new white paper from Nexyad, which explains important points to check on a vehicle telematics application to assess the risk taken by the driver about his driving task.

The calculation of risk requires having contextualized data that are inherently confidential, personal, and therefore which must in no case be recorded on computer servers in a cloud as they contain, directly or indirectly, information about offenses (in France it is forbidden: by respect of the criminal code and rules CNIL).

Onboard-measurement-of-risk-of-accident-with-SafetyNet-real-time-risk-assessment.pdf



A scale model car to test ADAS (ADAS validation)

NEXYAD will use a scale model car for ADAS and driverless software modules testing & validation.

Nexyad built their own intelligent scale model of car integrating a camera and telecommunications to a PC running the RT-MAPS framework (by INTEMPORA).

Scale Model Car Nexyad

The PC runs real world detection software modules of NEXYAD into the framework RT-MAPS. Then the
scale model car can evoluate on a scale model landscape where it is easy to generate complex use cases
such as sun rising and other perturbations that are not easy to record in the real world and that are not that easy to simulate.

Beside, Nexyad built a testing and validation database that will represent thousands of million km of natural driving with the fewest number of vids as possible.
NB : this NEXYAD validation database will be available for free to every research and development team in the world on the NEXYAD web site.

Database

This database will be used by NEXYAD of course to test and validate their own software modules for ADAS and Driverless cars :
. RoadNex for road detection
. ObstaNex for obstacles detection
. ObstaNex BiCam for obstacles detection using 2 cams
. VisiNex for visibility measurement
. SafetyNex for real time onboard risk assessment

This database is the result of a advanced methodology published in the 90’s by Nexyad Founder. The methodology « AGENDA » allows to build and validate camera-based complex detection and recognition systems (for ADAS and driverless cars).
This methodology was recently re-published and presented in different symposiums in Europe to show exactly how it may be used by car manufacturers and their OEMs.



SafetyNex available on
App Store and Google Play Store end of october

SafetyNex One Pager

Interest for the driver :
. SafetyNex warns you when there is a danger ahead in function of your car speed (save your health or your life)
. SafetyNex warns you when your speed is over legal limitation (save your money and your driving licence)

Interest for Insurance Companies :
. SafetyNex provides qualified data as histogram of risk taken by the driver, eco driving score, statistics of usages, contingency tables, etc.

Interests for car manufacturers :
. SafetyNex can be used as ADAS for customers
. SafetyNex gives the risk taken by the robot driver of future Autonomous Car

AVAILABLE END OF OCTOBER ON :
Stores

More information

Nexyad SafetyNex leading actor of ADAS Active Safety

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #10, June the 20th, 2016



Headlines :

– First BMW tech_date : Nexyad Laureat

– Launch of Nexyad SafetyNex App on Android Smartphone

– Active Safety Europe 2016 : ADAS to Autonomous

– Autonomous Vehicle Test & Development Symposium 2016

– Mov’eo Days 2016

– Four Nexyad Camera-based software modules



First BMW tech_date : Nexyad Laureat

BMW techdate

The BMW Tech_Date wants to highlight French excellence in innovation and identify new technology partners through a contest : Nexyad is rewarded for SafetyNex

BMW Press Release

The french TV channel BFM Business gave the exclusive news on the program « Good Morning Business ».



June 13th 2016, Serge Naudin BMW Group France CEO and Gerard Yahiaoui Nexyad CEO were invited by Stephane Soumier for Good Morning Business on the french TV Channel BFM Business.

BMW is betting on French Tech to develop Connecting Mobility

To celebrate its 100 years, BMW is trying to develop connected mobility, while promoting respect for the environment. The group’s strategy is based on three pillars: innovation, connectivity and personal mobility. To get there, its French subsidiary has selected three innovative companies to develop the mobility of the future. The start-up Nexyad is one of them. Nexyad has developed SafetyNex an APP onboard real-time that estimates the risk in driving. Based on artificial intelligence, the system can calculate at every moment the risk taken by the driver, by comparing the driving behavior (speed, acceleration, etc.) to the difficulties of the road (crossroads, school, turns tight, etc). In an environment where 75% of risk situations on the road are caused by infrastructure, this innovation proves to be a powerful prevention tool. Sole system to have been validated over 50 million km, this software performs all calculations locally (in the smartphone the driver or embedded electronics) and is thus compatible with the requirements of the french CNIL on the registration of personal data.

In the media :

Usine Nouvelle http://www.usinenouvelle.com/article/bmw-s-ouvre-aux-start-up-francaises.N397032

L’Express http://votreargent.lexpress.fr/bourse-de-paris/bmw-trois-start-ups-francaises-recompensees_1801750.html

Les Echos http://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/sciences-prospective/0211017258595-bmw-selectionne-des-pepites-francaises-pour-imaginer-la-mobilite-du-futur-2005843.php

Planet sans fil http://www.planet-sansfil.com/nexyad-oridao-sentryo-vainqueurs-de-premiere-edition-bmw-tech_date/

Industrie & Technologies http://www.industrie-techno.com/bmw-et-trois-start-up-francaises-inventent-la-mobilite-du-futur.44820

L’Automobile & l’Entreprise http://www.automobile-entreprise.com/BMW-Tech_Date-trois-start-up-pour,5131

CCFA http://www.ccfa.fr/Trois-start-ups-francaises-ont-162373

Auto Infos http://auto-infos.fr/BMW-Tech_Date-3-start-ups-de-la,8429

Boursorama http://www.boursorama.com/actualites/bmw-trois-start-ups-francaises-recompensees-4f40c17e914eba1053729369f16ea41a



Launch of Nexyad SafetyNex App on Android Smartphone

SafetyNex on Smartphone


Functions of SafetyNex :

– onboard real time risk assessment every second
– warning for driver when speed doesn’t fit difficulty of road infrastructure
– automatic « Call » in case of severe collision
– risk and usage profiles (for Insurance Companies)




Active Safety Europe 2016 : ADAS to Autonomous

Active Safety Munich

Wenesday May 18th : Presentation at the conference by Nicolas du LAC General Manager of Intempora, France

« ADAS Validation: non-deterministic algorithms vs ISO-26262 »
Number crunching technologies and non-deterministic algorithms (image processing, neural networks, data fusion…) are taking in charge more and more functions and driving tasks in vehicles. Autonomous vehicles will be based on many of these. How to validate such functions when facing such different possible driving scenarios?

Munchen

Focus on two companies present at the symposium in Munich :

SoftKinetic
is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation, is the leader in 3D vision and gesture recognition technologies. The company, located in Belgium and the USA, delivers state-of-the-art solutions in the field of 3D sensing and processing, in particular for “natural interfaces”. These include CMOS 3D Sensors, 3D camera reference designs, SDKs, algorithms and applications for gesture recognition, object scanning, automotive control and AR/VR. With over 8 years of R&D on both hardware and software, SoftKinetic solutions have already been successfully used in the fields of automotive, interactive digital entertainment, consumer electronics, health care and other professional markets (such as digital signage and medical systems).

LeddarTech
Founded in 2007 as a successful spin-off of Canada’s leading optics and photonics research institute, LeddarTech® is the world’s only supplier of advanced detection and ranging systems based on patented, leading-edge sensing technology that performs time-of-flight measurement using pulses from infrared light processed through innovative algorithms, detecting a wide range of objects in various environmental conditions. Leddar technology is highly adaptable, serves multiple markets such as automotive, trucks and unmanned vehicles and comes in different formats, providing brand owners and OEMs with a solution that meets their needs while ensuring quick and simple integration.

Watch video : Affordable Sensing Solutions for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)




Autonomous Vehicle Test & Development Symposium 2016

Testing Expo

Wenesday 1st of June : Presentation at the conference by Gérard YAHIAOUI President & CEO of NEXYAD, France

« 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 & test) design.

A large audience attended to this conference that questions the way for Autonomous Vehicle ADAS validation.

