OMRON Corporation (Headquarters: Kyoto, Japan; President & CEO: Yoshihito Yamada [TSE: 6645]) announced today the development of the world’s first onboard sensor featuring the “driver concentration sensing technology,” which combines OMRON’s proprietary image sensing technology with state-of-the-art AI (time-series deep learning*) to sense the driver’s various motions and conditions and thereby determine if he/she is in a condition suitable for safe driving. With a view toward realizing collision-free automated driving and other advanced driver assistance systems, OMRON has dedicated itself to making our motorized society safer and more secure by innovating relationships between people and machines.
In recent years we have seen multiple cases of accidents where the driver’s condition changed suddenly and thus made it difficult to continue driving, as well as a growing demand for development of technologies that can assist safe driving and, eventually, automated driving. Against this background, OMRON’s development team has been working on safe control technology for vehicles that determines whether the driver is in a condition suitable for safe driving.
OMRON’s “driver concentration sensing technology” uses an onboard camera for real-time detection of whether the driver is in a suitable condition for driving. A combination of OMRON’s proprietary high-precision image sensing technology and state-of-the-art “time-series deep learning” AI technology, this innovative system makes it possible to control a vehicle based on the driver’s condition by, for example, safely switching between automated and manual driving and safely bringing the vehicle to a stop if something happens to the driver, thereby effectively assisting safe driving and enhancing the safety of our motorized society. OMRON aims to have an onboard sensor featuring this technology adopted for such applications as automated driving vehicle models to be released from 2019 to 2020.
