Israeli stereo/quad-camera vision system developer Foresight Autonomous Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ: FRSX), via wholly-owned subsidiary Foresight Automotive Ltd., is rapidly advancing the state of the art in ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) with a growing emphasis on the semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicle markets. The company’s unique QuadSight™ system (http://ibn.fm/wbNY9) leverages a host of proprietary 3D video analysis, advanced image processing algorithms, and sensor fusion technologies, in order to provide the automotive industry with one of the most sophisticated accident prevention and real-time situational awareness packages available today.
QuadSight, which was well received during its public debut at the recent CES 2018 show in Las Vegas, boasts nearly 100 percent object detection under all weather conditions (http://ibn.fm/uIOLr), thanks to the system’s dual pairs of stereoscopic infrared and daylight cameras. Moreover, QuadSight is capable of providing this groundbreaking capability with nearly zero false alerts, thanks to proprietary image-processing algorithms and sensor fusion techniques that greatly enhance the system’s core architecture, which was derived directly from already field-proven security technology.
Driverless Car Market Expanding Fast
The QuadSight specs are quite tantalizing given recent projections for the global autonomous vehicle market, such as last year’s $126.8 billion by 2027 target (39.6 percent CAGR) from Infoholic Research (http://ibn.fm/Dflt7) or a study last year by chip giant Intel and the research firm Strategy Analytics, which sees driverless vehicles behind a whopping $7 trillion in aggregate economic activity and new efficiencies by 2050, with $4 trillion from driverless ride-hailing and around $3 trillion from driverless delivery and business logistics (http://ibn.fm/pOrQ3). The ADAS market alone is on track to hit upwards of $79 billion by 2020 on a 28 percent-plus CAGR, with object detection and differentiation being a leading component, due in large part to steadily increasing demand for driver assistance systems that can create enhanced automotive safety (http://ibn.fm/7n6sR).
Driverless car tech was a main feature at this year’s CES – a striking reality that comes hot on the heels of Alphabet subsidiary Waymo’s announcement in November (http://ibn.fm/b9AK1) that it would begin testing fully driverless cars on public roads, as well as an announcement in early January that GM has petitioned the government to mass-produce a car called the Cruise AV (http://ibn.fm/NejTG), with no steering wheel or pedals (slated for as early as 2019) via San Francisco startup company Cruise, which GM acquired in 2016 for over $1 billion (http://ibn.fm/tgwzU). For a company like Foresight, with its cutting-edge quad-camera vision technology and a market cap just shy of $100 million, the prospect of an eventual buyout by an automotive sector major is mediated by the secure knowledge that the company is sitting on a veritable goldmine, which it can easily exploit on its own.
The Industry Needs the Right Set of Electronic Eyes
QuadSight is believed by management to be the industry’s most accurate quad-camera vision system. Such robust detection capability with exceptionally low false positive rates under virtually any weather condition, including complete darkness, rain, haze, fog and glare, would make any company similarly confident. The president, CEO and founder of market research and strategy consulting giant Yole Développement, Jean-Christophe Eloy, remarked at CES that “the potential impact of Foresight’s breakthrough cannot be overstated,” because QuadSight surpasses, in a single stroke, “so many other approaches that simply can’t address the real world need for all-weather, all-conditions driving.” A perfectly timed and seemingly street-ready solution like this is exactly what the burgeoning semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicle markets have been looking for (http://ibn.fm/ipnpl).
Because stereoscopic cameras are able to actually surpass a human’s ability to see and recognize 3D objects in real-time and to do so at short or long-range, irrespective of size and degree of motion, QuadSight is now being hailed as the salient ADAS answer for the industry’s long-term needs. To quote CEO and founder of Foresight Haim Siboni, who is also the CEO and founder of leading homeland security 3D video surveillance solutions innovator Magna B.S.P – the level of vision perfection attainable by QuadSight is “clearly the breakthrough that vehicle makers need to build consumer confidence in order to accelerate autonomous vehicle adoption.” If a QuadSight equipped car can actually see better than the customer and do so in all weather conditions, both the semi-autonomous market focused on driver assistance tech and the driverless market will likely be beating a path to Foresight’s doorstep.
Rails and Roads Could Benefit From ADAS
A hallmark of the company’s confidence in its ability to exploit its market position is the announcement in early January (http://ibn.fm/yqwBB) that Foresight increased its stake to 32.62 percent in train safety and railway accident prevention innovator Rail Vision Ltd. (http://ibn.fm/j44xu), via an aggregate $2.24 million exercise of warrants at Rail Vision’s behest. Foresight’s veteran management team can smell a good deal and was excited to move quickly with an expedited exercise of warrants, subsequent to Rail Vision’s successful trial in December of its unique vision-based system with a leading European railway company. Conducted under harsh winter weather conditions at both day and night, the system was able to rapidly distinguish and classify railway obstacles at distances of several hundred meters.
This successful pilot test has set the stage for a long-term follow up pilot test with the aforementioned European railway major, which intends to purchase the system upon completion of said test for use on its locomotive fleet. The Rail Vision stake increase by Foresight is particularly interesting given the recent fatal Amtrak crash near Tacoma in December (http://ibn.fm/6MNi8), the inquiry into which will focus on driver distraction and excessive speed. Driver assist systems for trains could become a big market considering there were 586 train accidents globally in the last five years alone (http://ibn.fm/dDjwV), 53 of which were due to derailments, many of which might have been prevented by a system capable of identifying obstructions in real-time and acting on its own to slow or even stop the train.
Global Market Potential is the Brass Ring for Foresight
The successful completion in September of a third pilot project (http://ibn.fm/ao1Bk) with one of the top three Chinese car manufacturers utilizing Foresight’s Eyes-On™ accident prevention system (http://ibn.fm/rtPhV) has opened the door for commercialization in that country. The pending commercialization of this advanced driver assistance system will benefit mightily from a wealth of localized field data acquired during the three testing phases, such as local weather and infrastructure data, as well as data on the driving habits and tendencies of Chinese drivers. Eyes-On met all pre-determined specific terms, conditions and specifications in the third pilot test, so investors should keep an ear to the ground for more news about the direction of pending commercialization. Foresight’s plan is to extend and broaden the company’s contacts with various manufacturers as commercialization of the system heats up, getting out ahead of the curve and securing as much global footprint as possible for this potentially life-saving technology.
Foresight also successfully executed a system demonstration project in August (http://ibn.fm/1hc8g) with Swedish electric vehicle (EV) startup Uniti (http://ibn.fm/PTrY4), which is developing an EV that is optimized for agility and overall performance in an urban setting. This open road test of the company’s ADAS has set the stage for a definitive agreement that will see Foresight’s multispectral all-weather condition system incorporated into Uniti’s EVs as the primary ADAS, a move which will lead to the system becoming the backbone of Uniti’s forthcoming fully autonomous EVs.
It is well worth investor’s time to make particular note here that the field-proven security technology of major shareholder Magna B.S.P, from which Foresight’s proprietary stereoscopic technology is derived, has been deployed globally for almost two decades now, and that the IP is backed up by several patents.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.ForesightAuto.com
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