Many newer cars have crash avoidance systems. Now, suppose you want one of those systems, but your car doesn’t have it. Do you have to buy a new car in order to get it? Well maybe not…we have Mark Medawar, from Mobileye, to explain their system to us. Mark, welcome to Goss’ Garage.  

MARK: Thanks for having me here today, Pat.

PAT: Alright, whadda got here?

MARK: Well, let me tell you little bit about Mobileye. Mobileye is the leader in collision avoidance systems. We make a product for the automobile industry; in fact about 90 percent of automobile manufacturers use our product. And then we also make an aftermarket product that can be retrofitted into any vehicle.  

PAT: Ok, now when you say any vehicle…old, new, doesn’t make any difference?

MARK: Old, new doesn’t make a bit of difference.

PAT: Ok, now what does this offer us?

MARK: It installs inside the vehicle, attaches to the windshield up near the rearview mirror. And it actually looks out using its vision sensor unit to do road scene interpretation. So in other words, we can do things like identify bicyclists, pedestrians that might be crossing the street. We can do cool things like identify lane markings. We can also provide you an alert for an impending forward collision. And also let you know if you’re approaching the vehicle ahead of you too closely. We’ve told and taught the system how to recognize human body parts and how to recognize bicyclists.    

PAT: Mark, now you mentioned that Mobileye reads lane markings. Tell us about that.  

MARK: That’s correct. So what we do is we identify road edges. We identify lane markings. They can be yellow lines, white lines, bots, dots…you name it, we identify it. And then what we’re doing is, 15 times a second, we’re measuring the distance between the edge of the tire and that lane marking or road edge, and we’ll give you can alert if you’re starting to drift out of your driving lane, and you’re not using your turn signal.

PAT: Alright, now the car ahead of me has stopped. What goes on here?

MARK: Well, the Mobileye system identifies the vehicle first, and then what it does – and think about how the human eye and the human brain works – as we approach something, that vehicle or that person starts to get larger.  We use that same type of vison system to actually understand that this car is getting closer, the object is getting larger, and we give you an alert at a certain point, to make sure you have plenty of room to stop before an impending collision.

PAT: I like that. Now one of the things that it doesn’t do: it doesn’t stop the car.

MARK: It will not stop the car. The system will give you what we call passive alerts. Audible, visual, and for those that are hard of hearing, and can even do a nice little seat vibrator, and vibrate the seat for you to alert you to an impending crash.

PAT: Do it yourself installation, or not recommended?

MARK: It’s not recommended. We prefer that you have it professionally installed. The Mobileye system is basically a one size fits all system on all size vehicles. And what we need to do is we need to tell the system how big the vehicle is that it’s being installed in. And we do that using a setup wizard using a computer that connects through a connection here on the Mobileye system.

PAT: I see, ok. Mark thank you. And if you have a question or comment, drop me a line, right here at MotorWeek.