Late last November, IoT Evolution covered critical partnership news regarding the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) and the FiRa Consortium (FiRa).
For context, the CCC is a cross-industry organization (i.e. representing companies including Apple, BMW, Ford, Google, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Panasonic, Samsung, and Volkswagen) that advances the connectivity between smart vehicles and smart mobile technologies. Its work emphasizes accessibility when it comes to digital-age solutions for smartphone and vehicle manufacturers, automotive Tier-1 suppliers, silicon and chip vendors, and security product suppliers.
Then, FiRa. FiRa (denoting the “fine-ranging” and positioning capabilities of ultra-wideband, or UWB, technology) dedicates its focuses to transforming how we interact with dynamic environments through enabling precision location awareness for consumers and their devices. FiRa drives the development of unique technical certifications and guardrails, and this happens to include direct and active advocacy for UWB (and effective use cases and regulations therein).
So when the CCC and FiRa officially announced the formation of the Joint Ultra-Wideband MAC PHY Working Group (JUMPWG) for collaborative maintenance of UWB specifications, we know more was on the horizon.
The same proved to be the case – more news on the horizon, namely – last December when NOVELDA, a renowned provider of highly accurate and intelligent sensors designed for human presence detection (particularly child presence detection, or CPD), announced updates to its X7 UWB CPD and Vital Signs Monitoring and other in-cabin sensing resources for automotive manufacturers. NOVELDA recognizes how great a tool UWB is for sensing and locating people and objects (and transmit data with short latency), and it’s already being used to create safer context-aware situations in mobile phones, laptops, lights and air conditioning, sleep monitors, you name it. The short pulses and fine time resolution available in UWB systems also lend unique advantages to use cases involving highly secure communications systems, indoor navigating, in-asset tracking, and so on.
And what’s the cherry on top of all this contextual info?
NOVELDA is a member of the CCC. So through the invention of its UWB solutions (again, its in-cabin X7 UWB In-Cabin/CPD and Vital Signs Monitoring being an incredibly important solution for reliable micro-movement detection in vehicles), NOVELDA’s teams are carrying immense responsibility for human safety, for springboarding into future UWB innovation, and for connectivity in IoT as a whole.
And now – quite literally, as of just this morning – NOVELDA announced an expansion of its X7 UWB In-Cabin Sensors, specifically the new multi-target occupancy detection function.
This is huge. Per reports from The New York Times, approximately 1,050 children have died due to “vehicular heatstroke” since 1990. Since then, government actions around the globe have aimed to reduce such preventable tragedies. So in addition to the already-powerful applicability of its technology, NOVELDA’s solution is poised to serve CPD and pediatric heatstroke prevention systems well, but also multiple gesture recognition and heartbeat detection functionalities for abandoned vehicles or those involved in crashes. (Note: It’s also an energy-efficient and cost-effective radar solution, too.)
“By optimizing our X7 radar chip with software enabling seat occupancy detection, we ensure our NOVELDA X7 UWB In-Cabin Sensor can serve additional automotive applications through robust reliability and precision,” said Dag Wisland, CTO and founder of NOVELDA. “NOVELDA’s groundbreaking UWB sensing technology has proven its diverse utility by delivering lifesaving CPD capabilities in the automotive sector and vital signs monitoring in the digital healthcare sector, and now sets a new standard for seat occupancy detection and other in-cabin sensing capabilities.”
Read here to learn more about NOVELDA’s leaps in the UWB space.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
