NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #31, April 5th, 2021

Headlines :

– Nexyad CEO Editorial

– Nexyad’s Customer Testimony 

– Nexyad Change Logo 

– OASIS Project with MillaGroup, YoGoKo and Nexyad

– SafetyNex AI Technology for Driving Coach and Predictive ACC

– Intelligent & Predictive ACC with SafetyNex

– Road Safety Digital MAPS using Risk Data from SafetyNex

– They talk about Nexyad

NEXYAD’s Customer Testimony

 

“We have integrated NEXYAD technology into our smartphone App BRIGHTMILE for insurers and fleets and our App reduces accident rate by 25-35% through its worldwide deployment in more than 50 countries. » Dominic Saunders, CEO of BRIGHTMILE     CEO of NEXYAD (left) and CEO of BRIGHTMILE (right): a handshake to save lives

 

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NEXYAD Change Logo

 

 

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MillaGroup, Yogoko and Nexyad Launch OASIS Project

 

MillaGroup, Yogoko and Nexyad launch OASIS project with driver assistance solution for everyone French excellence for a decisive step towards road safety autonomous vehicles. Meudon, February 2021 – MillaGroup, Nexyad and YoGoKo launch the project in partnership OASIS (cOoperative Assistance System In Safe road), which announces new technological advances around cooperative driving assistance systems for all. The OASIS project proposes to develop and integrate new enhanced driving assistance features, based on an innovative data fusion solution. The data comes from V2X communications, driving risk assessment, and predictive collision estimation. Although the number of accidents decreases each year in France, more than a third of fatal accidents are linked to a collision. Today, cooperative ADAS solutions integrate data related to the human factor and driver inattention. The implementation of these driving aids (ADAS) takes into account the concept of risk. In driving, 75% of the risk is linked to inappropriate driver behavior, linked to road and urban infrastructure. The technology developed within the partnership is based on Nexyad’s expertise and knowledge of road risks. Safetynex is a data aggregation software module that detects 20 times per second any lack of caution (also called risk of driving) in driving behavior in view of the road context. Integrated into a real-time on-board AI, the solution makes the vehicle smarter and teaches it to anticipate certain situations, such as by slowing down preventively. Combining the Y-CONNECT solution with Y-SMART communication technology from YoGoKo increases the perception of the vehicle’s environment. YoGoKo combines V2X communications between vehicles and with the road infrastructure with the collision risk calculations related to road behavior offered by Nexyad.

The OASIS project offers a global vision of road safety, deployed in marketed vehicles. This is experienced on the autonomous shuttles produced by MillaGroup. MillaGroup is a mobility provider offering on-demand and multimodal transport solutions (for people and goods) in rural and peri-urban areas. Since 2019, MILLA POD shuttles have been running on an open road every day at a speed of 30 km/h in autonomous mode. This combination of expertise in the area of risk management with Nexyad, connectivity with YoGoKo and vehicles deployment by MillaGroup will allow, among other things, an autonomous vehicle to drive thru an intersection with low visibility and priorities. Thus, the OASIS project brings new perspectives in response to the needs of improving road safety and increasing the perception of the vehicle’s environment. The system deployed, with risk traceability, takes into account the legal aspect and will make it possible to dispel the debate on liability in the event of an accident: – an assessment of driver behavior based on risk – improved predictive ACC and AD systems « aware » of the risk they are taking, and able to prove their level of caution at all times (in response to legal and insurance questions) – a new collision warning – a smarter predictive AEB Whether it is for the detection of lack of caution, dangerous situations, or emergency situations, road safety is integrated. This decompart- mentalised approach is completely innovative compared to the segmented approach by « use case » of the automobile. A system vision that must bring rapid progress in road safety, and on a larger scale respond to societal challenges.

