NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #25, January 24th, 2019

CES
– Consumer Electronic Show 2019
– XAVIER DALLOZ Conference at CES 2019

Other events
– NEXYAD at Road Safety at Work Conference 2018
– NEXYAD Presentation at SIA CESA 5.0

It’s been an exceptional CES for NEXYAD :
. a major firm of car exlectronics presented on their booth 2 products that integrate our SafetyNex API
. we has about 30 qualified meeting (and we took good shoes J)

Between two meetings, NEXYAD has visited the gigantic section for Automotive in CES 2019 : Central Plaza and North Hall + a part of Central Hall
Four major trends caught our interest : Lidar, Vocal Driver Assistant, Autonomous Pods and French Tech.

The lidar (light detection and ranging) becomes an inescapable technology that will be present inside tomorrow vehicles, whether for the ADAS or for the autonomous vehicle. Investors seem to have made big bets on and yesterday Lidar actors still non-existent or tiny have now clearly visible in the aisles of the show. Lidar can be electromechanical or solid-state much cheaper technology. It is easy to split the following lidar companies in two: the north americans and others.

In California, we have Ouster that sided with the high resolution; and Cepton that provides long range lidars; also Velodyne with a whole range of different products for different uses; Then AEye with its iDar combination of camera and lidar. In Montana, there is Blackmore providing solid state technology; In North Carolina, a new comer Sense Photonics. And the Canadian Leddartech solid state technology for mass deployment thru a chip for perception analysis. LeddarTech is member of the MOVEO ADAS Group with NEXYAD and a dozen of other high-tech companies for intelligent mobility.

RoboSense the Chinese company proposes several technologies: mechanical, solid state, laser scanner and also perception algorithms. Innoviz Technologies the israeli makes solid state and software perception. In South Korea there is SOS Lab with a product for self driving cars.

Everybody heard about vocal assistant, it is very popular for home use. Of course, those assistants arrive now into cars. Vocal Driver assistants make spoken human interaction with computers possible, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and questions in natural language, and typically text to speech to play a reply. They are the primary way of interacting with virtual assistants on smartphones and smart speakers.

Difficult to miss Hey Google for example at CES this year. Besides Hey Google, there is OK Google and Google Allo. Google announces major automotive partnership with Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi to integrate its Android System into their future cars. Let’s bet that their Vocal Driving Assistant will be in the deal.

Amazon wishes putting Alexa into every car with Echo Auto. Anyway, Amazon Alexa Automotive and Here Technologies partnershiped for giving voice to car navigation.

Nuance is the pure player of this domain and showed this year an impressive new release of their Dragon Drive that brings the connected car to life through a natural language voice interface.

IBM Watson Assistant for Connected Vehicles is a digital assistant designed to enhance in-vehicle experiences, helping the automotive industry better understand and interact with drivers and passengers.

On the Pionner Booth, was demonstrated a Proactive Telematics product on smartphone with a beacon, and also a dashcam. Those 2 products send to driver vocal alerts before difficult ans dangerous situations and allow then to avoid accidents. Another way to assist driver (the Vocal Driving Assistant that can save your life).

Most of the Autonomous Vehicle presented to CES were manufacturers or tier one companies intentions for future or stylish Demo Car. Besides, future seems to be moving away year by year, full autonomy will be difficult to reach most professional say.
The French Milla Group showed their electric Mobility POD and claims to be not only a prototype, but ready for different use cases: cities, industrial sites, University campuses, gated communities and resorts, at the commercial speed of 19Mph / 30Kmh with a price target compatible with massive deployment.

Note : Milla Group is member of the MOVEO ADAS Groupe through their subsidiary ISFM. One can notice that MOVEO ADAS Group had an incredible presence at this CES 2019.

NB : ce serait pas mal de mettre une photo de face de MILLA parce que là on ne voit pas grand chose

Business France has brought together 26 high-tech companies, including NEXYAD, in the French Tech pavilion on Central Plaza, beside Here Technologies, Google, Faurecia, Valeo, etc… Half of those companies are members of ADAS Groupement, SME’s cluster inside larger competitiveness cluster MOVEO for Normandy and Paris area. ADAS Groupement offers numerous competences, services and products: EcoGyzer, eVA, I-Deep, LeddarCore, LeddarVu, Magic Vision CMOS, NeuroRBF, NSWeight, ObstaNex, Roadnex, RTMaps, SafetyNex, VisiNex, Widy Vision, Y-Konnect, 4DV-SIM, etc
– Sherpa Engineering‘s mission is to support its customers in the deployment of methodologies tooled by models to design and validate piloted systems.
– Intempora has developed RT-Maps for synchronizing and processing real-time data streams, and I-Deep a web-based application server for automating your algorithms test and validation procedures.
– Yogoko is an industry-leading communication solutions provider for the connected, cooperative & autonomous vehicles (CCAV) evolving in intelligent environments, their target markets are transport & mobility players: autonomous vehicle manufacturers, legacy automotive OEM and Tier1, for intelligent mobility solutions developer and integrators.
– Milla Group made the world premiere presentation of electric Mobility POD visible in the Pavillon. It was the big attraction of the pavilion. Mobility POD integrates Nexyad computer vision software modules RoadNex and soon ObstaNex and VisiNex and also SafetyNex on the top of the autonomous driving system to control Driving risk at each moment in real time.
– NEXYAD is the reference worldwide for risk driving computing, onboard, in real time, at each moment : what is the risk that driver (human or not) is currently taking. See LINK
– Geoflex allows to give a very appreciable accuracy to gnss (less than a meter) only with software, using a hundred antenna distributed on the globe.
– Benomad provides traditional GPS Navigation, EV Navigation, Intelligent Navigation for Collection Services, Mapping Services and Mapping SDK and Navigation API. NEXYAD API SafetyNex integrates the SDK of Benomad.

NEXYAD IS VERY PROUD FOR THEIR PARTICIPATION TO THE XAVIER DALLOZ CONFERENCE AT CES LAS VEGAS YESTERDAY

Hotel the Linq, wednesday january 10th.
It’s been a very interesting exchange about major trends on the CES this year, and NEXYAD presented an example of eXplanable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) to the automotive sector with their software component SafetyNex that computes at each moment in real time and with anticipation the risk that the driver is currently taking, with applications to :
. alerting human drivers and reduce accident rate by 20%
. making autonomous Driving systems much safer Thanks for this perfect organization.

On December 17th, the 2nd edition of the National Symposium for Road Safety at Work was held at the French Ministry of Economy and Finance in Paris. This event was an opportunity to discuss the good practices implemented in this area for French companies and administrations. All day long, leaders, managers and experts gathered in front of 400 professionals, all types and sizes of corporates, to expose and cross theories, prevention strategies and feedback.

The 5th and 6th december, International Conference SIA CESA 5.0 took place in Versailles (just near the Château).
The goal of the organisers is to build a bridge between traditional automotive electronics and the new developments in vehicle electrification and digitalization as well as those from the world of consumer electronics and the Internet of Things.
The event has presented a great opportunity to understand how the automotive business will evolve over the next five years, with a focus on products and services that are likely to transition from other markets into use-cases for automotive.

Gérard Yahiaoui, Nexyad CEO was part of speakers for a new paper : Real Time Driving Risk Assessment for Onboard Accident Prevention : Application to Vocal Driving Risk Assistant, ADAS, and Autonomous Driving.