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Autonomous Vehicles, New Mobility & the Built Environment

Improving Driving Today, While Building an Autonomous-Driving Future #CES2020

Using only the camera and processing power of an iPhone, Phiar overlays directions on a live video shown on a driver’s smartphone display. The Phiar solution also identifies objects, people, lane-markers, and more. Potential features of the Phiar app include lane departure warning and collision warning.

Founder and CEO, Chen-Pin Yu explains that they had to develop their own augmented reality tool kit because ARKit and ARCore do not work well with high-speed movements. The Phiar app blurs identifiable images, such as license plates and faces, on the device prior to sending data to the cloud.

Further, while on mobile networks, only location metadata is sent for location information. The transmission of higher bit rate data, such as images and video, only occurs when the phone connects to WiFi. Yu stresses that they take various measures to protect the privacy of the driver’s identity.

As more people adopt their free app, which is in beta, their machine learning back-end will effectively learn how to drive. Yu sees a future where their technology integrates directly into vehicles, heads up displays, and smart glasses.

[Added 1/20/21 – As predicted by Yu, at CES2021, Panasonic announced the integration of Phiar’s technology into its new augmented reality, heads up display. This display promises a more engaging experience by using eye-tracking to place important information directly into the driver’s line-of-sight.]

Author Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

By Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

Ken Pyle is Marketing Director for the Broadband Forum. The mission of this 25+-year-old non-profit “is to unlock the potential for new markets and profitable revenue growth by leveraging new technologies and standards in the home, intelligent small business, and multi-user infrastructure of the broadband network.”

He is also co-founder of Viodi, LLC and Managing Editor of the Viodi View, a publication focused on the rural broadband ecosystem, autonomous vehicles, and electric aviation. He has edited and produced numerous multimedia projects for NTCA, US Telecom and Viodi. Pyle is the producer of Viodi’s Local Content Workshop, the Video Production Crash Course at NAB, as well as ViodiTV. He has been intimately involved in Viodi’s consulting projects and has created processes for clients to use for their PPV and VOD operations, as well authored reports on the independent telco market.

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