Subject: [NEXTEL-1] For the Multitasking Motorist, a Third Eye

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 18:15:35 -0500

WHAT'S NEXT
For the Multitasking Motorist, a Third Eye
By IAN AUSTEN

Published: February 19, 2004

N an ideal motoring world, Amnon Shashua acknowledges, there would be no
need for the EyeQ chip, a processor that analyzes signals from
automobile-mounted cameras to warn drivers of potential collisions or
other dangerous situations.
"If you're very vigilant and very alert, you don't need a thing to help
you," said Dr. Shashua, the chairman and chief scientist of MobilEye, a
company based in the Netherlands that produces EyeQ. "Your visual
processing is much better than any computer."
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For many people, of course, driving is an activity that may overlap with
other tasks like dialing cellphones, twiddling radio dials and restoring
peace among children. For those situations, Dr. Shashua said, a
computerized camera becomes "another eye helping the driver."

Systems that use computer analysis to help prevent accidents are already
standard in some vehicles. A relatively common example is the
cruise-control system that uses radar beams to maintain a safe gap
between cars.

But the price of radar technology - unlike, say, CD players - is not
likely to become feasible soon for use in more plebian cars and vans.
The cost issue, along with some inherent limitations, has generated
interest in using inexpensive cameras based on complementary metal oxide
semiconductor technology, or CMOS, to scan the road for danger.

Dr. Shashua, who is also the chairman of the school of engineering and
computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, first became
aware of such interest through his involvement in a different commercial
venture in the 1990's.
At that time, he had set up a company to exploit the expertise he had
acquired in computer vision and machine learning at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's artificial-intelligence lab. That venture
makes costly camera-based inspection machines used by automakers to
check the dimensions and other properties of parts.

But Dr. Shashua said there was an enormous difference between measuring
car bumpers and dashboards as they move along the assembly line and
asking a computer to deal with everything that comes roaring into an
car's field of view.
"This is a big challenge," he said. "When you put a camera into a car
that's moving along, you have control over nothing."
Compounding the challenge, he added, such a camera system must be
reasonably sophisticated, to avoid alienating drivers with false or
excessively cautious alerts.

The first step in developing the system, Dr. Shashua said, was to create
thousands of images of the crucial visual elements that the system would
need to recognize, like other vehicles, road markings, guard rails,
cyclists and pedestrians.
Similarly, the software had to be loaded with thousands of images of
objects it could safely ignore, like trees. From there, it then was
mostly a matter of testing and refining the system, first in a lab and
then in cars.
"It is learning by example," Dr. Shashua said of the system.

Of course, a good deal of re-education was needed during the testing
period. Among other things, the system initially assumed that
pedestrians (which, along with cyclists, are the most difficult things
to identify) dressed in white were lane markings.
The system also needed a way to judge distances between the car and
other objects. One approach would be to mimic the binocular vision of
humans by combining images from two cameras. But Dr. Shashua rejected
that because of the cost.
As part of his general computer-vision research, Dr. Shashua had found
that the importance of binocular vision for humans declines with
distance. "You can drive a car with one eye," he said, "although it's
not very comfortable at first."
One-eyed driving is possible because the brain can judge the proximity
of moving objects by their increasing or decreasing size on the eye's
retina. For his digital invention, Dr. Shashua adopted the concept.

Collaborating with big auto-parts suppliers and the automakers
themselves, MobilEye is developing various car systems. Dr. Shashua
expects one of the early applications to be a camera that warn drivers
if they are wandering within their lane on the highway. If a turn
indicator is not operating and the camera detects that the car is moving
out of its lane, an electronically generated rumble will sound as a
warning.

Later, he anticipates that the systems will detect imminent collisions,
sound warnings and try to reduce the chance of injury by taking steps
like locking seat belts.

Two cars recently introduced only in Japan incorporate some of these
ideas. A two-camera system in the Subaru Legacy warns of dangerous
situations. One version of the Honda Inspire (which strongly resembles
the Accord) uses a single camera to adjust the steering automatically if
the car begins wandering within a lane.

Cameras, however, are unlikely to replace radar altogether.
"Radar has the ability to measure distances very accurately," said Karl
Naab, the head of intelligent sensor development at the BMW Group. "The
camera has the advantage of being able to detect road surfaces and to
see the white lines. It's also difficult, in some cases, for radar to
identify different types of objects."

In North America, truckers rather than regular motorists may become the
first drivers to benefit from in-car camera systems. East West Express,
a trucking company based in Calgary, Alberta, is testing a safety system
that uses the EyeQ chip.
Thomas deWaal, the company's president, said he was so impressed with
the results that his plans now go beyond outfitting all 55 of his
trucks. He has started a separate company to build and market the
systems, which use the camera to gather data about drivers' habits as
well as provide immediate safety warnings.

"This job is not worth dying for," he said. "There is substantial room
in the trucking industry for improvements in safety."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/19/technology/circuits/19next.html?ex=1077771600&en=7271e99c000124e5&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

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