While it was clear at MINEXPO 2021 that the major mining equipment OEMs have an aggressive roadmap for integrating digital transformation technologies in future models, we talked to a lot of customers who are trying to work out the best way of adding these capabilities to existing vehicles in their fleets.
It was to meet what we predicted would be a growing need for retrofitting existing vehicles that we originally initiated the development of our growing VIA Intelligent Automotive Solutions family of vehicle safety systems over five years ago. To start with, we focused on leveraging over twenty years of graphics chip design experience and expertise to create SVS (Surround View System) technology for real-time 360-degree video capture, rendering, and recording applications that make it easier for operators to see everything that’s happening around their massive vehicles.
Although we received a lot of interest in our first VIA Mobile360 SVS system, we soon realized that our SVS technology was not sufficient in itself to meet customer requirements. As the next step, therefore, we focused on adding DMOD (Dynamic Moving Objection Detection) capabilities to the system, so that it could automatically alert an operator whenever a person or other vehicle came too close to the vehicle.
To ensure that the system could detect people or objects in all weather and lighting conditions, we also integrated support for 77GHz mmWave radar using our unique vSense sensor fusion technology. The culmination of these ongoing R&D efforts is the VIA Mobile360 HESS that we unveiled at MINEXPO.
Although we have been greatly encouraged by the response we received to VIA Mobile360 HESS at the show, we are keenly aware that the launch marks just the start of the rollout process. Now is the time to hit the ground running as we move on to the next stage of retrofitting the customer’s existing heavy equipment with the system and optimizing it to meet their specific installation and operational needs.
