October 19, 2017 -DENSO Corporation, an automotive technology, systems and components supplier, and Xperi Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based technology company, announced DENSO will start joint technology development of cabin sensing with FotoNation, an Xperi group company specializing in image recognition technologies. The partnership is designed to help DENSO improve the performance of its Driver Status Monitor, an active safety product currently used in commercial vehicles. Improvements of such products also will accelerate the development of next-generation products to be used in passenger vehicles, including a system to help drivers return to driving mode during Level 3 of autonomous drive.
This collaboration will combine DENSO’s accumulated experience in cabin sensing innovations and FotoNation’s facial image recognition and neural network technologies. By combining technologies of the two companies, DENSO hopes to be able to achieve sophisticated driver status detection, which will not be affected by differences between individual faces, or by sunglasses, masks, and other facial coverings, in the vehicle cabin where environmental light changes dramatically.
Since 2014, DENSO has provided a Driver Status Monitor for heavy trucks and large sightseeing buses. This advanced safety product uses a cabin camera to capture images of the driver and computer vision technology to detect the driver’s face angle to determine the level of drowsiness. Using its proprietary algorithm to carefully analyze the driver’s eye blinking, DENSO’s driver status monitor can detect driver drowsiness and alert the driver when it judges the driver is distracted or falling asleep at the wheel, to help prevent traffic accidents.
Using FotoNation’s facial image recognition and neural networks technologies, detection accuracy will be increased by detecting much more features instead of using the conventional detection method based on the relative positions of the eyes, nose, mouth, and other facial regions. Moreover, DENSO will develop new functions, such as those to detect the driver’s gaze direction and facial expressions more accurately, to understand the state of mind of the driver in order to help create more comfortable vehicles.
DENSO will exhibit a prototype next-generation driver status monitor at the Tokyo Motor Show from October 27 to November 5, 2017.
