Recently, NXP Semiconductors and Momenta, a Chinese autopilot software solution provider, announced that they will jointly develop a vehicle-level driver monitoring solution (DMS) to improve road safety. The solution will provide the foundation for the development of driver attention monitoring technology and help automakers meet the requirements of the next-generation New Car Assessment Program (NCAP).

DMS is inseparable from the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and is critical to the development of L3 to higher levels of autonomous driving. This system uses deep learning algorithms to monitor and detect driver attention through visual techniques and to provide collision warnings when necessary. The EU New Car Safety Assessment Association has also decided to include the driver monitoring system as a major safety function in its new car evaluation procedures by 2020. It is predicted that by 2026 the market size of the industry is expected to exceed $1 billion.

NXP's partnership with Momenta will combine the high-performance, low-power architecture of the NXP Open Vision Platform (S32V2) with Momenta's deep learning software and technology to optimize, compress and accelerate deep neural networks, makes it possible to run efficiently on an automated DMS embedded platform.

Kamal Khouri, NXP's vice president and general manager of the ADAS product line, said: "The integrated hardware accelerator in the NXP S32V2 platform is ideal for deep neural network processing, It helps customers reduce costs by reducing CPU usage and saving computing resources and providing more performance support for other visual processing tasks in the car. The combination of Momenta's deep learning software and the NXP S32V2 platform will provide a powerful solution for DMS applications.”