Swiss Car Camera Uses AI To Detect Pedestrians 100 Times Faster

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) A car camera has been developed in Switzerland that will recognise obstacles 100 times faster than previous driver-assistance systems.

• Português pt Câmera de carro suíça usa IA para detectar pedestres 100 vezes mais rápido Read more: Câmera de carro suíça usa IA para detectar pedestres 100 vezes mais rápido

Do you want to read our weekly top stories? Subscribe here .

In the future this technology, developed by researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH), will help cars to brake in time if a pedestrian suddenly runs into the road.

“It's a major breakthrough,” Davide Scaramuzza told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA. The IT researcher developed the system with his colleague Daniel Gehrig. It was presented in a study published on Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

+ The ethics of artificial intelligence

Driver-assistance systems can already warn drivers of obstacles or initiate emergency braking. However, these systems are not yet fast and reliable enough.“They still need to be significantly improved if they are to be used in autonomous vehicles where there is no human behind the wheel,” said Scaramuzza.

Such systems work with standard cameras that take 30 photos per second, he explained. In other words, one image every 33 milliseconds. To reliably detect a pedestrian or car and initiate a braking manoeuvre, these cameras require at least three images, which brings the total time until the braking manoeuvre begins to 100 milliseconds.“Our system makes it possible to reduce this time to less than one millisecond,” said Scaramuzza.

In theory, one way to improve this would be to use a high-speed camera that shoots significantly more images per second. However, such a camera would require enormous computing power, the researchers explained in the study.

That is why they used so-called event cameras. Just like the human eye, these cameras look for things that change quickly. Instead of constantly taking photos, event cameras only take a photo when something moves suddenly. However, according to the researchers, these cameras have their own drawback: they do not register slow movements reliably.

This is where Scaramuzza and Gehrig came in. They developed a camera that records 20 images every second combined with an event camera and artificial intelligence (AI). The AI was trained to recognise certain obstacles, such as other cars or pedestrians, in the images from the first camera. Meanwhile, another AI system analysed the data from the event camera, which it used to predict what the conventional camera would see.

However, it could be some time before the new camera is used on the road.“It can take many years to get from 'proof of concept' to crash tests and finally launching,” said Scaramuzza. However, they have handed over the technology to a company and made the software publicly available so that other companies can also use it.

Computers are proving capable of performing tasks that require human intelligence and to influence our decisions. Should we be letting them?

Adapted from German by DeepL/kp

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look
here , and if you have feedback on this news story please write to
... .

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.

I consent to the use of my data for the SWI swissinfo newsletter.

• Is AI going to help or hurt us?

This content was published on May 30, 2024 Switzerland's average salt consumption is around 75% above the recommended five grams per day, according to a new study.

This content was published on May 30, 2024 Switzerland's finance ministry has fined UBS bank CHF50,000 after employees allegedly failed to report red flags of money laundering over several years.

This content was published on May 30, 2024 Switzerland received 430 requests for the extradition of criminals last year, an increase of over a quarter compared to 2022.

This content was published on May 30, 2024 The Swiss parliament is calling on the government to amend legislation so that small-scale snail breeding facilities on farms can be authorised.

This content was published on May 30, 2024 A cheesemaker in Steinerberg has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after seven people died after eating listeria-contaminated cheese.

This content was published on May 30, 2024 Switzerland has strongly condemned Hamas' recent rocket fire on Israel and Israel's attacks on a camp for displaced people in Rafah.

This content was published on May 30, 2024 Despite the difficult economic situation in 2020, both incomes and wealth continued to grow on average in Switzerland.

This content was published on May 29, 2024 Foreign students at ETH Zurich and EPFL may soon have to pay at least three times as much as Swiss students in tuition fees.

This content was published on May 29, 2024 The KlimaSeniorinnen association (the Climate Senior Women) is urging the Swiss government to respect the European court's recent decision.

This content was published on May 29, 2024 By 2028, there will only be 600 post offices in Switzerland, with 2,000 serviced locations.

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at ... .

MENAFN30052024000210011054ID1108277590