SOME TOPIC AREAS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT REGARDING LANE DEPARTURE WARNING.
DISCLAIMER: The following points are expressions of my opinion in the topic area and should only be viewed as such.
Some perspective including general chronology. This timeline from year 1914 to year 2020 shows an approximate sequencing of relevant events.
Mobileye as a driver of LDW technology. If you want to understand how and why this technology is so important to the world in 2020, you should learn all that you can about Mobileye Vision Technology. However, it might be wise to first consider some of my perspective on the global rollout of automotive safety systems. Why? To understand the incredible significance of Mobileye to relatively recent global advanced safety systems, you should consider my perspective on pertinent transportation issues of global scope over the past fifty or so years. Consider these in the broader context of the general chronology that I presented just above.
Q: What year was Mobileye Vision Technology founded? Was this the original name?
Q: Why was the main location for the non-US based Mobileye headquarters so important as a technological base?
Q: What was going on with the US domestic automotive manufacturers just prior to this time regarding the Collision Avoidance Metrics Partnership (CAMP) congressional act and the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI)?
Q: What has been going on with regards to development of military leader-follower transport systems around this time?
Q: Which groups (e.g., California PATH) and institutes (e.g., the UMTRI) are leading trials with advanced transport systems around this time?
Q: How (if at all) have groups like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) been involved?
Q: What has been going on with the US automotive manufacturing parts supply units around this time?
Q: What has been happening with the domestic auto manufacturers' collective bargaining power base?
Q: Why would some of the largest automotive manufacturers in the world choose a company like Mobileye over US based companies like AssistWare Technologies and Iteris to establish their twenty-first century vision based safety systems?
Q: Which companies (if any) were collaborating with or using the technology of AssistWare and/or Iteris for production automotive lane departure warning systems around this time?
Q: What (if any) relevance is there in the papers which were published by Mobileye's chief technology researcher(s) in the field of image and vision processing prior to and during the establishment of the company?
Q: What is the significance to Mobileye's (potential) use of former Intel corporate scientists on their executive board towards implementation of the most advanced chip technologies?
Q: What is going on with the Intel Corporation around the turn of the century and, in general, with American high tech stocks? Are there any unexpected global changes driving significant stock price fluctuations?
Q: What (if any) agreements (e.g., working, development, etc.) were established between Mobileye and automotive OEMs/suppliers around the world during the early part of the twenty-first century?
Q: What is the importance in the establishment of early Mobileye locations around the United States and the significance in where/why/when those locations were chosen (e.g., Arizona, southern California, Michigan, etc.)?
Q: Which (if any) of those Mobileye locations are still open? How long were each of the US based Mobileye locations open and why is this significant?
Q: What is occurring with the USDOT Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) towards establishing basic operational requirements for lane departure warning systems in the late twentieth and/or early twenty-first century?
Q: What sort of usage requirements were being considered for proposed aftermarket LDW systems around this time?
Q: Where (if at all) were the preliminary aftermarket LDW systems manufactured by Mobileye originally sold in the United States?
No one is lying if everyone is telling the truth about LDW. Q: What sort of agreements (if any) did Mobileye enter into with companies like Delphi and Denso during the early part of the twenty-first century?
Q: What is significant about the major US automotive manufacturers (potentially) filing their own patent applications for lane departure warning technology in the early part of the twenty-first century, years after already having started working with Mobileye technology towards vehicle integration?
Q: What is the significance that Mobileye (likely) posted documents on its website around 2006 related to future GM and Ford production vehicles using Mobileye technology?
Consider the 2004 Automotive Congress held in Detroit, Michigan, where Mobileye Vision Technology is likely a primary forum presenter and what a monumental occurrence this is.
Mobileye as a beneficiary of LDW technology. Q: What were the academic institutions (if any) which formed affiliations with Mobileye either before or after its production systems started to be used by the largest and most powerful automotive manufacturers in the world?
Q: Why is it significant that General Motors received a special 'solid' from the US Government around 2008/2009 with a point in history that GM couldn't be held responsible for prior to?
Q: Is there anything else significant with the year 2008 as it relates to GM manufacturing vehicles incorporating LDW technology?
Delphi's 'circle of life'. Q: What is significant about the 2005 filed bankruptcy of Delphi which took about four years to complete as compared to a relatively short bankruptcy reorganization afforded to GM and Chrysler by the US Government several years later?
Q: What is significant about GM purchasing some of the Delphi 'leftovers' after the GM bailout/bankruptcy? How might this have been different had Delphi waited for the 2008/2009 US Government auto bailout/bankruptcy protection?
