Freescale and CogniVue Partner to Enable Smart Cameras for Mainstream Vehicles

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In a move intended to improve automotive safety systems, Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) is licensing Image Cognition Processing (ICP) intellectual property (IP) from CogniVue Corporation that will be incorporated into new processors for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Freescale will be the exclusive provider of this technology to the automotive market.

“With this exclusive combination of CogniVue’s unmatched imaging technology and Freescale’s automotive semiconductor expertise, automotive OEMs will be able to bring smart cameras to market quickly and cost-effectively”

Freescale plans to offer new processors that bring Image Cognition Processing to automotive cameras later this year. Freescale licensed CogniVue’s APEX™ IP to enable vehicle cameras to sense the environment – determining the presence of an object and identifying it.

“Advanced driver assistance systems are becoming more and more sophisticated. And, while ADAS are already included on many luxury vehicle models, there is increasing demand to include them on higher-volume mainstream vehicles,” said Ray Cornyn, vice president of Freescale's Automotive MCU Division. “Today’s collision avoidance systems are typically enabled by digital signal processors or field-programmable gate arrays. Freescale is taking a different approach by integrating CogniVue’s Image Cognition Processing IP into our processors, providing massively parallel processing in small packages and with very low power consumption.”

CogniVue’s APEX Image Cognition IP

CogniVue offers fully programmable, parallel processing IP for intelligent imaging. Its products capture, analyze and render video and images for smart cameras used in automotive vision systems and smart video monitoring markets. In addition to capturing image and video information, CogniVue’s APEX technology enables extraction of application-specific information from a scene and interpreting the image data to make decisions or take actions based on the extracted data. With pattern recognition, detection and classification algorithms, smart cameras can detect objects and people around the vehicle and measure distance to alert the driver of an impending collision.

“With this exclusive combination of CogniVue’s unmatched imaging technology and Freescale’s automotive semiconductor expertise, automotive OEMs will be able to bring smart cameras to market quickly and cost-effectively,” said Simon Morris, CEO of CogniVue Corporation. “Freescale selected our APEX IP because of the cost/performance/size benefits it brings – they are able to do more with less die area and with lower power than other solutions available today.”

For more information about Freescale solutions for automotive electronics, visit www.freescale.com/automotive.

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Camera technology in vehicles

Front- and rear-facing cameras are integrated into a vehicle’s safety systems and help drivers avoid collisions. The growth of ADAS is, in part, being driven by legislation. According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 228 people die and about 17,000 people are injured annually in the United States due to backover accidents involving cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Backover accidents are the most common cause of off-road deaths involving children and vehicles, according to KidsandCars.org.

The NHTSA has proposed a rear-facing camera requirement to be phased in, with all vehicles having the feature by September 2014. Legislation for front-facing cameras, particularly with embedded pedestrian detection features, is likely to follow. European NCAP ratings will be heavily influenced by pedestrian detection functionality.

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor is a global leader in embedded processing solutions, providing industry leading products that are advancing the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets. From microprocessors and microcontrollers to sensors, analog integrated circuits and connectivity - our technologies are the foundation for the innovations that make our world greener, safer, healthier and more connected. Some of our key applications and end-markets include automotive safety, hybrid and all-electric vehicles, next generation wireless infrastructure, smart energy management, portable medical devices, consumer appliances and smart mobile devices.

The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing and sales operations around the world. http://www.freescale.com.

About CogniVue Corporation

CogniVue Corporation makes cameras smart by providing its customers with a comprehensive embedded vision processing platform combined with its best performance per mm2 per mWatt APEX processor technology in its first Image Cognition Processor (ICP) family, CV220X. CogniVue's vision processing software, tools and ICP chips are used in a wide range of smart camera applications such as automotive vision systems, face detection and recognition, gesture recognition, smart home monitoring/surveillance and other smart video monitoring applications. Founded in 2005, CogniVue is a privately held company headquartered in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada. For more information, visit http://www.cognivue.com.

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