Immervision, Co-Founder & VP Technology, Patrice Roulet Fontani discussed occupant monitoring system trends with AutoVision News. 

For the inaugural In-Cabin show in Brussels, Immervision VP Technology, Patrice Roulet Fontani, sat down with Carl Anthony of AutoVision News to discuss the latest in-cabin monitoring system trends for automotive vision systems.

With the increased concern with driver and occupant safety, the automotive industry is trying to combine must have automotive safety with an innovative user experience binging, comfort, well-being and ‘infotainment’.  These trends are leading to growing demand for wide-angle lenses and cameras in the interior of vehicles. This in turn leads to a centralized architecture approach to monitor the cabin’s complete interior with a single camera, including both the driver and passengers in the back seat. Using a single camera has several benefits, such as minimizing the impact on the interior design, the overall system cost and the required computation power to process the sensor images. 

This approach means a growing need for high quality and compact cameras that capture a wide field of view with the appropriate pixel resolution. And Immervision is meeting that need with our high-precision Panomorph wide-angle technology that can cover the entire cabin. Not only do they offer extended coverage, Immervision camera and lenses are capable of meeting the highly specialized need to handle the wide variety of natural and artificial lighting conditions found in automobiles throughout the day and night.

Originally In-Cabin monitoring cameras were primarily focused on the driver, but lately manufacturers are using our wide-angle cameras to capture the entire interior of the car with more pixels offering better image quality. 

The logical questions manufacturers ask are how do you extend what you do well for the driver to the entire cabin? And, how do you make it as unobtrusive as possible? 

Immervision has the answer. Combining  wide angle optical elements with Immervision’s Smart Pixel Management technology, our camera is capable of magnifying specific area(s) of the image and to capture more details where it matters for the application. A single camera can then bring the required resolution for critical driver monitoring, such as gaze tracking, and still capture the entire cabin. Because of Immervision’s decades of design expertise and the fact that we were the first to design a wide-angle phone camera, not only do we know how important it is to have small, non-intrusive cameras, we have the experience designing, creating and implementing them.

Part of Immervision’s experience is also one of our most unique aspects – the InnovationLab. The InnovationLab  allows us to draw upon our multidisciplinary expertise to create an end-to-end solution that is adapted to each clients particular needs. 

What’s Immervision’s latest With Occupant Monitoring? 

And as for what’s new, check out Immervision’s latest new white paper “Freeform wide-angle camera lens enabling mitigable distortion” that shows, among other things, the freeform components we have had the expertise of since 2005, simply allow us to offer you one of the best occupant monitoring systems. We are also working on increased performance of camera and lenses in low-light, which is increasingly important for in-cabin monitoring. We already have such technology deployed for the commercial drone industry.

Listen to the Full Interview with Car Anthony of AutoVision News