 

 

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SafetyNex AI Technology for Driving Coach and Predictive ACC

 

When you look at this video, imagine that information pasted by our module SafetyNex are inputs to your digital driving coach and your predictive ACC: easy to integrate and efficient

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Intelligent & Predictive ACC with SafetyNex

 

how to make ACC automatically follow rules of the road (slightly slow down before an intersection, etc.) without long and complex development? New developments are starting up everywhere to make ACCs smarter, which could, for example, automatically slow down slightly before an intersection, and then pick up the speed of initial cruise. The whole question is: when should the vehicle be made to slow down? crossing? turn ? school zone ? roundabout ? pedestrian zone ? pedestrian crossing? Traffic light ? stop sign ? give way ? etc. And how to deal with the whole combination of these simple cases? (school located behind a bend with an intersection at left…). And if we have to slow down, when? of how much ? with what speed profile? Finally, to sum up, the idea is to make ACC follow the rules of the road so that it modulates vehicle speed exactly as a driver should do on license day. The combination of cases is huge. NEXYAD provides an elegant, reliable, efficient and very simple solution to integrate into a vehicle, which resolves all the simple cases and all their combinations. The modification to be made to a regular  ACC system is minimal and formal proof of safety (SIL) is very simple to do. Indeed, NEXYAD has carried out research and development in AI for more than 20 years on road safety. and now offers a real-time on-board software module called SafetyNex. SafetyNex permanently monitors both driving behavior (speed, accel) and driving context (in particular complexity of the infrastructure, via the navigation map).		At every moment, SafetyNex detects any mismatch between driving behavior and driving context. Such a mismatch is interpreted as a lack of caution, and the degree of lack of caution is called « Driving risk »: this is the risk taken by the driver (human, human assisted by robots, or AD system). The higher the risk, the greater the number of emergency situations encountered by the vehicle. Conversely, the lower the risk, the lower the number of emergencies statistically encountered. Note : do not confuse the « driving risk » as defined above with criticality (probability of interpretation of trajectories, time to collision, etc.), the two concepts coexisting in road safety systems. For a given driving context, the driving risk depends ONLY on the speed profile of the vehicle approaching a potential singularity of infratructure. It then becomes clear that by regulating the speed we can keep the risk of driving below a maximum accepted value. SafetyNex is then used to define the setpoint speed value Vr (at each instant) which makes it possible to guarantee that we never exceed the maximum accepted. On the other hand, any current ACC already defines a speed setpoint Vo. By simply taking as the new speed setpoint the smaller of these two speeds, we obtain directly and without any further development, a vehicle that slows down before intersections (for example) with the « Good » speed profile which guarantees safe driving. This simple, validated, efficient, and quick to integrate system is currently being integrated by OEMs with support by NEXYAD.
Contact us for more details.

 

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Road Safety Digital MAPS using Risk Data from SafetyNex

. Record into map layers the geolocated setpoint speed not to exceed in order to stay under a driving risk (lack of caution) of X% . Deploy road safety alerts on smartphones and telematics devices without computing power (only reading the map) . Deploy easy to develop Apps for insurers and fleets . Deploy vehicle intelligent ACC at very low cost without computing power onboard . Make your map THE map of reference for any mobility application (any market)
Contact us for more details.

 

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They Talk about NEXYAD

By Laurent MEILLAUD Journalist, Automotive Expert Read more on the Blog: http://voituredufutur.blogspot.com/2021/03/oasis-des-aides-la-conduite-plus.html		(Extract) « La technologie développée au sein du partenariat s’appuie sur l’expertise de Nexyad et sa connaissance des risques routiers. SafetyNex est un module logiciel d’agrégation de données qui détecte 20 fois par seconde tout mande de prudence (appelé aussi risque de conduite) dans le comportement de conduite et en fonction du contexte de circulation. Intégrée dans une IA temps réel embarquée, la solution rend le véhicule plus intelligent et lui apprend à anticiper certaines situations, comme par exemple en ralentissant de manière préventive. Pour rendre ce module encore plus performant, l’idée est donc d’y associer la technologie de communication Y-SMART de YoGoKo. Cela permet d’augmenter la perception de l’environnement du véhicule. YoGoKo associe les communications V2X réalisées entre véhicules et avec l’infrastructure routière aux calculs de risques de collisions liés au comportement routier proposés par Nexyad. Le projet OASIS est expérimenté sur les navettes autonomes produites par MillaGroup (un acteur dont j’ai déjà parlé sur ce blog). Depuis 2019, les navettes MILLAPOD circulent tous les jours sur route ouverte à la vitesse de 30km/h en mode autonome.