Conference Stuttgart 2016
Gérard on the left, the conference’s audience on the top and the booth of Groupement ADAS from the mezzanine.

Focus on some french companies present at the exhibition

OPAL-RT Technologies
is pushing the boundaries of innovation in hardware-in-the-loop simulation for ECU testing. Its automotive offering includes a new, dedicated family of motor and power electronic models. Its turnkey HIL solutions provide a flexible, comprehensive, environment for the development, testing and validation of all Embedded software. Opal-RT simulators optimally employ multi-core CPUs and FPGAs, maximising the fidelity that can be achieved when simulating complex, multi-domain systems.

ROTRONICS
has more than 25 years’ experience in the design and manufacturing of engine and vehicle testing solutions. From chassis dyno to hub dyno, it has already realised testbeds that meet most of your vehicle testing spécifications. the company’s versatile design allows it to pass all kinds of vehicles, including hybrid, electrical and two, three and four-Wheel vehicles. Its powerful automation system is also able to manage your engine or component testing application. It can answer your braking and/or motoring needs using its wide range os standard or tailor-made EC and AC dyno, emotor, exhaust testing, valvetrain, gearbox and combustion analysis Tools.

CRITT M2A
Based in northern France, Critt M2A is an independant R&D test centre dedicated to the automotive industry. Thanks to its high testing capabilities and know-how, the company can offer services in line with the highest industry requirements. Its turbocharged department is recognised by customers and automotive suppliers as one of the world’s leading testing centres. Critt M2A is also known as an NVH and engine development test provider, and now offers new skills in the electrification of vehicles, with an important range of testing facilities.

Critt

GROUPEMENT ADAS
is a team of innovative companies with over 20 years’ experience in the field of technologies used in driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles (design, implementation, integration of ADAS in vehicles for safety features, driver assistance, partial delegation to the autonomous vesicle). Members of Groupement ADAS offer complementary expertise, Tools and test Equipment (including test tracks) to take up challenging projects covering vehicle electronics, vehicle dynamics, command/control, HMI, perception, vision, data fusion, communication, eco-driving and so on. Groupement ADAS include : CAR&D, GlobalSensing Tehnologies, Intempora, Nexyad, Nomadic Solutions, Sherpa Engineering and Transpolis. It is coordinated by the french MOV’EO cluster.

BIA
is a global supplier of Advanced test systems, servicing the automotive and Aerospace markets. It offers a diverse and multi-functional product portfolio and a strong ability to meet Customer-specific focused needs. The company’s strong relationships with a global Customer base allow it to anticipate fast-changing regulatory and local market needs. It also invests heavily in R&D to meet those needs. BIA offers Equipment related to safety, engine and powertrain, vehicle dynamics, components, and enviromental chambers.

CREATIQUE TECHNOLOGIE
provides comprehensive lab and end-of-line test solutions and industrial connectors up to 300 000. Since 2015, Creatique has offered very powerful real-time test benches and connectics at extremely competitive prices, dedicated to manufacturers, suppliers and integrators of the automotive industry. This transversal solution is adapted to tests for ECU, doors, cockpits, seats, etc. With more than 450 systems in place all over the world and with a team of more 190 employees, Creatique is an indistrial group with complementary skills, tailored according to the customer’s criteria, standards and organisation.

EFE
has manufactured a complete range of pressure transcuders since 1973. During this time, it has designed its proprietary sensing technologies and created a unique range of high-performance and miniature pressure transcuders. Its products are designed to be used in the most demanding operating environments and to give highly accurate and reliable measurements. Available from 100mbar up to 3000bar, -55°C to 250°C, its sensors, which are fully metallic, with lare bandwidth capabilities, are used with the most aggressive fluids on vehicle and test benches.

ACTEMIUM
is a European builder solution, with subsidiaries worldwide (in the UK, Germany, Spain, Brazil, China and Morocco), which proposes a large range of test benches for laboratory or production. These include engines, powertrains, e-motors, starters, alternators, etc. Actemium also offers all components needed for load testing, simulation, durability tests, crash tests, and characterisation, in addition to final acceptance on the production line. It also provides engineering turnkey solutions for complete test centres.

Actemium

EFS
is specialised in injector testing. It provides Equipment and services in this domain. EFS provides benches for R&D, endurance or production, shot to shot flow measurement, spray visualisation, injector’s driver for coil or piezo stack. EFS has three benches in its company to provide testing service to qualify the injectors in flow and in visualisation and answer for diesel or gasoline injectors from light vehicles up to electrical power plant.

EMC
is a company founded in 1993, which specialises in testing engines, vehicles andd components. It has two technical centres with 30 facilities, including engine benches for durability and climatic purpose, climatic chassis dynos, and several rigs (GDI pumps, glow plugs, belt, swivels and so on). Since 2009 EMC has developed for its customers specific testing solutions in the domain of hardware-in-the-loop rigs, software, dynamic control, climatic process and fluid conditioning. EMC is ready to become an expert for your complex system developments.

EXXOTEST
develops hardware and software testing solutions for CAN, Dig On Can, LIN, VAN, ISO9141, J2534, J1939 and NMEA2000. It provides a large range of hardware solutions such as USB, PCI and Ethernet multi-channel communication interfaces, standalone dataloggers, intelligent gateways and integration/validation table and models. These Tools, associated with Exxotest’s comprehensive and ergonomic software solutions such as MUXTRACE Expert bus analyser, datalogger control advanded configuration tool, graphical analysis solution and utilities, offer complete and cost-effective solutions for bus and component testing, analysis, emulation and datalogging.

GREENMOT
studies energy optimisation in powertrain and global vehicle systems. Based on the work of highly skilled research and development specialists, it has developed and offers innovative approaches such as Advanced high-power climate test cells, robot driver or specific sensors design and integration. The company provides its innovations to support various OEMs or their suppliers in fuel economy, CO2 and emissions reduction challenges. Greenmot supports its customers through the design phase, sensor selection, implementation and calibration, test program definition and analysis. For each challenge, it proposes a dedicated solution and is able to adapt its Equipment to fulfil worldwide Customer requirements.

IMPEDANCE DATAVIB
is a subsidiary of the Impedance Group specialist for more than 20 years in acoustics, mechanics and vibrations. DataVIB is the designer of Vib360, the most powerful software on the market dedicated to torsional vibrations analysis and diagnostics of early mechanical failure of engines and rotating machines. Vib360 includes a set of modules for order analysis, static and dynamic torque in selected harmonics, couples and other specific modules, such as driving diagnosis or gearings. Vib360 adresses the technical departments of maintenance as well as R&D teams that wish to have a powerful, high-resolution, non-intrusive and preditive tool.

NERYS
provides turnkey testing solutions products based on the latest technologies. It is the franch laeder in accurate acyclism generation and management. It also provides bespoke software development, data acquisition systems and test rigs for its customers, among them Valeo, PSA, Hutchinson and SKF. Nerys has presented VEGA, its latest solution. VEGA is the only product fully compatible with test machines, that easily générâtes torsional vibration (respect SAE J2432). It has showed the VASCO suite, the test management software, fully customisable and configurable (based on LabVIEW and a database).



Mov’eo Days

Nexyad, Nomadic Solutions and Transpolis members of « Groupement ADAS » were present in a shared booth at Moveo Days in Estaca.
Moveo Imagine Mobility is the main pole of competivity for Automotive in France.
Moveo Days is the Annual Convention of the pole with focus on new uses for Mobility, strategy and future of the pole and thematic workshops & R&D projects sessions.

Imagine Mobility Awards 2016
Winner for Clean & Eco Mobility : ADACCESS
Winner for Smart & Connected Mobility : HYPE

MoveoDays1
A Young woman tries a Hublex gyropode

MoveoDays2
A Hype Taxi above and a Faar Industry Autonomous Car

Moveodays3
Groupement ADAS (SMEs cluster) booth



Four Nexyad Camera-based software modules

Click on software name for more information.