Q: Why is it significant that Delphi had posted documents on its website around 2009 that its LDW production system was based on Mobileye technology?
Corporate citizen or global strategist? Q: What is significant about BMW having (potentially) been involved with integrating Mobileye based LDW technology into their production vehicular and/or automotive systems?
Q: Did BMW have direct involvement with Mobileye? Did BMW have a system integrator?
Q: Did BMW have a vehicle system or subsystem supplier involved?
Q: Have there been any German automotive corporate troubles and/or bankruptcies which have occurred amongst suppliers to the larger German automotive manufacturers?
Q: How was Germany involved with the European Union's bailout of Greece? What sort of historical relationship does the United States have with Greece?
Intel and Mobileye, a 'match made in heaven'? Consider the purchase of Mobileye by the Intel Corporation, one of the most powerful semiconductor chip manufacturers in the world and US based.
Q: What year did the purchase of Mobileye by Intel occur?
Q: Could having a former Intel Corporation scientist working for your company ever be seen as a liability which might need to be circumvented through the purchase of Mobileye Vision Technology by the Intel Corporation?
Q: Think about the apparent 'optics' problems whose transparency might be better eliminated via an end-all purchase?
Q: Consider how and why this was/wasn't likely ‘over the top’ from the standpoint of purchasing a company whose market portfolio might not seemingly be in an area which would be in high demand as a partner for this powerful chip manufacturer?
Q: Did this purchase potentially prevent predatory practices against a common business interest? Was there more than one interest being protected?
Q: Consider any other advantages to having one of the world's preeminent semiconductor companies as your owner, particularly well into the twenty-first century where vision based systems are becoming the norm?
Q: What years did the different generations of the Mobileye EyeQ chip get released for production? Consider this during the development time frame from 2000 through 2007?
US capitalism for global tranquility at a cost. Q: What other US based corporations have taken up financial stakes in Israeli based companies, particularly in the past twenty-five years? Have any US based corporations established and/or supplemented their Israel based locations, particularly in the past twenty-five years?
Q: What (if any) steps has the US Government taken to (potentially) hide figures on US corporate investment in Israeli based companies from the American citizenry?
Q: How much has the US given to Israel in foreign aid in the past thirty years?
Q: How much has the US sold in advanced military systems to Israel (e.g., missile protection systems, etc.) in the past thirty years?
Q: Have there been any recent changes (e.g., over the last twenty-five years, in the last five years) to United States policies related to military spending, foreign policy, domestic/international fiscal policy, impacting countries which might be particularly friendly or unfriendly with Israel?
Q: How has the movement of the US Embassy to Jerusalem under the administration of President Trump benefitted the people of that country? How has it been detrimental for them?
Q: What are the countries around the world which were for the embassy move and which were against it? Which countries were neutral?
Q: What has the state of Israeli politics been like over the past twenty-five years? What about over the past five years?
Providing the right 'light' in vehicle safety. Q: What Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), Society of Automotive Engineer (SAE) standards, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards or other standards/rules/regulations are in place for vehicle and/or roadway lighting in the United States of America? Which (if any) are in place around the world?
Q: What has the USDOT published during the past thirty years related to roadway lighting, headlamp illumination, night time traffic control device visibility, etc.? What have other domestic groups or foreign government agencies published?
Q: What has Mobileye published in the area of night driving road scene vision processing or related? What has US higher education published in this area or a related area? What have publicly traded US auto manufacturers published in this area or a related area? What have non-US based auto manufacturers published in this area or a related area?
Q: What has been published in the area of automotive vision based safety system recognition of non-roadway surface traffic control devices (e.g., signs, etc.) or raised pavement markers?
Q: What advantages/disadvantages are there to using only chrominance analysis versus using both chrominance and luminance image processing for road scene vision?
Consider the group of four (two rows of two) images just below, the first three of which (upper left, upper right, lower left) show challenging illumination conditions. The fourth (lower right) shows just a small number of shades of yellow which might appear during camera imaging of yellow solid/broken longitudinal lane markers under relatively normal illumination conditions.
Q: Might a high dynamic range camera system be particularly effective in any of the above three difficult illumination road scene images? Might analysis of wavelengths outside of the human visible spectral range be required for thorough lane marker detection in any of the above three road scene images? Consider the same two questions but now for the images just below.
Q: For the image just above on the right side, what role (if any) might a vehicle navigation system potentially play in supporting lane boundary detection?
This website also shows many road scene images with superimposed forward and rearward projection lines.
Q: What was the accuracy for global positioning systems (GPS) back around 2008? How accurately does a GPS based auto navigation system's mapped vehicle position correlate to a vehicle's actual positioning on a roadway? How often are auto navigation system maps updated?