We Save Lives

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NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #30, September 14th, 2020

Headlines :

– Nexyad CEO Editorial

– Why do we develop real time hybrid Artificial Intelligence for road safety

– OTN and Nexyad join forces in a strategic partnership for active rail safety

– SafetyNex Integrator BRIGHTMILE unveils partnership with AXA Insurance

– RoadNex Off Road Drivable Surface detection

– Hazard, Criticality, and Risk in Road Safety ?

– Gathering Computer Vision Detection with Prediction and Risk Assessment: This is what we do!

– SafetyNex: ADAS for Road Safety Using Map

Nexyad CEO Editorial

Hello,

The world is going through an unprecedented crisis and more than ever it is innovation that will allow industries to take advantage of the opportunities created by destabilization of markets. In this context, it is interesting to notice that NEXYAD finds itself at the center of many strategies of automotive industrial groups, rail, and mobility.

NEXYAD’s embedded software modules are intended to be integrated into application software programs and embedded electronic application platforms, and we are now present on several markets:

•  advanced telematics, which deploys smartphone apps, electronic devices, and dashcams
•  automotive, which deploys advanced driver assistance systems, and connected vehicle features
•  public transport, including bus, tram, metro, train, etc.
•  advanced autonomous vehicle projects
•  road safety for motorcycles and bicycles

NEXYAD provides computer vision functions:

• detection of any lack of visibility, with the VisiNex module (lack of visibility is a factor of risk,
  VisiNex detects fog, heavy rain, sand storm, snow storm, lack of lighting, dust on embedded cameras, …)
• drivable surface detection, with the RoadNex module
• detection and recognition of objects, obstacles, ‘a la MOBILEYE’, with the ObstaNex module

Note: VisiNex may also be used to automatically adapt parameters of a complex computer vision chain to image quality. This is used by NEXYAD to increase number of use cases where our computer vision modules lead to good performance. And when image quality (measured with SafetyNex) is not enough for any reliable detection, then NEXYAD modules are aware of it, they can end a special output “not applicable” which is very important for sensor fusion stages.

And our  company also strongly deploys its unique real time driving risk assessment* module SafetyNex, validated in terms of metrics, by global insurers, police of road safety,  one autonomous vehicles manufacturer, and major car OEMs. The current and upcoming deployments in the very short term are in Europe, USA, Asia, India, and China. We are proud of the deployments planned by our integrator customers, because it will allow us, through their high-level products, to save lives, which is our mission statement.

SafetyNex is a Knowledge Based System (Hybrid Artificial Intelligence) involving symbolic reasoning) that monitors in real time driving behavior to detect 20 time per second any lack of cautious. This helps not to go to emergency situations, and if ever, with a driving behavior (vehicle speed and accel) that will be adequate to let more time to ADAS systems for their detection, criticality assessment, decision-making, and action.

This is what we call ANTICIPATION skills.

Real time applications of SafetyNex today are:

• alerting driver through advanced telematics tools (smartphone App, telematics device, dashcam), for fleets and insurers risk management
• alerting driver through advanced cockpit HMI systems
• automatically modulating vehicle speed and accel of ACC (Automated Cruise Control)
• alerting the AI od AD system that risk is rising

*_Risk Assessment shouldn’t be confused with hazard detection or with criticality assessment during emergency situations. Risk is lack of cautious, it is NOT probability of collision,  and it must be assessed permanently during normal driving. (see our article on risk assessment  in the following articles).