RoadNex v2.3

RoadNex
RoadNex detects all kind of roads (detection of the sides of the road and the drivable surface) on front of vehicle.


ObstaNex v2.1

ObstaNex
ObstaNex detects obstacles (everything in a area of interest with a relative speed) on front of vehicle.


ObstaNex BiCam v1.0

ObstaNex BiCam
Obstanex BiCam detects obstacles with two mono cameras (data fusion for stereo reconstruction), still works in degraded mode (one cam down).


VisiNex Onboard v2.0

VisiNex
VisiNex Onboard measures visibility conditions where your computer vision algorithms work: reliability estimation in real time.

This four module sotwares are available in :
– the Framework for real time asynchronous sensors RT-Maps of Intempora.
– Android Smartphone (soon in IOS)
– in specific device on demand

ADAS & Connected Cars
The future on the road

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #9, May the 9th, 2016



Headlines :

– Connected Car Insurance Europe Symposium in London

– Robustness of RoadNex v2.3

– Future Presence of Nexyad on Congresses & Exhibitions (ADAS, Connected Cars & Autonomous Vehicles)



Connected Car Insurance Europe Symposium in London

This year NEXYAD has participated to Connected Car Insurance Europe 2016 Congress at London the 12th and 13th april.
NEXYAD shared the booth 17 with the french company INTEMPORA creator of the famous Framework RT-MAPS to present SafetyNex. MOV’EO and cluster « Groupement ADAS » helped to sponsorize this venue.

HERE
HERE is a leader in mapping and location technology backed by a consortium of leading automotive brands. With highly precise, industrial grade maps and a robust and flexible platform of location services we help governments around the world and businesses across industries, from fleet management to retail, analyze and optimize their operations and better manage their assets with location intelligence. To learn more about our solutions for enterprise, visit here.com/enterprise

QUECLINK
Having shipped more than 1 million telematics units to leading service providers, Queclink is now one of the world’s largest suppliers of Fleet, UBI and M2M hardware. Established in 2009, we provide international design and manufacturing quality with the economics of Chinese high volume supply chains. Headquartered in Shanghai, our global management team with deep industry and technical skills can provide both standard and bespoke products for automotive, fleet, asset and personnel tracking as well as hardware designed specifically to meet the needs of the insurance market as it transitions to telematics based policies.
http://www.queclink.com/

SCOPE TELEMATICS
As a true global end-to-end telematics solution for insurance companies, car manufacturers and consumers, Scope Technology solutions includes hardware, an advanced actuarial platform, claims management support and actuarial support services. It is the only comprehensive insurance telematics solution available on the market with more than 35 usage-based insurance (UBI) projects spanning across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Our UBI products enable insurers to better manage client risk and encourage safer driving. Globally patented Advanced Pattern Recognition self-calibrates for highly accurate exception reporting related to driver abuse, and state-of-the-art Whiplash probability index.
Scope Technology, multi-awarded insurance telematics solutions are competitively priced, reliable, and designed for claims management support and fraud detection, Pay as you Drive plans, UBI and vehicle recovery, while meeting various industry requirement since 1999.
www.scopetechnology.com

Connected Car Insurance
Telematic met Insurance in London

WUNELLI
RELX Group is a world‐leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. The group serves customers in more than 180 countries and has offices in about 40 countries. It employs approximately 30,000 people of whom half are in North America. RELX PLC is a London listed holding company which owns 52.9% of RELX Group. RELX NV is an Amsterdam listed holding company which owns 47.1% of RELX Group. The shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RELX and RENX.
http://www.wunelli.com/default.aspx

HUBIO
Hubio provides integrated solutions to help organizations in the insurance and automotive sectors increase efficiency, reduce claims, build customer engagement and enable usage-based personalization.
Through the innovative use of telematics, UBI, mobile, gamification and enterprise technologies, Hubio is bringing new levels of data-driven insights to the insurance and automotive industries, while challenging and redefining established business models.
Hubio was formed to be a best-in-class solutions provider, bringing together several industry-leading technology and service businesses. As one organization, we are uniquely placed to deliver and support true end-to-end solutions.
For more information visit www.hubio.com

MSG Global Solutions
Working in balance with our customers and industry partners, msg global delivers solutions and services to help our customers achieve operational efficiency, meet regulatory standards and realize digital excellence. We bring expertise, a customer-centric philosophy, and a focus on innovation to everything we do.
We help insurers globally collect, manage and leverage data in the new IoT landscape. The Telematics Analyzer is the centerpiece of our IoT offering. We also offer a mobile application for usage-based insurance which is certified by a world-leading software provider.
http://www.msg-global.com/

INFOWARE
infoware is a specialist for map enabled technologies such as driver analysis, routing, geocoding and navigation. infoware’s APIs enable pay as you drive tariffs by analysing a driver’s driving style based on map and traffic data.
Infowares business is to deliver consultant services and contract services as well as products, based on platforms from IBM and Open Source. We are IBM premier Business Partners and have been working with IBM and Lotus technology since 1995. We address organizations with large production environments in need of services and products with high quality and security.
http://www.infoware.eu/

CalAmp
CalAmp (NASDAQ: CAMP) is a proven leader in providing wireless communications solutions to a broad array of vertical market applications and customers. CalAmp’s extensive portfolio of intelligent communications devices, robust and scalable cloud service platform, and targeted software applications streamline otherwise complex machine-to-machine (M2M) deployments. These solutions enable customers to optimize their operations by collecting, monitoring and efficiently reporting business critical data and desired intelligence from high-value remote assets.
http://www.calamp.com/

REDTAIL TELEMATICS
Redtail Telematics is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of quality customised telematics products. Redtail’s systems have recorded over a billion miles worth of data and Redtail’s design and manufacturing teams have delivered over 5.5 million devices into the automotive aftermarket worldwide. Redtail is a full service TSP into the UBI and fleet markets, including devices, airtime, datawarehousing and analytics including crash notification and reconstruction and advanced scoring. Redtail notably supplies Ingenie and Admiral Group among others. Founded in 2010, Redtail is a sister company of Plextek, the award winning communications technology design house founded in 1989.
http://www.redtailtelematics.com/en-us/company/

Connected Car Insurance London 2016
Some booths : TrackM8, CalAmp, Vodafone Automtive and Nexyad

VODAFONE AUTOMOTIVE
Vodafone Automotive is a leading provider of automotive products and services – which include InCar Telematics, Stolen Vehicle Tracking and Usage Based Insurance solutions – for vehicle manufacturers, insurance companies and fleets.​
When it comes to the connected car, we offer the end to end solution by developing and fully managing:
• The onboard telematics unit
• The GDSP SIM connectivity over the Vodafone network
• The telematics infrastructure
• The network of National Service Providers (NSPs) and Secure Operating Centres (SOCs) across 49 countries globally.
Vodafone Automotive is part of Vodafone’s M2M business unit which connects devices such as cars to the internet.
http://www.cobra-group.com/

DANLAW
Danlaw is a recognized leader in automotive electronics and engineering solutions for OEM’s, Tier 1 suppliers, and automotive and fleet insurance companies worldwide since 1984. Danlaw’s specialty areas include embedded systems development and testing for Embedded Control Units (ECUs), vehicle network communications, infotainment testing, connected car solutions, and V2X certification services.
Danlaw is headquartered in Novi, MI, with offices in India and China. www.danlawinc.com

TRACKM8
Trakm8 is a UK-based big data company which uses innovative telematics as their primary enabler. The brand collect over two billion miles worth of data every year and create fine-tuned algorithms to track vehicles, score driver behaviour and provide FNOL in order for insurers to make informed decisions with regards to premium renewal and to assist in offering enhanced customer propositions.
The Group supplies telematics hardware, dash cams and other comprehensive fulfilment packages to a range of industries. Trakm8’s partners include well-known brands in the insurance sector such as Direct Line, Churchill and Young Marmalade.
http://www.trakm8.com/

