Image recognition processor wins award for preventive safety

The Toyota Alphard/Vellfire was declared the winner of the Grand Prix Award for preventive safety performance, and the Toyota Crown and Corolla Sport were both evaluated as ASV+++, the highest level for advanced safety vehicles.

Advances in driver assistance systems are bringing autonomous vehicles ever closer, but also raising concerns for ensuring safe roads and reducing traffic accidents. Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (Toshiba) is contributing to a future of safe vehicles by channelling its know-how in deep neural networks and sensor and imaging technologies into the Visconti series of image processor LSIs for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

JNCAP was initiated by the Japanese government in 1995 to promote the safety of new cars launched in Japan by domestic and overseas makers. The program brings together results of vehicle safety tests carried out by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), and the National Agency for Automotive Safety and Victims' Aid (NASVA). Tests cover preventive safety performance, collision safety performance, and pedestrian protection performance. The Preventive Safety Performance Assessment evaluates advanced safety technologies such as damage mitigation braking.

Toshiba supplies Visconti4 to the Toyota vehicles as an integral part of DENSO Corporation’s Front-Camera-Based Active Safety System. The LSI’s ability to process luminance differences between objects and their backgrounds, realising better detection of pedestrians at night and in low light conditions, helped the Toyota vehicles win high scores in assessment of collision avoidance braking for pedestrians. 

The Alphard/Vellfire integrating the system received a high score of 126 points and took the Grand Prix Award for preventive safety performance assessment, and all of the Toyota models integrating Visconti 4 were evaluated as ASV+++.

Toshiba continues to channel resources into Visconti, and into other innovative automotive devices that will contribute to ADAS. The company is now developing Visconti5, which will deliver advanced Deep Neural Network IP, and expects to start sample shipments in September this year.