We Save Lives

« We believe that every single Human life on Earth deserves to be saved. We can avoid up to 840 million road accidents and save up to 250 thousand lives per year with Minimum Viable Version of our technology. Road accident is a huge factor of material & resources waste (repair) and pollution/CO2 emissions: by saving lives we also contribute saving the planet. After more then 25 years of high level R&D, we propose today validated onboard AI technology deployed by our customers through easy to use products, for a better road safety »

Check our 1 minute global presentation video :

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The companies OTN and Nexyad join forces in a strategic partnership for active rail safety.

Saint Germain en Laye, April 20, 2020 – The company OTN, which develops safety products in the rail sector among others, announces the signature of a partnership with the company Nexyad, specializing in on-board risk assessment of accident, with the aim of developing solutions for predicting and preventing collision risks.

This partnership will significantly improve the performance of current detection systems, by offering a risk detection horizon adapted to the speed of traffic on trams, metros and trains.

This technological contribution will allow rapid migration from simple « detection » to « prediction », thereby improving the overall safety of users and the environment close to the traffic lanes.

The combination of the skills and experience of our two companies will allow us to quickly develop a high-performance analysis system (images, signals, data) to identify the risks of railway equipment in traffic. After six months spent evaluating the work necessary for the development and adaptation of the algorithms, initially intended for road safety, we are happy that this partnership results in the development of prototypes which we will be able to test in real situation in the short term.

OTN, a company based in Saône et Loire, France, manufactures, designs and markets electrical and electromechanical equipment intended for various advanced markets, including railway.

Nexyad, a company based near Paris, markets a global road safety platform for telematics, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, and Autonomous Vehicles, currently adapted to railway focus.

   

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« AXA Insurance is offering the Brightmile app to its fleet customers as a way of supporting safe driving during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The motor insurer and the tech start-up are partnering on a smartphone telematics solution for fleets, which they are launching during lockdown. »

To reed more: https://www.axa.co.uk/newsroom/media-releases/2020/brightmile-app-for-axa-fleets-during-lockdown/

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In this demo video, NEXYAD RoadNex algorithmes are challenged with very bad conditions : There is no wheel angle, off road with kind of white gravels, high light thru trees in the darkness of wood which bring lots of shadows on the trail. The result is pretty good the green highlighting shows where the vehicle is able to go!

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Meanings of those words are very different and it is very important to distinguish them:

. HAZARD indicates presence of POTENTIAL DANGER: if behind a door there are toxic materials, you write « HAZARD » on the door. But if the operator who opens the door has the appropriate helmet, he/she can do so at no RISK.

. CRITICALITY indicates a measurable level of DANGER. During a road accident, CRITICALITY is measured by « time to collision », « probability of interception of trajectories », etc.

. RISK indicates the absence of caution: if you put a glass near the edge of the table, you take a RISK. In this case HAZARD is the edge of the table. If the glass falls, at every moment you can measure CRITICALITY of the situation. If you have good reflexes, you can catch the glass. This is what AEB does for vehicles (ADAS). If you want to avoid breaking the glass without using reflexes, you put the glass away from the edge. In road safety, it’s the same, and NEXYAD has developed a real-time embedded software tool that measures « how far we are from the edge ». Applications are: alert driver, or act automatically on the driving behavior of the vehicle (ACC, Autonomous Driving). thereby improving the overall safety of users and the environment close to the traffic lanes.

 

 

 

 

  

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Because most automotive engineers have no knowledge in Road Safety, they usually do not know that 75% of driving-risk come from a driving behaviour that is inadequate to infrastructure characteristics (geometry of curve, narrowness, pattern of intersection – angles, number of input and output lanes, functionality of infrastructure – pedestrian crossing, school zone, … -, road signs – traffic light, stop sign, …). So they focus on vehicle performance in passive safety (deformation of vehicle during a crash, safety belt, air bag, etc… and active safety, vehicle detection and reflexe : emergency braking (AEB). NEXYAD do not build cars, but as software company, we worked for 20 years with road safety experts and road infrastructure experts on 8 major scientific programs to acquire this specific knowledge. This is why our minimum viable product for road safety can run onboard on a smartphone or any other device, and reduces accident rate by 25% with only a map, accelerometers, and GNSS. This year we can add NEXYAD computer vision modules that bring other risk factors; ObstaNex which brings interdistance and presence of vulrenables, RoadNex which brings size of drivable surface, and VisiNex which detects lacks of visibility. This brings a complete onboard road safety platform: under deployment for telematics (fleets and insurers), ADAS, and Autonomous Vehicle. Available for cars, motorcycles, buses, trucks, trams, and soon for bicycles and other vulnerable mobility systems. It is time to join modernity, and integrate our best technology into your valuable solutions, available everywhere…  

