Aug. 3, 2017—Nexar, provider of a free safety AI dashcam app and the world's first vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication network, introduced the first driving safety application leveraging the Qualcomm Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine (NPE) SDK (software development kit). The Nexar app will now be able to provide advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), including unprecedented real-time forward-collision warnings and other life-saving features, to hundreds of millions of vehicles whose drivers own Android phones or have Android-based in-vehicle systems.
Until now, Android devices were incapable of running AI processes internally, efficiently, and in real-time, making them unsuitable for driver assistance. Thanks to the Snapdragon NPE SDK, Nexar now can efficiently run its AI processes directly on users' endpoint devices, which are powered by premium tier Snapdragon Mobile Platforms, and analyze a driving scenario 15 times per second. This allows Nexar to bring the company's full range of safety services, that have already helped lead to a 24 percent reduction in car collisions within its network, to all drivers.
The Snapdragon NPE SDK is designed to allow deep learning and AI to be executed directly on the data from Snapdragon 800 and 600 tier Android mobile devices, instead of on the cloud, bringing the revolution of AI to edge devices, and providing a wealth of new opportunities for software developers in the automotive space.
"The Snapdragon NPE SDK unlocks critical computing power with exceptional battery efficiency, opening the door to mission-critical AI automotive applications on the Snapdragon mobile platform," said Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz, co-founder and CTO of Nexar. "With this newfound ability to run AI efficiently on Android phones, we are one step closer to making safety a commodity available in all cars, both old and new, and ridding the world of car collisions."
