Automotive Engineering - October 2021 - 20

Making UX easy on
THE EYES
Mercedes-Benz pioneered Faurecia IRYStec's display technology on the MBUX Hyperscreen launched on the 2021 E-Class.
Faurecia IRYStec combined physiology and image processing to create uniquely
personalized high-fidelity screen displays, as pioneered by Mercedes' MBUX.
The company's founder explains.
by Lindsay Brooke
T
he vital concept of personalized vision has
been around since the 13th century, allegedly
when the first eyeglasses appeared in Italy. It
took nearly another 500 years for American
inventor Benjamin Franklin to create bifocal lenses. If
he'd had a glimpse into the future, the forward-thinking
Franklin may have wondered why, with electronic
display screens dominating 21st century life, the ability
to deliver eye-friendly displays customized to the user's
own vision had been largely neglected.
That development came in 2015 when Tara Akhavan,
an entrepreneurial Montreal-based computer engineer,
completed her initial proof-of-concept for what became
the world's first software platform using perception and
physiology to optimize the user experience (UX) of display
systems. Akhavan founded a company, IRYStec
Software, to take her idea to market. Mobility applications
soon became a focus, and with the help of foresighted
investors and Tier-1 supplier Faurecia (whose
Faurecia Clarion Electronics group acquired IRYStec in
2020), Akhavan's pioneering technology entered production
in the MBUX Hyperscreen fitted in the 2021
Mercedes-Benz E-Class convertible.
IRYStec provides a software-development kit that
OEMs integrate into their processing unit and use the
20 October 2021
amibient-light information supplied, into the CAN bus, Akhavan explained
in an interview with SAE Media. It's a complete software solution
that enables the personalization of the display according to the driver's
vision and the ambient light. The plug-n-play technology is adaptable to
all types and sizes of in-vehicle display, she said. It offers up to 30% better
perceived brightness and contrast and up to 30% energy savings and
reduced thermal heating, compared with alternative systems, she added.
Beyond multiple potential applications in the mobility space, the
technology can be applied to any electronic UX display and digital
screen, including Times Square-sized billboards. For customers concerned
about processing power and bandwidth, Faurecia IRYStec, as
the company is officially known, also has a hardware version of the
product - a FPGA ASIC (field-programmable gate array; applicationspecific
integrated circuit) that can be provided to customers as part
of the screen Faurecia sells. It's aimed at customers whose vehicles
may have limited processing units.
" I was a second-year Ph.D student at the Vienna University of
Technology working on the intersection of 3D displays, HDR [high
dynamic range] displays and how visual performance happens in the
eye between physiology and computer vision, " Akhavan recalled. " I
had a vision - to bring perception into the camera-to-display industry
- but my prof did not consider it doable within a Ph.D scale. At a conference
in Greece, I pitched the idea and it was dumb luck: a young
guy who didn't appear to be an investor approached me in the coffee
break. He asked if I'd thought about doing a start-up with my idea. "
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
MERCEDES-BENZ

Automotive Engineering - October 2021

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