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Sometimes, accurate detection both by human perception and by sensors are not enough for road safety. Nexyad has worked on some use cases for which classical ADAS can’t help. So we have developed SafetyNex that reads and analyses the digital map (HERE, TOMTOM, OSM, etc.) in front of the vehicle
(4-5 seconds ahead) as a bird view to anticipate singularities of the road. Then SafetyNex allows to vocally alert drivers when they approach these singularities (curves, intersections, pedestrian crossing, etc…) in order, for them, to reduce speed and to lower risk of accident.   Of course, it is possible to equip vehicles with Adaptative Cruise Control (ACC) to reduce speed automatically before these singularities. As a reminder, road safety studies show that if speed is reduced of 1mph to the right moment, risk of accident is lowered of 4% to 6%. With SafetyNex alerts, drivers have time (at least 4 seconds) to reduce speed far more than 1mph.

See 2 use cases below :

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NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #28, October 4th, 2019

Headlines :

– Nexyad CEO Editorial

– Short News

– Motorbikes

– Trucks

– Teaching Chair at INSA Rouen Engineering School in Normandy

– NEXYAD at the VIVATECH Symposium, May 2019

– NEXYAD at the MOVEO IMAGINE MOBILITY Forum (2019 June at ESTACA in Montigny-le-Bretonneux (France)

– NEXYAD Scientific Publication about Driving Risk in “Electronic Components for Automotive Applications: proceeding of the 5th CESA Automotive Electronics Congress”, Paris 2018

NEXYAD finally sees the result of its hard work and of its industrial agreements signed those last two years with integrators that develop their own products for road safety on the basis, among other technologies, of our SafetyNex software component. This unique and disruptive SafetyNex technology revolutionizes both telematics on board and autonomous vehicle, and is starting then to be deployed by NEXYAD integrators at the end of 2019. SafetyNex for fleets and motor insurers brings a huge ROI : accident rate reduction by 20%.

This is a new start for the company that has spent some 20 years developing deep tech very high level Artificial Intelligence technologies:
. SafetyNex software component, that brings anticipation to drivers and to AD systems
. Three computer vision software components that can be considered as additional option bringing addition inputs that transform SafetyNex into “Augmented SafetyNex”:
          . VisiNex : detection of lacks of visibility such as fog, heavy rain, snow or sand storm, …
          . RoadNex : semantic segmentation that detects the drivable surface of the road (free space)
          . ObstaNex : detection of objcts (possible obstacles) such as cars, pedestrians, …
All those algorithms are now available as directly integrable software components (SDK / API) by our customers into their products.
See full presentation of Nexyad

We present in this issue of our newsletter the first products developed by our integrators, based on our technologies, that are starting their mass volume deployement, and we also present global news of NEXYAD activities.
Enjoy
Gerard, CEO of NEXYAD

#roadsafety #fleetsafety #insurance #accident #accidentrate #accidentratereduction #SafetyNex #AugmentedSafetyNex #VisiNex #lackofvisibility #fog #heavyrain #RoadNex #computervision #semanticsegmentation #freespace #roaddetection #ObstaNex #detection #cardetection #algorithms #NEXYAD

NEXYAD was proud to see the first navigation tool based both on WAZE and SafetyNex, developed by SOFTEAM, amazing idea to gather WAZE powerful navigation skills with unique risk alerts (with anticipation) of NEXYAD SafetyNex technology that reduces accident rate by 20%.</ br>

See below the smartphone screen capture of some samples of a trip with alerts:

NEXYAD is partnering with Brightmile which is a Kamet Ventures company incubated & backed by AXA. Brightmile integrated (among other technologies) real time driving risk assessment software component SafetyNex into their complete risk management smartphone App.

