Nexyad finalist of BMW techdate

BMW techdate

The BMW Tech_Date wants to highlight French excellence in innovation and identify new technology partners.
You are interested in mobility and connectivity of tomorrow?
See you on June 9th at 10am to watch the event.
#BMWTechDate.

Nexyad was chosen by BMW tech_date to pitch about his unique software for road safety : SafetyNex an App for smartphone and electronic devices that calculates risk assessment taken by driver.

The event will take place on Brand Store BMW George V, Paris (near les Champs Elysées).

http://www.bmw-techdate.fr/startups/

Where to find Nexyad at Testing Expo 2016 in Stuttgart

Automotive Testing Expo Europe 2016 will take place at Stuttgart Messe May 31th, June 1er and 2nd.
This congress is huge and Nexyad will share the booth #1170 of Groupement ADAS (SME’s cluster) with Intempora and GlobalSensing Technologies.This venue is sponsorized by Moveo.
See in the planfloor below where to find NEXYAD which will present his three camera based onboard software : RoadNex for Road Detection, ObstaNex for Obstacle Detection and VisiNex for Visibility Measurement, and also our onboard software for measurement of risk in driving SafetyNex.


Testing Expo 2016 Floorplan

Second and last day in Munich at Active Safety Congress

Active Safety Europe : ADAS to Autonomous.

Lot’s of visitors yesterday and many contacts for Nexyad.
Today Nicolas du LAC CEO of Intempora and member of Groupement ADAS make a presentation for the congressmen : 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 ?


Nicolas Dulac Intempora
Our colleague Nicolas du LAC of Groupement ADAS (SME’s cluster)

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.


Many Thanks to all Nexyad booth visitors at Connected Car Insurance

Connected Car Insurance
You have been numerous to visit Nexyad Booth at Connected Car Insurance, London last week.
Our disruptive product SafetyNex benefited a lot of interest !
SafetyNex measures Risk of Accident and decreases Loss Costs. This software is available as a smartphone App and as a device.
More information about the ultimate solution for insurance companies that need onboard risk assessment : SafetyNex Position Paper
Version française

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 !

The Newsletter #5 is now available !

The Nexyad Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #5 is now available !

Autonomous & Connected Cars at ITS World Bordeaux

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

Read the Newsletter #5 HERE

ITS Patchwork

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 »

Nexyad dans le journal Le Monde

La voiture autonome fait rêver la filière française

Un article du journal Le Monde.

«Avec les autres sociétés, nous rassemblons environ 150 personnes et réalisons tous ensemble un millions d’euros de chiffre d’affaires, soit une entreprise de taille intermédiaire. Cela nous permet de démarcher les équipementiers et les constructeurs, et de les rassurer sur notre pérennité. Seul, c’est beaucoup plus compliqué», explique Gérard Yahiaoui, le PDG de Nexyad, une PME qui développe des algorithmes capables d’agréger les images captées par les caméras afin de «voir» la route. C’est surtout l’un des principaux concurrents de la start-up israélienne Mobileye, le leader mondial de ce nouveau marché.

Nexyad Le Monde

Booth installation at ITS WORLD in Bordeaux

Groupement ADAS (Mov’eo) installing the booth at ITS WORLD in Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Dominique Fernier (Transpolis) and Denis Foussard (FH Electronics) installing the booth with Nexyad
Demo Car Demos, real robotized car, films of ADAS use cases.

NEXYAD will show RoadNex, ObstaNex, VisiNex, SafetyNex.

NEXYAD vision-based ADAS modules for a demo car of “Université de Haute Alsace”

NEXYAD delivered a camera and two high-tech software modules :
. RoadNex : vision-based road detection in front of a car (for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicles)
. ObstaNex : vision and inertial navigation – based obstacle detection (for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicles)

Those two modules are integrated as component into the real time environment RT-MAPS (Intempora), and communicate with de neural network – based pattern recognition module Neuro-RBF (GlobalSensing Technologies).

NEXYAD will support Université de Haute Alsace during 2015 to integrate ObstaNex with their intertial
navigation unit.

NB : the 3 companies Nexyad, Intempora, GlobalSensing Technologies are members of the Mov’eo Groupement ADAS : http://groupementadas.canalblog.com/

ADAS