SafetyNex Presentation
Gerard Yahiaoui present SafetyNex to the Congressmen


NEXYAD
Beside his products of Artificial Vision for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicle, Nexyad has been developing since 2001 Onboard Risk Assessment algorithms and propose a unique tool that really measures Risk of Accident : SafetyNex. SafetyNex was scientifically validated through french national research programs and by scientific papers from 11 european countries, it was proven by a campaign of 50 millions km by 500 cars running for 3 years; it is fast and easy to use because SafetyNex gives an immediate result of risk taken by user. The risk is directly computed by the microprocessor of smartphone. Risk assessment histogram and every usage data histograms are sent to the customer : it is not big data, it is « small data ». The benefit of this appoach compared to all the other competitors that compute scores in the cloud are :
– small data upload doesn’t consume too much of the driver’s phone bundle
– the definition of risk used in SafetyNex fits into actuaries expectations
– no need to wait for accident to know that driver is risky
– because it’s real time, SafetyNex allows prevention (alarm to the driver before risky situation); this alarm statisticaly reduces number of accident and speed during unavoidable accident (then reduces lost cost)

SafetyNex runs in smartphones, in devices on demand and there is a Studio version on RT-Maps for PCs.
https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?page_id=441



Robustness of Road Detection by RoadNex v3.2

Nexyad compiled ten technology demos of our module software RoadNex v2.3

. 10 different roads : highway, desert track, country road, red road, et.
. 10 different conditions : fog, rain, front sunshine, overtaking, etc.
. 10 same excellent results : road on front of vehicle is detected

The 10 complete demos on « PRODUCTS » menu above



Future Presence of Nexyad on Congresses & Exhibitions (ADAS, Connected Cars & Autonomous Vehicles)

Nexyad at Active Safety Europe 2016 : ADAS to Autonomous

Actice Safety Europe 2016

Come to visit Nexyad the 17th & 18th may in Munich, Germany, for the Congress & Exhibition Active Safety Europe 2016 : ADAS to Autonomous.
Nexyad will be present with Intempora firm, provider of famous real time framework RT-Maps, Don’t miss the 18th : Software “Embeddibility”, Speaker Nicolas Dulac, CEO, Intempora.
Nexyad and Intempora are members of french cluster Groupement ADAS sponsored by MOVEO.


Nexyad at Autonomous Car Test & Development

Autonomous Car Test & Developement
Day 2 : June 1st 09:30 – Building a relevant validation database for camera-based ADAS
Gérard Yahiaoui, President and CEO, Nexyad, France
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.


High-Tech, ADAS, Autonomous Vehicle & Connected Car News

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #8, March the 24th, 2016



Headlines :

– Nexyad has just been rated by Early Metrics : We got Three Stars

– The Ultimate Solution for Insurance Companies that need Onboard Risk Assessment : SafetyNex

– Obstacle Detection using ObstaNex BiCam v1.0 : Rear Vision Demo

– Road Detection using RoadNex on Smartphone Camera (IOS,Android, Windows Phone)

– Future Presence of Nexyad on Congresses & Exhibitions (ADAS, Autonomous Cars & Insurance)

– Nexyad in Media

– Meeting with French Senator Claude NOUGEIN



Nexyad has just been rated by Early Metrics :
We got Three Stars

Early Metrics, first rating agency for startups gave three stars to NEXYAD.
The audit of NEXYAD has been ordered by a major industrial company of Automotive. The founders, the project, the market and the financial statement of NEXYAD were rated 75/100.
NEXYAD is then in the 20% highest rates ever given by Early Metrics.

Early Metrics
More informations : Early Metrics



The Ultimate Solution for Insurance Companies that need Onboard Risk Assessment : SafetyNex

. WHY TESTED SOLUTIONS ALL FAILED (ACTUARIES SAY) ?
. WHY SOLUTIONS BASED ON « SEVERE BRAKING », « VELOCITY IN CURVE », « ACCELERATIONS » … HAVE STRICTLY NO CHANCE TO WORK ?
. WHAT TO DO TO GET A RISK ASSESSMENT MODULE THAT WORKS? (Presentation of a disruptive solution)

Read the paper here.
Version française

Launch of SafetyNex Campaign :
Commercial SafetyNex



Obstacle Detection using ObstaNex BiCam v1.0 :
Rear Vision Demo

Nexyad runs two monovision-based obstacle detection modules (ObstaNex V2.1), and developed a data fusion algorithm that reshapes stereo.
This solution still can work in monovision when one camera is off.
In this example, we installed cameras in the place of rearview Mirror on a van.


Detection of pedestrian near the vehicle



Road Detection using RoadNex on Smartphone & RT-Maps

Road Detection using Smartphone Camera (IOS, Android, Windows Phone) : Nexyad Team validated that RoadNex works in real time on smartphone !
Otherwise, a new release of Nexyad Road Detection and software module is available on RT-Maps (by Intempora). RoadNex v2.3 (32 & 64 bits).

RoadNex Smartphone
Soon available on IOS, Android and Windows Phone.



Future Presence of Nexyad on Congresses & Exhibitions (ADAS, Autonomous Cars & Insurance)

Connected Car Insurance Europe 2016
Day 2 : April 13th1st 15:00 – Exclusive Nexyad Presentation by CEO Gérard Yahiaoui
The Ultimate Solution for Insurance Companies that need Onboard Risk Assessment : SafetyNex

Why tested solutions all failed (actuaries say) ?
Why solutions based on severe braking, velocity in curve, accelerations… have strictly no chances to work ?
What to do to get a risk assessment module that works ? (presentation of a disruptive solution)


Autonomous Car Test & Developement
Day 2 : June 1st 09:30 – Building a relevant validation database for camera-based ADAS
Gérard Yahiaoui, President and CEO, Nexyad, France
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.


Active Safety Munich
Nexyad will be present on a booth with Groupement ADAS.
Groupement ADAS is a Team of innovative companies with over 20 years experience in the field of technologies used in driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles (design, implementation and integration of ADAS in vehicles for safety features, driver assistance, partial delegation to the autonomous vehicle). Members of the groupements propose complementary expertise, tools and test equipment (including test tracks) to take-up your challenging projects covering vehicle electronics, vehicle dynamics, command/control, HMI, perception, computer vision, data-fusion, communication, eco-driving… Groupement ADAS members are: CAR&D , FH Electronics, GlobalSensing Technologies, Intempora, Nexyad, Nomadic Solutions, Sherpa Engineering and Transpolis. It is coordinated by the French MOV’EO cluster.




Nexyad in Media

« En route pour la voiture autonome » – On the Way to Autonomous Car

LePoint

The french weekly « Le Point » on February 11th released a special section on the city of Saint Germain en Laye near Paris. The journalist Valerie Peiffer has devoted a page to Nexyad.

To Read More.



Meeting with French Senator Claude NOUGEIN

18 Feb 2016 :
NEXYAD president CEO Gerard YAHIAOUI, and a panel of SMEs founders were invited by Isabelle STHEMER of DojoGroup, in Paris, and could exchange points of views about economics and small business development with French Senator Claude NOUGEIN.

Gérard Yahiaoui and Senator Claude Nougein
The main purpose was to share ideas that may enhance SMEs performance and French competitivity.


Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO
Gérard Yahiaoui in a very casual discussion.


Senator Claude Nougein
The Senator Claude NOUGEIN (here) that dares to talk to the base for a better understanding of the micro economy in the country. Quite unusual in France and very important !
Thank you Monsieur le Senateur !

NEXYAD Products :
Spreading the World

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #7, February the 4th, 2016



Summary :

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

– 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



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



Visibility Measurement :Release v2.0 of VisiNex Onboard

NEXYAD VisiNex Onboard v2.0 is now available on RT-Maps Framework (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 :





Applications :
Distance of visibility measurement, adaptive detection algorithms depending on visibility conditions, rain detection, fog detection, camera based ADAS reliability estimation, « your intelligent ADAS system ».


