Technology: New car camera detects pedestrians 100 times faster

A new car camera detects obstacles 100 times faster than previous driving assistance systems. In the future, this technology could be used in self-driving cars, researchers at the University of Zurich reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“It's a huge achievement,” Davide Scaramuzza told Keystone-SDA News Agency. A computer scientist at the University of Zurich developed the new system.

According to the researcher, the previous systems operate with cameras that capture 30 images per second. So an image every 33 milliseconds. In order to reliably detect an obstacle and initiate a braking maneuver, these cameras require at least three images: bringing the time until the braking maneuver begins to 100 milliseconds. “Our system allows this time to be reduced to less than a millisecond,” says Scaramuzza.

To achieve this, the researchers combined the traditional camera and the so-called event camera, which only pays attention to fast-moving objects, with artificial intelligence.

SIL, DAP