Quarantine Tales: Day 7
I’m approaching the half-way point of my stay in Hotel Quarantine. Not that I’m counting the days, hours, or seconds of course.
The best advice I can come up with for someone who has to get through quarantine is to stay as active as possible, both mentally and physically. I am finding this daily journal particularly beneficial for channeling my thoughts in the right direction. My daily steps are also proving helpful in maintaining my energy levels and keeping me focused. I just wish that the scenery along the way was a little more varied. I’ve had more than my fill of the fifty shades of beige that cloak the walls and floor of my room!
Working through my notes from MINEXPO 2021 certainly keeps my brain ticking along as well. While it was clear at the show that the major mining industry OEMs have a strong digitization roadmap for their products, we talked to a lot of people who are trying to figure out the best way of integrating the latest computer vision and vehicle safety technologies in their existing equipment now.
It was to meet what we predicted would be a growing need for retrofitting older vehicles that we originally initiated the development of our VIA Mobile360 family of in-vehicle systems over five years ago. To begin with, we focused on leveraging over twenty years of graphics chip design experience and expertise to create SVS (Surround View System) technology for real-time 360-degree video capture, rendering, and recording applications that make it easier for operators to see everything that’s happening around their massive vehicles.
Although we received a lot of interest in our first VIA Mobile360 SVS system, we soon realized that surround view technology wasn’t in itself enough to meet customer requirements. As the next step, therefore, we focused on adding DMOD (Dynamic Moving Objection Detection) capabilities to the system so that it could automatically alert an operator whenever a person or other vehicle came too close to the vehicle.
To ensure that the system could detect people or objects in all weather and lighting conditions, we also integrated support for 77GHz mmWave radar and ultrasonic sensors using a process called sensor fusion. The culmination of these ongoing R&D efforts is the VIA Mobile360 Heavy Equipment Safety System that we unveiled at MINEXPO.
Although we have been greatly encouraged by the response we received to the system at the show, we are keenly aware that the launch marks just the start of the rollout process. Now’s the time to hit the ground running as we move on to the next stage of installing the system on the vehicles of our customers and optimizing it to meet their specific requirements.