Technical information about VisiNex measurement : Distance of Detection and Visual Quality Score (VQS)

VisiNex Onboard computes a distance of detection (in meters) and the VQS number which represents the easiness of objects detection and image understanding.

Calculation is processed using two multidimensional functions :

– the MTF function : Modulation Transfert Function that gives the contrast (contrats of Michelson) of the scene among frequency (also called the Spatial Frequency Response).
The MTF function is measured by VisiNex, with a very high signal/noise ratio.

– the CSF function : that gives sensitivity of human vision to contrast among frequency
(NB : this CSF function is also a function of background luminance, ambiant lightning, and may also be different for categories of persons : children, « regular » adult, old people, trained people such as military fighter pilots, etc …). The CSF function was measured by searchers thats validated it from the observation of thousands of people (a representative panel). The most famous version is the NGAN model. NEXYAD is involved for many years in military applications and could develop and validate a very accurate CSF that takes into account many parameters (such as ambiant light, background, …).

A mathematical comparison of those two functions lets VisiNex Onboard compute :
– a distance of detection, recognition, and identification, applying the Johnson criteria
– the VQS number which is the quantity of MTF that is actually helpfull for human vision.
So in the end, we can say that VisiNex Onboard outputs are the results on deterministic computing on contrast measurement.

References :
http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF.html (MTF and CSF)
http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume40/number2/pxc3877165.pdf (CSF NGAN)
http://www.precision-vision.com/index.cfm/feature/12/d–contrast-sensitivity.cfm (Michelson contrats)
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA456742 (Johnson criteria)


VisiNex also computes image distortion and can display a distortion map.
High level of distortion lead to images that are hard to understand and that is a cause of bad road safety (as a lack of visibility is).


* * * * *

NEXYAD proposes VisiNex Lab since 2001 : a visibility measurement bench as an industrial system that you can install and uninstall very quickly.
VisiNex Lab system installs easily in an industrial laboratory, or a production line for quality control, and is in compliance with all industry standards that apply to this type of equipment. NEXYAD has developed rigorous calibration procedures for VisiNex™ to ensure the repeatability after assembly, disassembly, reassembly.




* * * * *

Risk & Safety Estimation in Driving : SafetyNex Software Module

SafetyNex now working on a lean Linux electronic device (of a tier one company) for insurance companies and the SEMACOR project will help us to accelerate deployment on smartphones too :




* * * * *

Nexyad Expertise about Autonomous Vehicle :
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



* * * * *

Future Presence of Nexyad on Congresses & Exhibitions
(ADAS, Autonomous Cars & Insurance)

Difficult to miss NEXYAD in 2016. The french High-Tech company for ADAS, Autonomous Vehicle & Connected Car will be where it’s important to be to present his work and his products :

Connected Car Insurance Europe 2016
Tues 12th – Wed 13th April • Tower Bridge Hotel, London
Actualise Connected Data Sets to Create Innovative Motor Insurance Products
Nexyad will present SafetyNex at the conference and on his booth.
http://www.tu-auto.com/connectedcar-insurance-eu/

Active Safety Europe 2016: ADAS to Autonomous
May 17-18, 2016 • Munich
Enabling The Next Phase in Auto Safety Through The Development of ADAS
Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO part of the 40 speakers.
http://www.tu-auto.com/activesafety-europe/

Autonomous Vehicle Test & Development Symposium 2016
May 31 to June 2 • Stuttgart
The world’s only conference dedicated to the testing and development procedures for autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems.
http://www.autonomousvehiclesymposium.com/

Connected Conference Paris
May 25-27, 2016 • Paris
Where Industry & Internet Meet
http://connectedconference.co/

CESA 4.0 – Automotive Electronics
16 & 17 November 2016 • Paris
Today’s automotive electronics & future trends and technologies.
Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO part of Commitees
http://www.sia.fr/evenements/43-cesa-4-0-automotive-electronics?lng=fr

Save the dates, everybody is invited to come visiting NEXYAD…



* * * * *

Nexyad New Customers :Focus on VeDeCoM

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
Vedecom

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.

VeDeCoM has presented his Autonomous Vehicle at ITS Bordeaux in november 2015. Nexyad made a short video :

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

The NEXYAD team is proud to announce that The VeDeCoM Institute bought user licences,
under RT-Maps Framework, of our
Road Detection software module RoadNex and Obstacle Detection ObstaNex.


SafetyNex World Premiere Road Safety App

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #6, the 13th of november 2015



Summary :

– SafetyNex & EcoGyzer : the Driver Behaviour Signature

– Nexyad ADAS Validation Database still in progress

– ProgressRoadNex v2.2 Robustness demonstration

– Nexyad in Media

SafetyNex & EcoGyzer : the Driver Behaviour Signature

SafetyNex is a Nexyad Module for ADAS that estimates the risk (or safety) in driving 100% correlated with accidentology. It is unique and disruptive in the whole world of Road Safety.
Recently, EcoGyzer a tool by the french company Nomadic Solutions, has been integrated to SafetyNex to estimate the Eco driving.
Now we are proud to announce that SafetyNex & EcoGyzer as a world premiere App estimating the Driver Behaviour Signature. To figure the Driver Behavour Signature, we imagined a special mapping as you’ll see on the demo films.
Every second in driving, one point is plotted on the mapping. The more right a point is, the more Eco is the driving; the more up, the more safe it is. At the end of the path, there is a cloud of points called the Driver Behaviour Signature.
In the following demo films, we show four different driving behaviour signatures for the same path :


The Good Driver



The Bad Driver



The Quiet-Dangerous Driver



The Sportive-Safe Driver


Comparison of the four Driver Behaviour Signatures



* * * * *

Nexyad ADAS Validation Database still in Progress

NEXYAD has been starting the development of a data base for artificial vision-based ADAS test and validation.

This data base will be relevant and unique because it is fully decribed in two ways :
. reality : position of road and obstacles
. driving situation (i.e. curve in a foggy weather with pedestrian crossing, …) using the methology AGENDA.

To read more :
– « Methodology for ADAS validation: Potential Contribution of other Scientific Fields which have already answered the Same Questions »,
G. Yahiaoui, P. Da Silva Dias, proceedings of the 3rd CESA Automotive Electronics Congress May 2014 Paris, Lecture Notes in Mobility,
ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, Jochen Langheim Ed, Springer, pp 133-138.
– « Validation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems », G. Yahiaoui, N. du Lac, SafetyWeek congress, Aschaffenburg, May 2015.

Business details :
A part of this data base will be soon available for free on the internet, to the worldwide ADAS and Autonomous
vehicle community (labos and firms).
If you wish to receive the link as soon as it is available, click HERE and fill the registration form.
(Free access to the NEXYAD Artificial Vision-based ADAS Validation Database)
The complete data base should be available soon through an annual membership.
For more information : contact NEXYAD Olivier BENEL +33 139 04 13 60

* * * * *


RoadNex v2.2 Robustness

On a new release v2.2 of RoadNex, we’ve added an arrow that shows the direction to be followed by the vehicle according to our road detection always defined by the edges of the rollable track and the surface of the rollable track. New tests were performed on videos of different types of roads, including tracks in the desert or lit roads by car lights at night.
These examples demonstrate the robustness of our module software that is more and more a reel competitor of lanes Detection System developed by Mobileye.

See some demos below or click on images.




To see all the demo films about RoadNex, go to the Nexyad Channel in YouTube :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9eYKvsuJMepuc42nM16f1A

RoadNex 10 different roads

* * * * *


NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation in Media

Article CCFA
https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Article-CCFA.pngArticle Cl'eo
To read more :
https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Article-Cleo.png

Article ACBB
To read more :

Le smartphone pour plus de sécurité au volant ?



