The global #automotive industry looks set on a collision course with transport #safety agencies in a standoff which can only resolve itself by #OEMs specifying better and higher performing #DMS which understands human behavior. Shown is the 2024 CHERY #Tiggo 7 Pro, which is a decent #SUV from China, and features both electronic instrument cluster and center console display. The invitation to the driver to take their eyes off the road and look at the center display or information-heavy cluster is obvious. This reflects a general trend, for OEMs to install large HD displays, coupled with the preference to remove physical buttons and switches in favor of software-defined touchscreens, or #shytech controls, all of which distract from the driving task.
In most cases the OEM strategy is to design the #cockpit, and then bolt-on the lowest performing DMS to mitigate distraction, which just ends up infuriating the driver with random beeping from a system which cannot be turned off. Shown here, Chery has specified a DMS to mitigate distraction, but the DMS is terrible. Noted in a review of this vehicle in Drive: "A driver distraction monitor that actively distracts the driver – by beeping, and flashing a warning on the dashboard they need to take their eyes off the road to look at – completely misses the mark in our books." Quite.
DMS supply in China is dominated by surveillance companies, not specialist automotive DMS suppliers and the tendency to procure staggeringly cheap #driver #monitoring software that barely works shows up in videos such as this one (Link: https://lnkd.in/e5VJDtkQ) where exasperated reviewers simply tape over the DMS camera to shut the system up. Incredibly this technique solves the nag problem, but at the expense of all the safety properties of DMS being lost.
These problems will only get worse as OEMs are forced to mitigate not just visual distraction, but #cognitivedistraction too. Also on the horizon is a global shift to mitigate impaired driving. So, the introduction of testing for #drowsy #distracted and #impaired driving will either result in procurement of higher performing DMS, or with continued low-cost and low-performance DMS that infuriates drivers.
The resolution is shown by BMW Group, which has designed the entire cockpit #userexperience for its #NeueKlasse platform through the lens of #humanfactors, and clearly intends to use head pose and eye gaze signals to provide value-added features in the digital cockpit. #NCAP compliance is effortless for such a sophisticated system.
The lesson for OEMs is to procure high performance DMS which understands human behavior in the cockpit and to work out new features which use it. The cockpit is the battleground ahead, not automated driving.
The May 2024 edition of Semicast's market report "ADAS & Automotive Vision-based Driver Monitoring Systems" is available for purchase. Message me for a copy of the sales brochure and sample pages for the study. My inbox is open.
