New research on consumer preferences for full autonomy in new vehicles finds the technology is not yet popular among a broad audience, according to analysts at IHS Markit. Ironically, the same audience ranked it among the very features they would be willing to pay the most for in their next new vehicle purchase. The IHS research findings demonstrate a wide variety of viewpoints from consumers across leading global markets. Blind spot detection ranked highest as the most desired features among all audiences, young and old, and propensity to pay for it varied by region, with the U.S. respondents reporting they would be willing to pay significantly more for the technology than consumers in other regions. Responses from more than 5,000 vehicle owners intending to purchase a new vehicle within the next 36 months were reviewed in the 2017 Autonomous Driving and Urban Mobility Consumer Analysis , representing five key automotive markets – the U.S., Canada, China, Germany and the United Kingdom. This is the fifth annual survey of its kind from IHS Markit and identified key attributes for consumers, providing insight into preferences, desires and future interest as new vehicle intenders return to market. A number of subjects were covered. “In terms of ADAS safety features like automatic emergency braking and blind spot detection, consumers wanted to see these features standard across the board,” said Colin Bird, Senior Automotive Technology Analyst for IHS Markit and Co-author of the report, “There is a large subset of consumers who are willing to pay for full autonomy features demonstrating that consumers see this more as a value-add rather than a necessary safety component, at least for now.” Just 44 percent of all respondents indicated that full autonomy would be a desirable feature on their next car, the lowest rank of all of the technologies included in this subsection of the survey. Interestingly, however, it also ranked as the technology that consumers would be most willing to pay for, according to IHS Markit. Price points varied by country, with US consumers indicating they would pay the highest price to have the feature in their next new vehicle. German consumers surveyed about the cost of the technology added to a new vehicle purchase, German respondents indicated they would be willing to pay $1016 for it, nearly 20 percent more than the US audience. Among consumers surveyed in China, more than 72 percent of respondents reported desire for full autonomy as a feature in their next new vehicle, the highest of all the regions surveyed. They also expressed a willingness to pay for it at the highest cost among other technologies, noting a price point of $557. Many also were interested in related technologies, according to IHS Markit. These included blind spot detection (89 percent), automatic emergency braking (92 percent), lane departure warning (88 percent), highway autopilot (83 percent), autonomous co-pilot (81 percent). In comparison, just over half of U.S. consumers surveyed indicated full autonomy is a desired feature in their next new vehicle, though they too seem willing to pay the most for it over other technologies; noting an average willingness to spend $780 to have the technology on their next new vehicle. In addition, U.S. consumers are interested in blind spot detection, navigation systems, automatic emergency braking and steering wheel mounted controls. From a global perspective, highway autopilot also was mentioned as a top technology among consumers surveyed from all regions, but also at a variety of costs. US consumers indicated a willingness to pay $107 more than their nearest counterparts to have their next new vehicle equipped with the technology. Younger drivers more comfortable with full autonomy than older drivers The survey also researched comfort level with vehicle technology by age of the respondent groups. Across all geographies, younger drivers, including Millennials and Generation Z respondents, were more interested in full autonomy than other generational groups, with 61 percent suggesting it as a feature of interest in their next new vehicle. Generation X, baby boomers and the swing generation all trail in level of interest significantly, even though these new and evolving technologies will present the greatest opportunity to make transportation and mobility easier for older generations. In addition, respondents widely reported that driving alone was their leading form of transportation, seconded by walking and public transit. In addition, respondents in China indicated a very strong response to ride hailing and car-sharing services, with 42 percent indicating use of ride-hailing and 16 percent having engaged in car sharing in the last 12 months. US respondents were less likely; while respondents from Germany and the UK reported some use. If vehicle insurance rates were based on how often consumers used self-driving features, consumers felt slightly different about it. In China, 70 percent of respondents indicated they would be more open to self-driving features. Respondents in Germany were least likely, with just 32 percent reporting it would have an impact for them. “Among new car intenders, ride-hailing services aren’t used as often as a daily commuting option. Instead, the research found that ride-hailing is used more often for weekend trips, errands, and vacations,” Bird said, “Interestingly, new car intenders are more likely to be drivers for hailing service companies like Uber and DiDi than they are to be passengers. This is particularly the case in the UK, Germany and Canada, which suggests there could be a lucrative sales model in these markets for automakers.”

