All Seeing Firm Sets Up Shop In Acton | Technology keeps drivers in line when they are drowsy
An Australian company has developed a system to alert drivers who start falling asleep or get distracted, and they’ve chosen Acton as their American beachhead.
Seeing Machines Ltd. of Canberra, Australia, makes computer vision systems that detect drivers becoming drowsy or when they are distracted from looking at the road.
They also have several other products based on the same technology: an eye testing machine that checks for many types of problems in a few minutes and software that lets users track peoples’ eye motions.
“The vast majority of high speed rear-end collisions often involve people who were asleep or distracted,” said Seeing Machines CEO Nick Cerneaz.
Eyes On The Road
The company’s system, Driver State Sensor, is wired into a vehicle’s system and includes an infrared light, a camera and software that monitor head and eye movement data to determine a three-dimensional individual baseline.
Once the baseline is established, the system can detect when sleep or distraction affects the driver and uses an audible alarm or vibrates the seat to alert the driver, according to Cerneaz.
“The great thing is they start the car and drive, and they don’t have to do anything differently because it’s automatic,” Cerneaz said.
Seeing Machines helps customers find the right positions in the vehicles for the system to work properly, according to Dean Croke, the company’s vice president of North American Auto Business.
Volvo, the Swedish car manufacturer, owns 13 percent of the company and plans to incorporate the system into its new commercial trucks.
The company’s customers include major auto makers and firms like Dycom Industries Inc. of Florida, which offers a variety of services to telecom companies. Dycom uses Seeing Machines technology in more than 10,000 vehicles their employees use when they’re out laying copper and fiber optic cables for companies like AT&T and Verizon.
Seeing Machines also has a product called faceLab, which is made with researchers in mind and monitors eye gaze and head movement of a user but needs no alarms.
The Universitat der Bundeswehr Munchen in Germany used faceLAB in designing dynamic road signs for Germany’s federal government.
The feedback gathered using faceLAB allowed the university to design signs that people could easily see while processing the necessary information on them.
Another of Seeing Machines’s technologies is called TrueField Analyzer, which it is in the process of unveiling. Using its software it can detect glaucoma and other eye diseases and problems like curtailed peripheral vision. The technology has already been approved the Federal Drug Administration.
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