Eyes on the Road

This article presents an overview of the EyeQ silicon chip developed by Jerusalem-based company Mobileye. The company has been designing hardware and training software algorithms to help vehicles detect and avoid other vehicles. In a major advance, the company has been able to shrink its Advanced Driving Assist System to fit on a single silicon chip it calls EyeQ. When wired to a camera, the system offers superior cruise control, keeps its vehicle in lane, recognizes traffic signs, and can automatically brake for pedestrians and other dangerously close vehicles. The company, which was founded by Amnon Shashua, a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has already sold 20 million of its chips. The advantage of having so many of them already traveling the world’s highways extends beyond the immediate safety they provide. Mobileye is mining the data those chips collect to create a high-definition mapping system that will work with real-time data to help vehicles navigate and eventually become fully autonomous.