AUTONOMOUS and CONNECTED CARS
at ITS WORLD Bordeaux

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #5, the 17th of october 2015



Summary :

– OVERVIEW OF ITS WORLD CONGRESS IN BORDEAUX

– USING NEXYAD ADAS MODULES FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE AND SAFETY/RISK ESTIMATION

– REAL TIME ONBOARD RISK ESTIMATION CORRELATED WITH ROAD ACCIDENT

– NEXYAD IN MEDIA

News about ADAS VALIDATION

NEXYAD has been starting the development of a data base for artificial vision-based ADAS test and validation.

This data base will be relevant and unique because it is fully decribed in two ways :
. reality : position of road and obstacles
. driving situation (i.e. curve in a foggy weather with pedestrian crossing, …) using the methology AGENDA.

To read more :
– « Methodology for ADAS validation: Potential Contribution of other Scientific Fields which have already answered the Same Questions »,
G. Yahiaoui, P. Da Silva Dias, proceedings of the 3rd CESA Automotive Electronics Congress May 2014 Paris, Lecture Notes in Mobility,
ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, Jochen Langheim Ed, Springer, pp 133-138.
– « Validation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems », G. Yahiaoui, N. du Lac, SafetyWeek congress, Aschaffenburg, May 2015.

Business details :
A part of this data base will be soon available for free on the internet, to the worldwide ADAS and Autonomous
vehicle community (labos and firms).
If you wish to receive the link as soon as it is available, click HERE and fill the registration form.
(Free access to the NEXYAD Artificial Vision-based ADAS Validation Database)
The complete data base should be available soon through an annual membership.
For more information : contact NEXYAD Olivier BENEL +33 139 04 13 60

* * * * *


ITS World Congress in Bordeaux

ITS Patchwork

From 5 to 9 October, the ITS World Congress held in Bordeaux.
It is the world’s largest gathering on the subject of intelligent transport systems and numerous corporations and government agencies were present to discuss new technologies, communication and robotics which every day are revolutionizing commercial road transport, individual and collective.

From our point of view, three main domains distinguished themselves which are however increasingly closely intertwined: the vehicle, the infrastructure and information.
The most spectacular of them represented by the many autonomous vehicles that lined the stands or went in demo mode near the fairgrounds.

We noted a trend of convergence between the connected vehicle on one hand and adas in the other hand, all autonomous vehicles were also connected vehicles and communicating vehicles : car to x and x to car (especially radio link with fires and road signs.)

The AKKA link in city car without driver of the French IT company has rolled around the lake so the city. This electric car is the result of a call for projects from the agency for the development and innovation of the Aquitaine region and it uses open data from the city of Bordeaux and its neighbourhoods.

Akka - Renault

From Renault, we saw the Next Two a piloted car remotely by a tablet. It parked all alone with no one behind the wheel. We liked particulary that this functionality avoids a walking pedestrian crossing in front of the car. Then it returns to the starting point when you recall it, always from the tablet.

Moveo-Groupement ADAS is a cluster of 8 french SME’s that put their competence in common to develop autonomous car. They showed on their booth the demo car that has been made for ENSIAME University of Valenciennes, entirely robotised by FH Electronics. Nexyad designed the eyes of this car with his vision-based road detection system RoadNex that runs on the framework RT-Maps from Intempora. The other companies showed demos, products, and competence on detection, pattern recognition, eco-driving measurement, human factors, advanced engineering for autonomous cars.

Groupement ADAS - PSA

PSA Peugeot Citröen showed on its stand several R & D results in progress (for example, a work in collaboration with Nexyad : a plateform for simulation Car Easy Apps or CASA) Several autonomous vehicles rolled in urban circuit.

VeDeCoM presented four autonomous vehicles driving around the lake near the Congress place on a 7km open track. These demonstrators, which are dual-mode vehicles (manual driving and driving delegation level 4), combine the French expertise, derived from the public-private partnership research on the autonomous vehicle. We appreciated a lot the capacity of those demo cars to pass all the difficulties of the city, including roundabouts with traffic which are one of the key problems of the automated driving.

Smartlane - Citilog

Smartlane opens up your data silos and allows you to create a secure, accessible and integrated data hub. In this way your own data are carefully combined with external sources in order to provide comprehensive information value.

Valeo came also with an autonomous vehicle in demo on the road of Bordeaux : the Valeo Cruiser4U fitted with the valeo laser scanner and the valeo camera that uses Mobileye processor. This car was designed to scale in urban and suburban driving, it can change lane, reaching 130km/h.

Nexyad - Valeo

Nexyad was present on two booth at ITS. « Moveo Groupement ADAS » one showing innovative technologies of perception with a suite of software modules RoadNex, single camera based detection of sides of the road and detection of the surface of the road ; ObstaNex, single camera based detection of obstacles on the road and on the sides of the road ; VisiNex onboard, camera based measurement of the visibility ; and SafetyNex, a world unique tool to estimate the risk/safe in driving 100% correlated with accidentology. Nexyad was also present on the PSA Peugeot Citröen booth with the FUI, Moveo labelised, research program CASA.

Citilog showed his incidents detection system on motorways, and management of intersections in cities based on proprietary camera technology. Citilog was on Moveo Groupement ITS Infra booth with other SME’s.

ST - Citilog

ST Microelectronics showcased next generation technologies for automotive applications, with a range of solutions including telematics, positioning, ADAS, digital radio, and sensors. We discovered his partner AutoTalks the pioneer and leader of the V2X Technology.

TomTom makes his navigation more and more precise and efficient. They have fully mapped in 3D the roads of Germany to render, in the future, automated driving possible, and they will do the rest of Europe before the world, they say.

Navya is an electric shuttle 100% French without driver that moves at low speed through an embedded robot and multi-sensor system. Designed for urban mobility, first for closed sites and latter for the first or the last kilometer of a journey, it can accommodate up to twenty passengers safely. Demo on a course in the city of Bordeaux.

Atlatec makes ground reality which is very valuable for validation of ADAS. Put their box in your car, calibrate it and run. Then it stores a mass of data and the software creates automatically high precision 3D maps of the environment with high resolution top view of the road.

Here presented high definition maps combined with cloud technology. The leader of navigation brings to the driver, real-time location experiences through of a broad range of connected devices from smartphones, tablets to wearables and vehicles; and always more informations like road surface horizon (slope/cant track).

Here -

On the ITS World Congress we could feel very clearly that car manufacturers, Tier One and Tier Two Companies, stakeholders in mobility, in general, (including many SMEs) have heavily invested on ADAS and autonomous vehicles. It leads to a multitude of very advanced exhibitions, and present or future availability of high performance sensors at low costs, with associated signal processing, which are also mature.


Nexyad tries Autonomous Vehicle by VeDeCom at ITS World in Bordeaux

* * * * *



Using Nexyad ADAS Modules for Autonomous Vehicle
and Safety/Risk Estimation

by NEXYAD


INTRODUCTION

The company NEXYAD developped software modules for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems :
. RoadNex (Road detection) : lane detection, detection of the borderlines of drivable area in the lane, detection of the surface of drivable area in the lane.
Sensor : camera (color)

. ObstaNex (Obstacles detection) : obstacles detection (if they have a vertical dimension or – inclusive – if they have their own movement)
Sensor : camera (N&B or color), accel, gyro

. VisiNex onboard (weather visibility measurement) : visibility measurement (quality and distance)
Sensor : camera

. SafetyNex : onboard road safety / risk estimation
Sensor : navigation map, gps, accel or car speed

Those modules were made to develop very efficient ADAS.
There are many ways of comining those modules, depending on the function that should be developped.

LANE KEEPING AND AUTOMATIC BRAKING : FOR CAR MANUFACTURERS AND TIER ONE COMPANIES

For this function, modules may be integrated in a rather complex way :
Nexyad Suite 1
Such an application needs to know where it works and where it doesn’t work (reliability). For that, VisiNex helps because it measures weather visibility and the nit is possible to know in which context artificial vision algorithms are efficient or not. It is also possible to switch setting parameters of artificial vision based algorithms using visibility characteristics, in order to expand the range of good performance of the global system (this is robustness).