We all could recently read on the press good news of this very talented team :

#Softeam #waze #brightmile #smartphone #navigation #intelligentnavigation #fleetmanagement #motorinsurance #carinsurance #insurance

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NEXYAD has worked those last two years on a collaborative R&D project, in partnership with HERE, IFSTTAR, POINT CORE, PREVENTION ROUTIERE. This project aimed to enable SafetyNex usage to motorbikers. We are glad to announce that this project, co-funded by Région Ile de France, and accredited by French Research cluster FINANCE INNOVATION is a success. The R&D consortium quality was unique (test and validation, field operational test, electronics, digital map, …)</ br>

SafetyNex will soon be deployed for motorbikes.

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NEXYAD integrators are currently deploying their telematics products (smartphone App, electronic device, dashcam), based among other technologies on SafetyNex. Main markets for those first deployments are :

. Motor insurance
. Fleet management
. Driving school

Some of our integrators then urgently needed to have a truck version that would paste right speed limits (for any kind of truck, any transported products, any country) and that would modulate risk assessment for truck use case. This version is available in Oct. 2019.

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September 18th, Nexyad still involved in training Master level students through the Pedagogic Chair under the direction of Pr. Aziz Bensrhair. Gérard Yahiaoui presented research activities of Nexyad and particularly Driving Risk calculation in real time to INSA Rouen Engineering School students, maths and computing option’s

#INSA #INSArouen #teachingchair #NEXYAD #moveo #intelligentcar

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NEXYAD had a booth at the famous Paris symposium VIVATECH. This booth was offered by French Ministry of Security/Police of the road (DSCR) that gave us the French Price of INNOVATION for road safety (for our software component SafetyNex):

SafetyNex technology is now validated and rewarded by experts on road safety. This makes the SafetyNex technology completely different from others. It is :

. proven
. validated by road safety experts, insurers, industrials
. real time on regular telematics devices, smartphones, and dashcams
. deployed for the masses through integrators

NEXYAD met new leads of customers from all over the world and will soon announce important collaborations. We also could meet other high-tech SMEs that will surely become new partners in the future.

#SafetyNex #award #towardssaferroads #vivatech #nexyad #roadsafety #DSCR #innovation

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NEXYAD was part of the IMAGINE MOBILITY FORUM that took place at the Engineering School ESCATA in the Paris suburb. NEXYAD was present with both:

. Groupement ADAS: a business cluster of High-Tech SMEs focused on connected and intelligent vehicles
. Groupement AI4Cities: a business cluster of High-Tech SMEs focused on applications of digital technologies to smart cities and mobility

NEXYAD showed films and demos of their 4 software modules ready for integration into products by customers:

. SafetyNex that computes onboard in real time at each moment the driving risk that driver is currently taking
. VisiNex that detects (from a camera) lacks of visibility (fog, snow, sand, dust, lack of lighting, heavy rain, …)
. RoadNex that detects (from a camera) the road and especially the free space (where it is possible to drive)
. ObstaNex that detects (from a camera) obstacles, in particular other vehicles

#moveo #mobility #nexyad #SafetyNex #VisiNex #ObstaNex #RoadNex

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“Real Time Driving Risk Assessment for Onboard Accident Prevention: Application to Vocal Driving Risk Assistant, ADAS, and Autonomous Driving”
by Johann Brunet, Pierre Da Silva Dias, Gérard Yahiaoui

This publication is available in “ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS AND SYSTEMS FOR AUTOMOTIVE APPLICATIONS” Proceedings of the 5th SIA CESA Automotive Electronics Congress, Paris, 2018.

Jochen Langheim, Editor, Springer publishing.

 

#carelectronics #CESAautomotive #proceedings #publication #scientificpublication #automotive #Springer #risk #riskassessment #automotive #SafetyNex

 

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