Ever expanding, cities today must pay more attention to protect their people and properties. It is evident to anyone with access to global news that now even the most developed cities are faced with huge safety threats, ranging from terrorists’ attacks aiming at well-populated areas and historically significant places to road accidents that keep increasing with the number of automobiles. A smart and integrated system for urban security is an urgent need, which Dahua is competent to provide. Time to do it smartly Boasting its AI technologies and highly integrated platform, Dahua smart city solution aims to address safety issues of mega-cities without dramatically expanding police forces. To be more specific, the deep-learning empowered video surveillance performs timely and effective risk detection. The unified platform allows faster emergency response, and the powerful data mining helps get more insights from the data front-end systems collected. Combined together, Dahua smart city solution gives unprecedented advantages. For example, the deep-learning redefines the capabilities of video analysis. Dahua achieved 99.78% facial recognition accuracy in LFW (Labeled Faces in the Wild, a well-known facial recognition benchmark for academic purpose) in October, 2016. Moreover, deep-leaning even allows instant classification of human and vehicle appearing in video, capturing extract detailed features such as clothe color, gender, headwear, bag for human and license plate number, vehicle color, size, mark, model, cellphone usage, seat belt usage for vehicle etc.  Four working stages of Dahua smart city solution The overall working process of Dahua smart city solution can be viewed in four stages that are prevention, detection, response and investigation. By improving each, it can improve the city running in general. The Stage of Prevention means picking out and focusing on potentially dangerous persons and factors before they really do harm to public safety. This requires the ability of collecting and analyzing big data. Dahua’s smart city solution provides advanced forecasting models that give a better chance of predicting events. For example, with comprehensive analysis of violation data collected by traffic enforcement cameras, the system can generate a watch list for the vehicles with numerous violation records. The Stage of Detection involves real time surveillance in various forms, including deployment of 360-degree panoramic camera and ultra-long range, all weather monitoring thermal camera etc. In addition to multifunctional cameras, Dahua’s deep-learning empowered smart video surveillance can automatically detect risky individuals and activities from massive data collected. In fact, Dahua traffic enforcement system helped Hangzhou city automatically detect 29,823 vehicles’ illegal behavior during G20 Summit, which greatly reduced the burden on policemen who thus could put more focus on protecting key summit area. The Stage of Response enables key organizations in the city to react to security threats in real time. Dahua improves the communication efficiency through its integrated platform, allowing unified command and centralized data storage as well as cross-department information sharing. if a natural disaster takes place in the city, Dahua smart city solution can report it on a single e-map with available emergency response resources to all relevant departments and agencies, while providing seamless monitoring of the site to all units approaching. The Stage of Investigation analyzes all data collected by different systems and provide insights to facilitate the recovery of crucial incident like crime after it happened. In this stage, technologies such as video synopsis provide a short summary including all moving objects of a long video and supports query moving object according to different characteristics like size, color, direction and speed. Besides, there’re a rich set of data mining methods like active area analysis, active target analysis and trajectory analysis. So if a criminal tries to escape with different clothes or cars he is highly unlikely to make it in a city equipped with Dahua smart city solution. Multidimensional benefits Smart City Solution delivers on Dahua’s promise of ‘Safer society, smart living’ in 4 key metrics. Government investment measures the level of continued commitment by governments to maintain good function and development of systems in place. After deploying smart city solution, London’s police investment declined by 10% yet the criminal activity prevention score actually improved by 0.5% since 2015. Safety result measures changes in the levels of crime and risk to citizens. It also assesses the public’s perception of how well the city’s authorities can respond to incidents. This is improved by the efficiency savings that Dahua’s surveillance systems provide. Social benefits assess the ability of the public to enjoy entertainment and leisure activities safely and how their affinity for the government changes. Economic benefit accounts for personal wealth, spending on tourism and retail along with employment rates and the city’s protection against short-term economic fluctuations. Smart city solutions benefit everyone in all four aspects above. Governments can decrease spending and crime rates at the same time whilst increasing citizen safety, survival rates and citizen approval rating. Citizens will be safer and enjoy better living standards without the burden of increased public spending. In short, they will be happier with both the government and their lives. Summary By remaining ahead of the market with expertise in intelligent visual processing technologies and emphasizing its core value propositions of innovation, quality and service, Dahua Technology will continuously contribute to a safer society and smarter living, benefiting city dwellers worldwide.   By Balasubramanian Jayam Head of Marketing (India & SAARC) Dahua Technology Co., Ltd.  

Deep Learning has swept through the IT industry, bringing benefits and better classifications to a number of applications. Inspired by the way the human brain works, the technology uses a layered learning process to enable the computer to classify, store and access data, which it can then refer to for learning. This means it can use a whole image to recognise, rather than relying on separate elements of that image. This is a cumulative process – the more elements it has to draw on, the better the classification – thus, the better the ‘learning.’ The benefits of this technology for face recognition and image classification make it hugely valuable in the field of security. It touches on every aspect of the security industry – from facial and vehicle detection to behaviour analysis. This, in turn, starts to change the focus of security from being reactive to being able to predict problems before they happen. Hikvision has taken this technology and innovated a family of products to maximise its use. The DeepInview IP camera range and the DeepInmind NVR range work together to provide all the power and benefits of Deep Learning. While the cameras provide the smart ‘eyes’ of the system, the NVR represents the analytic and storage capabilities of the brain. The products help to tackle security on two fronts – recognition, monitoring and counting of people, and recognition and detection of vehicles. This uses Deep Learning technology at its most effective – for its ability to classify and recognise thousands of ‘features.’ Obviously, this multi-layered approach uses a lot of memory and performance, which is one of the reasons why the technology has become much more widespread in the past few years. To put this into perspective, in the first stages of the technology, it took 1,000 devices with 16,000 CPUs to simulate a neural network; now, just a few GPUs are needed. Hikvision is partnering with the largest of the chipset brands – Intel and nVidia – to explore the possibilities of Deep Learning for the surveillance industry. Hikvision’s innovation also facilitates and improves on this. The H.265+ codec radically reduces transmission bandwidth and data storage capacity requirements. This means there’s no loss of quality even though the data being shared and stored is exponentially higher. Applications are numerous. The technology could enable the system to provide a black list/ white list alarm, which could come in very handy in access control scenarios. It could also be used to recognise unusual behaviour – possibly allowing security staff to prevent an issue if people are found loitering nearby, for example. The new premium range of products will further extend the quality and capabilities of security systems. They will also allow security professionals to start planning to avoid issues, rather than reacting to them. This could be the next evolution of the whole industry – using AI to change the world, one Hikvision solution at a time.     By Ashish P. Dhakan – MD & CEO, Prama Hikvision