indie Semiconductor Announces Strategic Partnership with Seeing Machines

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indie Semiconductor, an Autotech solutions innovator has announced a strategic partnership with Seeing Machines, a leading computer vision technology company, to complement development of advanced vision processors for driver and vehicle occupant monitoring.

Leveraging indie’s global sales channels underpinned by leading tier 1 and vehicle OEMs, this partnership enables indie to deploy Seeing Machines’ hardware-optimized, industry-leading Occula® Neural Processing Unit (NPU) technology into the Company’s first generation of innovative vision sensing system-on-chips (SoCs).

Based on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), distracted driving is a factor in nearly 10 percent of fatal motor crashes and in the U.S. alone, driver distraction is responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 people a year and the injury of a further 400,000. To reduce the number of accidents related to driver distraction or drowsiness and occupant fatalities, driver and occupant monitoring systems (DMS, OMS) are now being mandated or strongly recommended by global regulators and standards organizations through initiatives such as Europe’s General Safety Regulations (GSR), European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and is currently being reviewed by the U.S. NHTSA rulemaking for inclusion in updated U.S. NCAP guidelines.

To operate effectively, camera-based monitoring solutions need to address a number of challenges, including dynamic lighting conditions that range from complete darkness to bright sunlight, and factors such as driver height, position, skin tones and facial obscuration, such as wearing sunglasses. indie's advanced vision SoCs will enable automotive manufacturers to address these requirements through best-in-class solutions featuring high processing bandwidth, while also achieving ultra-low power, low latency and extremely compact form factors.

"indie's expansion of intelligent, vision-based sensing solutions is another critical step in our mission to save lives via our diverse ADAS and sensor fusion product portfolio,” said Abhay Rai, senior vice president of indie Semiconductor's Vision Business Unit. “Through our partnership with Seeing Machines, indie can implement robust in-cabin driver and occupant monitoring functionality at truly breakthrough performance levels while simplifying hardware and software stack requirements and, in turn, significantly reducing system complexity and total cost.”

“In a mission to get everyone home safely, leading in the deployment of driver and occupant monitoring systems to address emerging safety standards and road safety legislation focused on reducing vehicle-related deaths and injuries becomes critical,” added Nick DiFiore, SVP & GM Automotive, Seeing Machines. “We are delighted that indie chose our world-leading Occula® NPU for optimized human detection and tracking in their innovative vision SoCs. Together, we are creating next-generation solutions that significantly simplify OEM conformance to ADAS mandates including the safe implementation of L2+ autonomy while reducing the cost of technology for monitoring vehicle occupants.”