Uri Tamir leads Mobileye’s Intelligent Mobility Solutions division in North America with responsibilities for growth, strategy, and operations. As general manager, he brings more than 20 years of experience in growing revenue, leading teams, and driving innovation, while overseeing Mobileye’s push for safer roads. With Mobileye, fleet managers have a solution to reach safe driver goals.
MWS: IN THE WORLD OF FLEET SAFETY TECHNOLOGY AND TELEMATICS, WHAT IS MOBILEYE AND WHAT PRODUCTS DO YOU OFFER?
TAMIR: Mobileye is a market leader in the development and deployment of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving technologies. By leveraging industry-leading expertise in computer vision, machine learning, mapping and data analysis, Mobileye innovations enable safer driving through premier ADAS and provide valuable insights for a range of companies and service providers to enhance mobility infrastructure. With active relationships across many of the top OEMs, Mobileye technology has now gone into more than 150 million vehicles around the world.
Based on our experience with more than 50 of the world’s leading automakers, we’ve developed a suite of safety products tailored to fleet managers’ and companies’ needs. Our fleet-centric collision avoidance systems, like the Mobileye 8 Connect™, help prevent collisions, thereby reducing crash-related costs, and have been shown to improve driver performance, in real time. We do that by leveraging the same cutting-edge computer vision and AI technology that Mobileye has pioneered and perfected over hundreds of millions of miles driven and over 800 vehicle models on the market.
Our fleet-dedicated products, such as Mobileye 8 Connect™, Mobileye Shield+™, and Mobileye Fisheye, go beyond dash cams and video recording systems in that they prevent collisions before they occur. Using real-time alerts to the driver triggered by AI-powered vision sensors, Mobileye enables fleet managers to improve driver safety without the need to review mountains of data, invest in excess training, or record their drivers.
MWS: DOES MOBILEYE OFFER A PLATFORM THAT BRINGS ALL OF THE FEATURES OF ITS PRODUCTS INTO ONE OPERATING SYSTEM FOR REAL-TIME ALERTS AND REPORTING FUNCTIONS? WHAT INSIGHTS ARE RECEIVED FROM THE DATA AND HOW DOES THIS BENEFIT THE FLEET OWNER?
TAMIR: Data can be a valuable asset to fleet managers, but in an era of data overload you have to be mindful to the type of data that you provide to the customer and how you communicate it. I believe that data without actionable insights is just noise for the fleet and safety managers. At Mobileye, we offer an optional Mobileye Connect Platform that integrates with our fleet ADAS solutions and can be used by the fleet as a safety management tool.
With the Mobileye Connect Platform, the fleet manager gets unique insights into the actual driving patterns of the employees who drive their vehicles. Does the driver use the turn signal before changing lanes? Do they keep a safe distance or aggressively tailgate? Who had a near-miss with a vehicle or a pedestrian and where? All these are the types of questions to which, for the first time, fleets deploying our collision avoidance warning systems can get a simple and direct answer. The Mobileye Connect Platform goes beyond the standard harsh brake and other gyro alerts to offer real insights into the driver’s behavior, drawn into a single safety score. On top of that, the fleet manager can use the tool as a way to track the vehicles’ location, measure the vehicles’ utilization rate, engine idle time, and more.
MWS: WHAT ROLE DOES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) PLAY IN MOBILEYE’S PRODUCT OFFERINGS?
TAMIR: Across our products, we are using the cutting edge of neural network architectures and putting them into the real world. AI is a part of our DNA.
Our core camera-based computer vision system that forms the foundation of all our products has long been the most advanced AI-driven sensing system in the automotive industry. Our EyeQ™ systems-on-chip are custom designed to process safety-critical AI workloads. We use a rich database to train our camera systems for all our applications, from alert-based safety systems like the Mobileye 8 Connect through to our more advanced products.
Our computer vision algorithms are trained to watch the road like a human eye would, constantly scanning for obstacles and potential hazards. Unlike the human eye, though, our technology never becomes distracted or fatigued. For construction and utility employees driving long hours to the next worksite, it’s like having an extra eye, without the need to record in-cab.
The leading causes of accidents drive our collision avoidance alerts: speeding, fatigue, distraction, aggressive driving, and so on. We have designed our system to help reduce the most severe and common types of crashes and to mitigate the driving behaviors that are most likely to cause a crash. Our forward collision warning and pedestrian/cyclist collision warning aim to dramatically reduce fleet rear-end crashes and pedestrian strikes. Our lane departure warning aims to lower the risk of side swipe crashes caused by unintentional or un-signaled deviation from the lane. Our safe following time alert ensures that the driver will have sufficient reaction time by keeping a safe distance from the vehicle ahead. And our speed limit feature indicates to drivers whenever they are driving above the posted speed limit.
Mobileye 8 Connect and other fleet solutions are driver-centric systems and have been shown to improve drivers’ performance over time, helping to change their driving habits for the better.
MWS: HOW DOES MOBILEYE EMPOWER THE FLEET OWNER WITH A MIXED FLEET WANTING TO INCREASE ITS SAFETY PROTOCOL IN AN URBAN SETTING? HOW DO FLEET OWNERS GET STARTED WITH MOBILEYE?
TAMIR: What makes Mobileye collision avoidance so valuable to a mixed-fleet safety policy is that it can be retrofitted to nearly any type of vehicle. We work directly with fleets to match different alerts’ settings to the needs of drivers and managers based on the driving environment. For instance, what a manager deems a safe following distance can change depending on an urban or highway setting.
Our tech team calibrates and customizes each unit in order to maximize its effectiveness and allow fleets to set a uniform ADAS safety policy across all vehicles. While as many as 70% of drivers report disabling ADAS that comes standard in their cars, Mobileye technology is designed to remain active at all times and cannot be turned off or muted by drivers. What’s more, Mobileye collision avoidance systems do not tie into the engine or other systems physically, so there’s no chance of compromising other vehicle functions.
Motor vehicle collisions cost employers over $72 billion dollars a year, and costs per employee were highest in the trucking, construction, transit, and oil and gas extraction industries. Mobileye collision avoidance is a one-time cost and customers have reported a typical ROI of under a year, achieved by offsetting the costs related to collisions, including injuries, repairs, insurance premiums and legal fees.
MWS: CLOSING THOUGHT?
TAMIR: The life of a fleet manager has become exponentially more complex in the past years. Continuously rising collision costs, higher insurance and operation expenses, driver shortage in the industry and supply chain issues are just a fraction of the challenges the modern fleet manager faces today. Mobileye gives fleets a straightforward solution that starts working immediately to help them reach their driver safety goals: fewer collisions, improved operational performance, and sustainable results.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Mobileye is a global leader in collision avoidance and computer-vision artificial intelligence. With technology trusted by dozens of OEMs, Mobileye’s safety solutions aim to reduce collisions and improve driver performance for fleets across all industries through real-time, proactive alerts. Find out more here.
