CEVA and AdasWorks to Demonstrate Free Space Detection for Autonomous Driving

CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of signal processing IP for smarter, connected devices, and AdasWorks, an innovative startup developing Drive 2.0, an integrated artificial intelligence-based full stack software suite for automated driving today announced that the companies will be showcasing a low-power ADAS solution demonstrating Free Space Detection at the upcoming AutoSens Conference in Brussels, Belgium, September 20-22, 2016. Visitors to AutoSens can see the solution running on the CEVA-XM4 developer platform at CEVA’s Booth #21.

The solution combines AdasWorks’ state of the art convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with the CEVA-XM4 intelligent vision DSP, to deliver a cost- and power-optimized system capable of detecting the free space surrounding the vehicle to provide a safe path for autonomous vehicles. The CEVA Deep Neural Network Software Framework (CDNN2) was used to convert AdasWorks’ pre-trained networks to run on the CEVA-XM4, significantly simplifying the integration and optimization process.  Using CEVA’s CDNN2 drastically improves the time to market when moving from networks developed on platforms tailored for research and development into low power, cost efficient platforms targeted for high volume applications.

“The CEVA-XM4 vision processor is ideal for demonstrating and delivering the performance to run deep and complex neural networks at a fraction of the power consumption required by other processors,” said Laszlo Kishonti, Founder and CEO of AdasWorks. “This joint demonstration is an important step our companies are taking together to prove that there are scalable and affordable software and hardware solutions for implementing intelligent automated driving systems.”

“AdasWorks is widely renowned as a leading innovator in AI software for automated driving and we’re delighted to collaborate with them and demonstrate the strength of our technologies for the ADAS market,” said Ilan Yona, vice president and general manager of the Vision Business Unit at CEVA. “Their advanced neural network algorithms combined with our DSP delivers outstanding performance-per-watt results and we look forward to continuing to innovate together.”

AdasWorks develops Drive 2.0, an AI based full stack software suit for Level 5 self-driving cars. Drive 2.0 will provide the full spectrum of automated driving functionalities from environment recognition, localization and path planning to low-level control. The Budapest-based company is also designing Toolkit 2.0, a framework combining the training and testing tools essential to build the Drive 2.0 suite. The toolkit will offer 360-degrees solution for the building of safe self-driving vehicles from data collection to real-time simulation and testing. The company has over a 100 AI, computer vision, navigation and automotive engineers working on the development of a hardware-agnostic and scalable software solution for drivers all around the world. AdasWorks is set to unveil their own self-driving car using affordable cameras as primary sensors at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. The company opened its US office in Mountain View this September and will open offices in Asia and Northern Europe in the near future.    

The CEVA-XM4 intelligent vision DSP efficiently addresses the intensive processing requirements of the most sophisticated computational photography and computer vision applications such as video analytics, augmented reality and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). By offloading these performance-intensive tasks from the CPUs and GPUs, the highly-efficient DSP dramatically reduces the power consumption of the overall system, while providing complete flexibility. The platform includes a vector processor developed specifically to deal with the complexities of such applications and an extensive Application Development Kit (ADK) to enable easy development environment. For embedded systems targeting deep learning, the CEVA Deep Neural Network (CDNN2) real-time neural network software framework streamlines machine-learning deployment at a fraction of the power consumption of the leading GPU-based systems. For developers of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), an ISO 26262 compliant safety design package is available for the CEVA-XM4 that helps customers accelerate their certification.

For more information, visit http://www.ceva-dsp.com/CEVA-XM-Family.

About AdasWorks

AdasWorks develops an integrated, artificial intelligence-based software stack for autonomous cars. The company’s software framework will provide the full spectrum of automated driving functionalities from environment recognition, localization and path planning to low-level control. The company uses cameras as primary sensors, along with additional sensors such as radars and ultrasound-based systems to ensure safe drivability under challenging weather conditions. AdasWorks is committed to creating a scalable and affordable self-driving solution for everyone. They have offices in Budapest, Hungary, and Mountain View, California.  For more information please, visit www.adasworks.com and follow @adasworks on Twitter.

About CEVA, Inc.

CEVA is the leading licensor of signal processing IP for a smarter, connected world. We partner with semiconductor companies and OEMs worldwide to create power-efficient, intelligent and connected devices for a range of end markets, including mobile, consumer, automotive, industrial and IoT. Our ultra-low-power IPs for vision, audio, communications and connectivity include comprehensive DSP-based platforms for LTE/LTE-A/5G baseband processing in handsets, infrastructure and machine-to-machine devices, computer vision and computational photography for any camera-enabled device, audio/voice/speech and ultra-low power always-on/sensing applications for multiple IoT markets. For connectivity, we offer the industry’s most widely adopted IPs for Bluetooth (low energy and dual mode), Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac up to 4×4) and serial storage (SATA and SAS). Visit us at www.ceva-dsp.com and follow us on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.