Nexar announces first driving safety Android app based on Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK
26 July 2017
Nexar, provider of a free safety AI dashcam app and an open vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication network, introduced the first driving safety application leveraging the Qualcomm Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine (NPE) SDK.
The NPE SDK is designed to help developers run one or more neural network models trained in Caffe/Caffe2 or TensorFlow on Snapdragon mobile platforms, whether that is the CPU, GPU or DSP.
The Snapdragon NPE is engineered to help developers save time and effort in optimizing performance of trained neural networks on devices with Snapdragon. It does this by providing tools for model conversion and execution as well as APIs for targeting the core with the power and performance profile to match the desired user experience. The Snapdragon NPE supports convolutional neural networks, Long Short Term Memory networks (in Caffe2) and custom layers.
The Nexar app will now be able to provide advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), including real-time forward-collision warnings and other life-saving features, to 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, Nexar said. With 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% 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 CPU, GPU and DSP of Snapdragon 800 and 600 tier Android mobile devices, instead of on the cloud, bringing AI to edge devices, and providing a wealth of new opportunities for software developers in the automotive space.
The Snapdragon NPE SDK is designed to support a broad range of high-performance AI-based applications to run efficiently on mobile and edge devices powered by Snapdragon. Nexar’s application of our technology to provide road safety functionalities is a great example of how developers can easily integrate AI into their mobile products to tackle real-world problems at scale.
—Gary Brotman, Director of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies
Comments