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Analog Devices and Jungo monitor vehicle safety

Thu, Feb 13, 2020

Analog Devices will develop a time-of-flight (ToF) and 2D infra red (IR) –based camera, using Jungo’s Co-driver software to enable driver and in-cabin monitoring in vehicles.

The system will monitor vehicle occupants for levels of drowsiness and distraction by observing head and body position as well as eye gaze. It is also expected to enable smart vehicle interaction based on face, body, and hand gestures and offer a facial recognition capability that identifies individuals and gives them access to features such as infotainment personalisation, personalised services, and ridesharing payments.

3D ToF is a type of scannerless light detection and ranging (lidar) that uses high power optical pulses in durations of nanoseconds to capture depth information (typically over short distances) from a scene of interest. Analog Devices specialises in products and solutions that enhance the capabilities of 3D ToF systems, including processing, laser drivers and power management, development boards and software/firmware to implement 3D ToF solutions.

Jungo’s Co-driver software uses deep learning, machine learning, and computer vision algorithms to detect, in real-time, the head and body position of the driver from cameras.  It also supports in-vehicle full detection technology with functions such as counting of the number of occupants, detection of seat belt wearing or detection or observing of critical medical conditions.

“Jungo’s Co-driver monitoring algorithms are used by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to keep their drivers and passengers safe and develop innovative use cases that understand an occupant’s state while in the vehicle,” said Ophir Herbst, CEO, Jungo. “We are delighted to collaborate with Analog Devices to make vehicles smarter and enable OEMs to comply with regulations and innovate in their next-generation vehicles by using our algorithms and ADI’s leading ToF technology.”

Jungo Connectivity was founded in 2013 as an automotive software divestiture from Cisco Systems. The company focuses on in-cabin driver monitoring.

http://www.analog.com

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XMOS claims to lower AI cost and raise the performance bar

Thu, Feb 13, 2020

Artificial intelligence (AI), digital signal processing (DSP), control and I/O are delivered in a single device, the xcoer.ai, which XMOS claims is the world’s lowest cost, most flexible AI processor.

Single device prices for the xcore.ai crossover processor start from $1.It is architected to deliver real-time inferencing and decision making at the edge, as well as signal processing, control and communications. It can be used by electronics manufacturers to integrate high-performance processing and intelligence economically into products.

According to XMOS, xcore.ai is a new generation of embedded platform. It has fast processing and neural network capabilities to enable data to be processed locally and actions taken on-device within nanoseconds. It can interpret data without communication with the cloud and delivers the performance of an applications processor with the ease-of-use of a microcontroller, enabling embedded software engineers to deploy every different class of processing workload on a single multi-core crossover processor, says XMOS.

For example, an xcore.ai embedded smoke detector can build an intelligent picture of an emergency which can be fed directly to emergency services to improve accuracy and speed of response. For example, a smoke detector could use radar and imaging to identify whether there are people in a building and, if so, determine how many, where they are located and use voice interfaces to communicate with those inside, while vital sign detection could identify whether they are breathing.

It is fully programmable in C, with specific features such as DSP and machine learning accessible through optimised c-libraries. It supports the FreeRTOS real-time operating system and the TensorFlow Lite to xcore.ai converter, allows easy prototyping and deployment of neural network models.

For connectivity, there are up to 128 pins of flexible IO (programmable in software) and integrated hardware USB 2.0 PHY and MIPI interfaces for collection and processing of data from sensors.

The xcore.ai employs deep neural networks using binary values for activations and weights instead of full precision values, dramatically reducing execution time.

By using binary neural networks, xcore.ai delivers 2.6 to four times more efficiency than its eight-bit counterpart, XMOS reports.

Product demos of the xcore.ai will be available from June 2020.

http://www.xmos.com

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Aaeon designs compact board for edge computing

Wed, Feb 12, 2020

Designed for embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing, the PICO-WHU4 is the latest compact board available from Aaeon. It is built on the PICO-ITX form factor and powered by eighth generation Intel Core processors.

The PICO-WHU4 features the eighth generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7 and Celeron processors (formerly Whiskey Lake) with support for up to 16Gbyte of DDR4 RAM. The computing power, despite the compact PICO-ITX form factor, allows the PICO-WHU4 to power AI and edge computing applications. It has a wide operating temperature range of 0 to 60 degrees C. It offers an I/O configuration designed to integrate with almost any embedded application, says Aaeon. There are two Ethernet ports, two HDMI ports, and four USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. The board also has two COM headers, supporting RS-232/422/485 serial port operation.

The PICO-WHU4 can be expanded with an M.2 slot providing support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. An mSATA/mPCIe slot can support expansions such as the AI Core X with Intel Movidius Myriad X.

Aaeon can also custom-configure the PICO-WHU4 to suit specific customer projects, helping to reduce development time and time-to-market.

The PICO-WHU4 is also available as a turn-key solution, the PICO-WHU4-SEMI compact embedded system. It has a compact chassis, which is described by Aaeon as easy to set up and deploy.

The PICO-WHU4 can be used in a variety of vertical markets, including smart retail and smart cities.

Established in 1992, Aaeon designs and manufactures professional intelligent IoT solutions. It provides industrial motherboards and systems, industrial displays, rugged tablets, embedded controllers, network appliances and related accessories, as well as integrated solutions. The company also has the hardware and services for premier OEM/ODMs and system integrators worldwide.

As an Associate Member of the Intel Internet of Things Solutions Alliance, Aaeon offers customised end-to-end services from initial product conceptualisation and board product development to mass manufacturing and after-sales service programs.

http://www.aaeon.com

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DC/DC converters simplify design of smart industrial applications

Tue, Feb 11, 2020

High efficiency at all loads, with a maximum value of 95 per cent is maintained byt eh L6983 38V/3.0A synchronous DC/DC converters, says STMicroelectronics.

They are integrated with synchronous MOSFETs on-chip to save external components and to simplify design.

The L6983 converters have low quiescent current of just 17 microA. Two variants, the low current consumption L6983C and the low-noise L6983N, are available. The L6983C enters pulse-skipping mode when the load current is below 0.6A while the L6983N, stays in PWM (pulse-width modulation) mode at all loads to minimise electromagnetic disturbances, making it suitable for noise-sensitive applications.

The L6983 converters have a wide input range from 3.5 to 38V, and are suitable for use over in 12 and 24V industrial bus-powered systems, battery-powered equipment, decentralised intelligent nodes such as smart-building controllers, and always-on devices including smart sensors. They can be ordered with 3.3V, 5.0V, or adjustable output voltage.

All L6983 converters have a ‘power-good’ output pin that can be used for power-up/power-down sequencing, enabling logic circuitry, or as a fault indicator. In addition, integrated feedback-loop compensation, over-voltage protection, and soft-start circuitry simplify the design of a complete power supply system. The switching frequency is programmable from 200kHz to 2.2MHz. Frequency spread-spectrum operation and external frequency synchronisation ease electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) compliance.

ST has also released the STEVAL-ISA208V1 evaluation board to help accelerate device selection and power-supply development using the L6983.

The L6983C and L6983N are in production now, packaged in 3.0 x 3.0mm QFN16 packages.

http://www.st.com/l6983-pr

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