Seeing Machines and Devant to enhance transport safety

Seeing Machines announces collaboration with Devant to accelerate machine learning capabilities as regulatory deadlines approach. 

Seeing Machines is a computer vision technology company that designs AI-powered operator monitoring systems to improve transport safety. 

The company develops and licenses proprietary eye-tracking technology to automotive manufacturers, underpinned by bespoke AI that monitors driver attentiveness.

Its driver and occupant monitoring system (DMS/OMS) technology is powered by Machine Learning networks, which must be trained and validated using large sets of high-quality data.

This collaboration brings together Seeing Machines' 20+ years of experience and access to human behavioural insights with Devant's specialist rendering capabilities.

Utilising Devant, the partnership leaves Seeing Machines positioned to accelerate the development and training of its Machine Learning networks that underpin its advanced DMS and OMS solutions.

Seeing Machines' move to incorporate Devant's advanced synthetic data into its DMS development flow is part of a larger Digital Engineering initiative.

The initiative is critical to the company achieving market-leading development efficiency to meet the growing demand for more in-cabin, driver and occupant monitoring capabilities as new transport safety regulation deadlines approach.

The successful incorporation of computer-generated synthetic data follows Seeing Machines' research and development of a realism taxonomy considering all system attribute and noise factors (i.e. human appearance and behavioural variations, optical, electronic, and vehicle cabin environment), impacting the real-world fidelity of data.

This research and development were ultimately used to augment the development, training and eventually validate its in-cabin AI vision software.

Seeing Machines' scientific approach to validate what makes a computer-generated human "real enough" in practice, combined with Devant's capability and focus on solving in-cabin human synthesis challenges, is unlocking a source of synthetic data suitable for accelerated development of in-cabin sensing technology. 

It also satisfies Seeing Machines' demanding requirements to achieve safety outcomes and uphold its reputation for delivering real-world reliability and performance.

Paul McGlone, CEO at Seeing Machines, says: "With a wave of new transport safety regulations coming into force around the world, it is increasingly vital for the advanced Machine Learning networks that underpin our AI-driven technology to access reliable data of the highest quality, accuracy and realism."

"Our mission to get everyone home safely has never been more relevant." 

"That is why we have partnered with Devant, a leader in its field, to help deliver on our promise of providing our customers with bespoke, mission-critical solutions that enhance driver safety."

"Devant is uniquely able to capture and translate the subtlest movements and human behaviours, producing a granularity of detail that has, until now, been impossible to simulate." 

"This unique approach to data creation will allow our Machine Learning to cover a broader range of human activity, improving on delivery times without compromising quality," says McGlone. 

Richard Bremer, CEO and Co-Founder at Devant, adds: "We pride ourselves on delivering best in class synthetic data, combining unparalleled 3D human animation, computer graphics and engineering to deliver millions of images and animations." 

"We are pleased to be partnering with an innovative market leader like Seeing Machines, which is delivering a step change in transport safety by harnessing its class leading DMS technology," says Bremer. 

Seeing Machines uses machine vision technology to monitor driver behaviours under a full spectrum of demanding lighting conditions, including sunglasses. 

This data is then processed to interpret driver attention state, focus, drowsiness and impairment levels to provide critical inputs in real-time to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and vehicle cockpit, comfort and convenience systems.

With DMS set to become mandatory worldwide this decade, Seeing Machines has nearly 900,000 cars on the road today. It features its safety technology underpinned by 15 expanding automotive programs for ten individual global OEMs.