NEXYAD applies a validation methodology called AGENDA (see papers in CESA Automotive 2014 in Paris and in SATETYWEEK 2015 in Aschaffenburg). This methodology is the onlt approach that allows to know what the system is supposed to do in a functional point of view, with measurable characterisctics of road scenes.
NEXYAD of course uses the NEXYAD ADAS validation data base : a part of this validation data base for artificial vision-based ADAS will be soon online for free (usable by every researcher or engineer in the world).

Note : the AGENDA methodology also provides a method to measure the similarity of a road scene in the validation data base anda current road scene : this is applied to estimate a confidence score.

SAFETY / RISK ESTIMATION FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES

SafetyNex measures the adequation of driving to road infrastructure characteristics.
It generates then a risk if the driver goes too fast when approaching a crossing road or a dangerous curve.
Of course, a poor visibility should lead the driver to drive slower.
In addition, there could be auxiliary inputs that would tell SafetyNex if there are obstacles on the pathway :
Nexyad Suite 2
This scheme is the same than the previous one but the outputs of RoadNex and ObstaNex are used INSIDE the scheme (they don’t provide an output of the global scheme).

DEMOS OF NEXYAD MODULES



REFERENCES

Validation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems by Gérard Yahiaoui & Nicolas Du Lac
CESA Paper by Gérard Yahiaoui & Pierre Da Silva Dias
Road detection for ADAS and autonomous vehicle
Using the NEXYAD road detection (RoadNex) to make obstacles detection more robust
Real Time Onboard Risk Estimation Correlated with Road Accident
Visibility Measurement for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicle


* * * * *



Real Time Onboard Risk Estimation
Correlated with Road Accident

REAL TIME ONBOARD RISK ESTIMATION CORRELATED WITH ROAD ACCIDENT :
AN ENTIRELY SOLVED PROBLEM AND A PRODUCT ALREADY AVAILABLE FOR DEPLOYMENT

by NEXYAD

(Version Française ici)

INTRODUCTION

Measuring road safety in the context experienced by the driver is a topic of interest for several activities :
. car manufacturers, who can inform the driver of potential dangers
. autonomous vehicle developers who need to prove that the driving actually minimizes risk of accident.
. fleet managers and insurance companies who wish to measure the risk taken by drivers (how they drive)
. managers of road infrastructure that alway change infrastructure to adapt and lower the risk of accident

The company NEXYAD has been developing since 2001 an embedded onboard module, SafetyNex, to
estimate in real time the risk of accident.

PRECONCEIVED IDEAS ABOUT ROAD ACCIDENTS AND DRIVING STYLE

Many trials have been completed or in progress, particularly by insurance companies and fleet managers,
In order to measure what is called the « driving style ».

The assumption is that some drivers are more « nervous » than others, and that this has an impact on the accident: those that speed up or slow down quite often brutally would be « bad drivers » while those with a quieter driving style would be « good » drivers.
This assumption is contradicted by the facts. There is no statistical connection between the driving style and
the accident.

Formally, one can easily fancy very well that if a driver operates very quietly, without slowing, without
accelerating at 30 km / h, and if this driver passes through a stop road sign without braking … then the driving style is quiet but very accident-prone.
We then see that beyond the possible statistical link (that doesn’t exist), there can be no relationship of cause and effect.

All experiments that were conducted led to this result.
All those that will be conducted, based on more or less intelligent thresholding of the acceleration values are doomed to failure.
Do not confuse eco-driving and safe driving.

Driving style cannot be interpreted itself without context description :
. infrastructure shape and characteristic, on which the vehicle is traveling
. traffic (presence of other road users)
. weather conditions (visibility, grip, …)
. level of driver vigilance (distraction, drowsiness, sleep …)

NEXYAD has developed a scalable solution capable of taking into account all these factors.
SafetyNex is therefore able to estimate the risk of driving using all those variables.
Version 2.1 of SafetyNex, under deployment, takes into account the adequacy of driving style with the type and shape of infrastructure (breaks on route characteristics, turns, pedestrian crossings, intersections …).

This version has been intentionally reduced to « driving style vs infratructure characteristics », because it already gives a 90% correlation with accident and because this version is deployable at very low cost:
. on smart phone
. electronic device (developed by an automotive tier one company), without using the OBD socket)

CORRELATION OF RISK OF ACCIDENT ESTIMATED BY SafetyNex V2.1 AND ACCIDENT

NEXYAD participated in collaborative research programs since 2001, and worked then with experts from the road equipment.

In particular, SARI research program led to detecting what experts call « Break on the route characteristics ». For example, a turn with a big curve may be a danger when it arrives behind a long straight line, while the same curve will not be dangerous bend on a mountain road.

NEXYAD published a paper at the conference on road safety May 6, 2010 in Paris: PRAC 2010
Risk Prevention and Save The Conduct, Session 1 Characterization of road risk vs. infrastructure
« Evaluation du risque routier pour l’aide à la conduite ou le diagnostic de l’infrastructure », Johann Brunet, Pierre Da Silva Dias, Gérard Yahiaoui, PRAC 2010, Mai 2010, Paris.

The work that led to this publication were integrated in the available product SafetyNex. This means that by construction, the risk estimated by SafetyNex is correlated to the accident. This is true by construction, and NEXYAD conducted tests on roads, downtown, on motorways in urban areas, etc … and was able to validate this result.

PRINCIPLE OF SafetyNex V2.1

SafetyNet is a knowledge based system (expert system) which applies rules of the experts of the equipment.
These rules are stored in a rules data base in a mathematical form that can adapt to gradual actual characteristics of the infrastructure.

Required inputs are :
. the navigation map and the GPS: To examine the shape and type of the infrastructure located downstream of the vehicle (turns with their radius of curvature, points of interest like pedestrian crossing, crossroads, etc …)
. the instantaneous vehicle speed

From these two inputs, SafetyNex evaluates, by applying the rules, the adequacy of the driving speed of the vehicle to difficulty and danger of infrastructure.

A sporty driver accelerating hard, braking hard, but passing dangerous places at low speed will be scored with a low risk.
A quiet driver that passes through a stop road sing at 30 km / h without braking will be scored with a high risk.
A brutal braking cannot be considered as « bad driving » if it is necessary to avoid an accident …

We see then, that SafetyNex risk estimation is not correlated with the absolute value of acceleration, but with ACTUAL speed adaptation to difficulty and danger of the infrastructure, in real time.

Additional inputs (optional) are already scheduled, and can afford to modulate the estimated risk to increase acuracy of SafetyNex :
. grip (if one has a sensor to connect to the input provided for the purpose of SafetyNex)
. weather report (if one has the temporal and spatial information)
. atmospheric visibility (if one has adequate measure: example: a camera and the measuring module of atmospheric visibility : VisiNex)
. distance to potential obstacles (if it has an adequate sensor : eg radar, lidar, or camera with RoadNex ObstaNex modules)
. a driver distraction factor (if the driver is observed with a camera and / or if one monitors the activity of mobile phone, etc …)

All these additional inputs are already ready to be used by SafetyNex but of course, they increase the cost of deployment, involving sensors (camera, …) and additional computing power before getting in SafetyNex to process signals and images from the optional sensors.

Using SafetyNex V2.1 with only the required inputs already allows a very high correlation of the estimated risk with the accident. We recommend to implement this version, already infinitely more effective than any other onboard measurements.
The interest of SafetyNex is that the future is already assured: Moore’s Law by rapidly lowering the cost of electronics and embedded computing, SafetyNex is ready to process the additional inputs, when users want to integrate cameras and sensors.