Q: What standards are in place (e.g., ISO) for lane departure warning systems? What year(s) were the standards released? How much time elapsed between the standards releases?
Q: How typical is it for there to be multiple standards released in a technological area such as this?
Q: In automotive camera based LDW safety systems, what happens when there are no detectable longitudinal lane markers distinguishing the boundary between a roadway surface and a non-roadway surface? What are the vision processing techniques which have been established for recognizing non-roadway surfaces?
Finally. Consider that for many years, Mobileye (likely) advertised vehicular outside mirror camera systems for sideview roadway vision. The automotive industry never (to my knowledge) incorporated these into their production vehicle safety systems but instead have (typically) gone with ultrasonic based transducers or radar for side object detection. Q: Why did the automotive industry (if it is indeed the case) never incorporate these side view cameras into their production LDW safety systems?
1) The US automotive manufacturers for the vast majority of the twentieth century were an industrial economic driver, with much of this country's domestic and international direction being dictated by the interests and welfare of the industry. Make no mistake about it, the automotive manufacturers know how to drive their needs in ways that most people (outside the industry and Washington D.C.) can’t understand.
2) Over the past twenty-five or so years, the US domestic automotive manufacturers have been constructing and implementing a well-thought-out strategy towards drastic expansion into and influence of foreign markets, using partnerships and alliances with non-domestic vehicle manufacturers and foreign governments alike. Consider how the countries of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, India, Italy, China, and France have all been involved to varying degrees.
3) The United States automotive industry partnership with Mobileye is (in my opinion) as much about international influence as it is about automotive safety. Think about what was shown in the previous chronological perspective . Consider the paper "The Domestic Automotive Manufacturers' activities towards Advanced Safety System Rollout as contributing to Globalization via coupled self-interest" in the context of the chronological perspective. Consider this slightly more auto-focused perspective in the context of the paper and the timeline. If much of it seems completely unrelated to vehicular safety and automotive vision based safety systems, you are starting to 'see the light'.
4) Have you gained any sense about what it takes to: a) establish select geographically tactical production/manufacturing locations around the world during the early and middle parts of the twentieth century, b) see an industrial workforce become empowered to the point of inhibiting vast global expansion, c) dismantle an industry and lay international groundwork for 'target-centric globalization', d) nurture a supplier, whose technology becomes the backbone for twenty-first century global automotive safety systems, in a location of the world where centuries old issues need a twenty-first century solution, e) put US legislation in place towards regulation and transparency of the evolving framework, f) get other interested and strategic partners involved (e.g., academia, public and private corporations, safety organizations, foreign governments, etc.) from around the world, g) establish multiple interrelated areas of vehicular need (e.g., passenger vehicle safety, semi tractor trailer insurance costs, aftermarket systems, etc.), h) work ‘behind the scenes’ with that supplier for approximately a decade before the technology ever goes into automotive production worldwide, i) create a system of ‘smoke and mirrors’ towards protection (e.g., responsibility, liability, etc.) and appeasement both prior to and after the worldwide rollout, j) be both a cause for and beneficiary of a domestic (and to a certain degree western world) great recession, k) receive historic and unprecedented protections from the US Government during the bailout, bankruptcy, and reorganization process and be granted a ‘point in time’ that prior to they (basically) no longer needed to be answerable for, l) receive partnerships with international auto manufacturers whose base country also holds common non-capitalist beliefs (e.g., religion, foundations for religious based health care systems, etc.), m) drive and/or exploit United States patent law reform, n) contribute to congressional investigations which destabilize the nations and/or states of auto/part manufacturers which don’t strategically align with the ‘rollout plan’, o) orchestrate the purchase of the strategic supplier by one of the most powerful semiconductor circuit manufacturers in the world (i.e., the Intel Corporation) and p) support the transfer of leadership in the United States to him whose base of supporters fully endorse the movement of the US embassy to Jerusalem, even with all the potential disturbances this could create to the historical status quo of Israeli-Palestinian politics, just after exiting an agreement (i.e., the JCPOA) with (quite possibly) Israel’s largest geopolitical threat in the region? If so, then you can probably surmise that the scientist whose research formed the basis for Mobileye technology was likely guided by interests outside simply road scene vision processing. Or maybe it was just a simple case of cause and effect?
Q: Have there been any recent alliances between Chinese and German auto manufacturers? Any recent alliances between Kia and Aptiv (Delphi)? Q: Are there any unexpected alliances (forming) between auto manufacturers in the US, Italy and France and are German auto manufacturers involved?
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