18 August 2015

Canberra's Seeing Machines wins BRW most innovative medium company award

| Canfan
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Canberra founded and headquartered Seeing Machines has won BRW’s most innovative medium company award for 2015.

Seeing Machines, which was the only ACT company to make this year’s BRW most innovative list, specialises in technology that monitors drivers’ attention and alertness levels.

Over the past nine months Seeing Machines has focused on bringing the world’s first fleet-specific fatigue and distraction system to market.

From BRW:

Fleet drivers are required to be behind the wheel for long periods of time, staying alert and focused. With growing fleet transport demands, additional pressures are placed on drivers, often challenging their individual abilities and risking accidents that can rapidly unfold. Mobile-device use and microsleeps are two of the most common unsafe behaviours that impair a driver’s ability to react in time to potential road hazards.

Seeing Machines uses smart cameras and algorithms to track a driver’s face, eyes and eyelids to monitor attention / inattention and driver fatigue. Using the information captured by these devices, alertness and attention levels are measured, and real time feedback is provided to the driver.

Seeing Machines also provides the ‘last line of defence’ against fatigue and distraction, providing an in cabin stimulus (vibrating seat) and audible alarm when a driver has a fatigue or distraction event. The system also reports instantaneously back to a web application, providing fleet company management heightened visibility of their operations and driver fatigue levels, and thus their overall risk exposure.

Global trials have validated the effectiveness of the solution showing reductions in fatigue and distraction of greater than 80 per cent.

Seeing Machines has since signed a 15 year strategic alliance with Takata Corporation, an automotive industry leader in the supply of advanced driver safety systems to provide eye and face tracking capabilities as part of an integrated package of advanced driver safety systems.

With an annual turnover of $23 million, 122 employees and a listing on London’s Alternative Investment Market, the business has come a long way from its origins in an ANU research lab in the early 2000s. Congratulations to the Seeing Machines team.

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