Automated Automotive Eyes

A Third Eye In Your Car Can Save Your Life

In an ideal motoring world, Amnon Shashua acknowledges, there would be no need for the EyeQ chip, a processor that analyzes signals from automobile-mounted cameras to warn drivers of potential collisions or other dangerous situations.

"If you're very vigilant and very alert, you don't need a thing to help you," said Dr. Shashua, the chairman and chief scientist of MobilEye, a company based in the Netherlands that produces EyeQ. "Your visual processing is much better than any computer."

I disagree there -- in a perfect world, people wouldn't be driving at all. Yes, it's true that humans currently have better vision processing systems than any computer, and the intelligence to go with it. But most of the dangers inherent in driving come from human error -- fatigue, confusion, anger, and so on and on.