DMS leaders join forces as OmniVision and Seeing Machines formally collaborate

CANBERRA, Australia, Jan. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Seeing Machines, the advanced computer vision technology company that designs AI-powered operator monitoring systems to improve transport safety, has advanced its previously announced Memorandum of Understanding to an executed License Agreement to license the Company's Occula® Neural Processing Unit ("Occula®") to OmniVision Technologies, Inc. ("OmniVision"), a leading developer of advanced digital imaging solutions.

This collaboration represents the first execution of a silicon license for Seeing Machines' Occula®, which offers a unique NPU design that enables the development of low-cost, high-performance edge-AI semiconductors to power future human-machine interfaces.

In line with its recently announced 'three pillar embedded product strategy', where Seeing Machines laid out its strategic approach to meet the broad and growing technology needs of the global automotive interior monitoring market for Automotive, this collaboration brings the third pillar to life as the partners are working together to combine the Occula® Silicon IP with OmniVision's innovative machine vision silicon technology.

OmniVision is a global technology leader in advanced digital imaging solutions, serving every imaging market segment, including automotive. For over 15 years, it has been delivering automotive imaging solutions, with proven success on the road for every type of interior and exterior vehicle camera, enabling its automotive customers to provide a safer and smarter driving experience. OmniVision has a full portfolio of image sensors for the interior monitoring market and is presently the leading supplier of image sensors into the interior monitoring market segment.

Seeing Machines continues to grow as an automotive leader in DMS technology, having won contracts with a total five automotive Tier 1 customers for a steadily growing number of programs across six global car OEMs. The Company is now expanding its embedded product offerings, and extending its low-cost high performance embedded DMS know-how into the automotive Occupant Monitoring System (OMS) market.

Seeing Machines and OmniVision are working together to deliver optimised, highly integrated solutions to the global DMS and OMS markets, leveraging existing and new customers globally.

Paul McGlone, CEO commented: "Seeing Machines has had a wonderful working relationship with OmniVision for over 5 years now, having successfully worked together on multiple automotive programs with a number of Tier 1 customers. This agreement represents a natural next step for our two companies, to work strategically together to achieve the highest possible coupling between the imaging and processing domains.

"We are thrilled to continue working with OmniVision as both companies combine to continue to deliver excellent price versus performance Driver and Occupant Monitoring solutions to the market."

Andy Hanvey, Director of Automotive Marketing at OmniVision commented: "We have been collaborating with Seeing Machines for over half a decade, because of their leading algorithm performance and leading position in the DMS market. This agreement enables us to better leverage Seeing Machines' Occula® NPU, in combination with OmniVision's extensive imaging technologies—including global shutters, Nyxel® near-infrared technology and CameraCubeChip wafer-level camera modules—to provide optimal performance for driver and occupant monitoring."

About Seeing Machines
Seeing Machines (LSE: SEE), a global company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Australia, is an industry leader in vision-based monitoring technology that enable machines to see, understand and assist people. Seeing Machines' technology portfolio of AI algorithms, embedded processing and optics, power products that need to deliver reliable real-time understanding of vehicle operators. The technology spans the critical measurement of where a driver is looking, through to classification of their cognitive state as it applies to accident risk. Reliable "driver state" measurement is the end-goal of Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) technology. Seeing Machines develops DMS technology to drive safety for Automotive, Commercial Fleet, Off-road and Aviation. The company has offices in Australia, USA, Europe and Asia, and supplies technology solutions and services to industry leaders in each market vertical.seeingmachines.com

About OmniVision
OmniVision Technologies, Inc. is a leading developer of advanced digital imaging solutions. Its award-winning CMOS imaging technology enables superior image quality in many of today's consumer and commercial applications, including mobile phones; security and surveillance; automotive; tablets, notebooks, webcams and entertainment devices; medical; and AR, VR, drones and robotics imaging systems. Find out more at www.ovt.com.

OmniVision^®, CameraCubeChip™, Nyxel^®, and the OmniVision logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of OmniVision Technologies, Inc.

Media enquiries:
Seeing Machines – sophie.nicoll@SeeingMachines.com 
OmniVision Technologies – mengxi.liu@ovt.com