TYPICAL USES OF SafetyNet V2.1

. Insurance Companies:

– Pay how you drive
– Predictive modeling of bonus malus: the same accident under the same conditions does not lead to the same conclusions based on accumulated historical and recording the last seconds risk SafetyNex
– Generation of a dumb risk variable, correlated to the accident, to help actuaries refine pricing (big data)

. Fleet managers

. Automotive equipment suppliers:

– Alarm on risk
– Intelligent Navigation able to advise the driver

. Engineers and researchers from autonomous vehicle:

– Driving Quality Assessment generated by the robot

CONCLUSION

Embedded estimation of road risk of accident is now a problem completely solved by a product available for deployment, SafetyNex.
SafetyNex is deployable at Low cost on:
. mobile phones
. electronic device of a Automotive Tier 1 supplier (without plugging the OBD).

And SafetyNex already planned to integrate (once the cost is acceptable) grip sensors and cameras (for example) to estimate traffic and atmospheric visibility, as well as information such as weather and driver distraction.

All of these are already processed by SafetyNex rules based system, so that the tool can quickly evoluate with each decrease in the cost of sensor elements and cost of computing power needed to compute sensors outputs.

* * * * *



NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation in Media

Logo Les Echos
Les Echos
« when the smartphone becomes a lookout driver »


Logo Le Monde
Le Monde
« Autonomous car is a dream the French Automotive sector »


Le journal de l'Automobile
NEXYAD was compared to Mobileye and considered as a serious player in the competition.
In french magazine Le Journal de l’Automobile, pp 52-54, 18 Sept 2015
« MobilEye a de la concurrence : longtemps en position monopolistique, la société israélienne a désormais un
concurrent qui s’annonce sérieux dans le domaine des algorithmes de gestion des caméras embarquées, Nexyad.
Rencontre avec les ingénieurs français qui pourraient changer la donne »

Validation Database New
Road Detection & Road Safety
NEXYAD tools for ADAS

NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #4, the 7th of September 2015



Validation database for camera-based ADAS

The company NEXYAD started building a database for validation of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS and Autonomous car) using the methodology AGENDA published in the 90 by Gérard Yahiaoui (methodology initially developped for control construction of learning and test databases for the implementation of artificial neural networks).
This database has two essential characteristics:

1) Known life situations
Indeed, the methodology AGENDA proposes to describe potential changes of signals and images came into factors of variability and their crosses.
Example, for obstacle detection :
   . weather (dry overcast, sunny weather, rain, fog)
   . overall brightness (low, medium, high)
   . speed of the carrier vehicle (low, moderate, high)
   . type of road (highway, road with marking, road without marking …)
   . coating (bitumen 1, bitumen 2, …, cobblestones)
   . day / night (headlights and the lights switched infrastructure)
   . season (spring, summer, autumn, winter)
   . etc …

      > type of obstacle :
           – stopped
                      . infrastructure-related: work terminals, tolls, …
                      . related users: tire on the road, parcel felt from a truck lying on the road, biker following a road                       accident, disabled vehicle stopped on the floor, standing pedestrian on roadside edge (dodger /                       no sniper)
           – moving
                      . truck, car, vulnerable (pedestrian, bicycle, motorcycle) each with types trajectories (longitudinal
                      in rolling direction, longitudinally in the opposite direction of rolling side) and position (opposite
                      to right, left).
                      . Etc…

We see that if we cross these factors, we find fairly quickly a huge number of cases. However, the development of ADAS systems is complex, and it is necessary to proceed by successive iterations, starting from simple situations to move to complicated situations.
Our database allows this, since all records are described in terms of crossing the terms of the factors of variability. Thus knows exactly which cases were tested or not by the system.
Formalism ‘crossing of variability factors of the terms’ allows using design of experiments, and in particular orthogonal fractional plans to sharply reduce the number of cases to be tested while ensuring maximum coverage of life situations. One can in this context to develop a fractional ADAS on an orthogonal plan and test other hard fractional orthogonal planes for example.

2) Reality reference
This is to crop images barriers and infrastructure elements (markings, roadsides, etc.) so as to constitute a reference to measure system performance.

. Examples of life situations:
Life Situations


1.1, summer, overcast, unmarked road, moderate speed tire on the floor, dry weather
1.2, summer, overcast, unmarked road, moderate speed, parcels on the floor, dry weather
2.1, summer, overcast , unmarked road, moderate speed, standing pedestrians non ambush at the edges of the floor, dry weather
2.2, summer, overcast, unmarked road, moderate speed, lying on the floor human, dry weather
etc …

Not sure that you would meet those few cases, even with on million kilometers on open roads.



Our Goal

NEXYAD starts his collection of images and data:
      . video (towards the front of the vehicle) Color
      . accelerometers
      . gyros

The files are synchronized by RT-MAPS tool INTEMPORA society.
The files are saved as RT-MAPS format and replayable directly by this tool.

NEXYAD currently looking for contributors on this internal project. Co contributors fund and in return free access to the database, unlimited in time. This contribution will accelerate the work of collecting and labeling.
NEXYAD wishes to provide this basis before June 2016, free way to give the material to the community and the ADAS autonomous vehicle for a smaller version of the database, and pay way (as subscriptions) for complete database.
NEXYAD’s ambition is to spread its methodological expertise and allow everyone to assess the performance of vision systems for ADAS, whether systems developed by NEXYAD, or others.

References
“Methodology for ADAS Validation: Potential Contribution of Other Scientific Fields Which Have Already Answered the Same Questions”, Gérard Yahiaoui, Pierre Da Silva Dias, CESA congress Dec 2014, Paris, proc. Springer Verlag
“Methods and tools for ADAS validation”, Gérard Yahiaoui, Nicolas du Lac, Safetyweek congress, May 2015, Aschaffenburg


Contact
For questions, or if you wish to become a contributor, please contact NEXYAD : +33 139041360


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Road detection for ADAS and autonomous vehicle :
NEXYAD module RoadNex V2.1

A useful complement to markings detection

The detection of the road is a key element of driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles.
Indeed, objects, obstacles, other road users, must be detected but also positioned relatively to the road.
The detection of the entire route, that is to say not only its markings or edges, but all the way, should enable
embedded intelligence to select appropriate action.

The company NEXYAD has been working on this issue for over 20 years without interruption, and has accumulated a large number of cases of road types, of coatings, in various atmospheric conditions.
This is to detect the rollable area on the road, without regard to, in a first step, lane markings.
Indeed, in Europe, there are many unmarked roads, and work on a marked road may change the markings and
make a « follow the markings strategy » dangerous.

In the images below you can see on the left a typical French countryside road with no markings, and on the right image, new markings was achieved while former markings still strongly visible.
Road without MarkingRoad with old and new Markings

These cases are quite common on our European roads and a driver assistance system, or a driving delegation
system, must at least understand such cases and if necessary tell the driver to cope with it by himself.

The NEXYAD road detection module, RoadNex V2.1 is a brick to go further to cope with these cases :
RoadNex V2.1

RoadNex V2.1 should be coupled with road signs detection, road markings detection, obstacle detection, in order to build an intelligent perception system. RoadNex is then a key module of such a system.

The road detection module NEXYAD, RoadNex V2.1 is available as a component into the asynchronous real time framework RT-MAPS : See HERE


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Road Safety for ADAS and autonomous vehicle :
NEXYAD module SafetyNex running as real-time component
of Framework RT-Maps

SafetyNex (safety level estimation for ADAS)
SafetyNex Onboard is a high level functional bloc (software) of safety measurement, taking into account map and GPS geolocation (shape of the road, crossing roads, … ahead), speed, accelerations, visibility, adherence, distance to obstacle, etc.
SafetyNex measures adaptation of the driving style to infrastructure topology, and possibly Dangerous situations.
Two main applications :
_ Car industry : intelligent Navigation system providing valuable advices to keep the car in a good level of safety; sending alarms on dangers
_ Insurance : driving style measurment correlated with accidentology (insurance pricing, Pay How You Drive)

SafetyNex is now running in RT-Maps by IMTEMPORA
SafetyNex is under fusion with Ecogyzer (eco driving rating system) : this « package » will be the ultimate tool for eco and safe driving combination.

SafetyNex V2.1
SafetyNex v2.1