i3 - November/December 2018 - 23

between three and six cameras inside the
car" to track all occupants, Alaoui says.
He expects the first cars with three cabin
cameras to be in dealerships next year,
and next-generation cars to include as
many as seven cabin cameras.
The company's demonstration vehicle
at CES 2019 will contain 10 cameras,
Alaoui notes.
At least one driver-facing camera is a
necessity in any Level 3 self-driving car,
like the CT6, says Christian Reinhard,
vice president and head of customer
projects at Elektrobit, a supplier of
embedded and connected software and
services for the automotive industry,
based in Erlangen, Germany. Level 3
requires the car to cede control to a
human under certain conditions, and
the camera confirms that a person is
piloting. However, "you can really do a
lot with the camera," Reinhard proclaims. "You can even detect the heart
rate of the passengers using the camera,
and other health data." And this can
lead to a variety of health applications
inside the car, he adds.
Indeed, emotion-recognition and
physiology monitoring are popular
subjects among automotive user experience designers now, says Jacek
Spiewla, user-experience manager of
advanced development at Mitsubishi
Electric Automotive America in
Northvale, MI, which makes driver
monitoring systems for automakers.
But scant attention has been paid to
"what are we actually going to do with
this information. You can't ultimately
determine whether somebody is distracted from the driving task," he says.
There can be indications, "but I really
don't know whether you're spacing out
or not," he contends.

ID'ING WHO'S WHO AND
WHAT'S WANTED

Also at CES 2018, Rinspeed AG - a
Swiss car design firm - unveiled its
Snap "skateboard and pod" self-driving

C TA . t e c h / i 3

concept car with another way to identify
the vehicle's passengers and conform it
to them: four iris scanners in dropdown screens supplied by Gentex Corp.
The biometrics technology identifies
each person and personalizes the seat
position, HVAC controls, streaming
audio and other settings according to
user-determined presets. In addition, it
facilitates secure access to cloud-based
work files or e-commerce.
For in-cabin monitoring, "the holy
grail would be one camera that does
everything," says Craig Piersma, director
of marketing at Gentex in Zeeland, MI.
"That's just not as easy as it sounds."
On the other hand, VSI Labs' Magney
says, people are generally unwilling to be
watched by a camera. "I'm a little leery of
that whole approach, frankly," he adds.
A further possibility is identifying a
driver or passengers by their voice pattern
to customize the in-cabin experience, says
Daniel Sisco, director of cockpit systems
at Renesas Electronics America Inc., in
Milpitas, CA. On-screen user-interface
choices could be fewer or greater depending on the audience. "That's well within
reach technically," he says.

Fingerprint identification of drivers is
coming, too, and ultimately augments
both computer vision and voice biometrics in self-driving cars, says Sunil
Thomas, vice president of automotive at
semiconductor maker Synaptics Inc., in
San Jose, CA. "We think a fingerprint
sensor is the entry point," Thomas says.
To begin with, it could be put on the
vehicle's "engine start" button for theft
deterrence and to enable user-defined
functions - and he expects this to be on
the market in 2020.
Fast forward five years, and Thomas
foresees voice interactions extending
outside the vehicle, as well - cars in
effect listening to and conversing with
pedestrians. "We have some experimental versions of that currently," he says.
"Technologies are there and capabilities are there," concludes Synaptics'
Thomas. But the auto industry must
"open its mind to think a little bit differently, to bring these technologies into
their cars faster," he declares. 

2019

CES 2019 See the latest in self-driving
cars and vehicle intelligence.

"Emotion-recognition and
physiology monitoring are
popular subjects
among automotive
user-experience
designers
now."
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

23
http://www.elektrobit.com http://www.CES.tech https://www.cta.tech/
i3 - November/December 2018

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