Renesas Electronics Develops a Kit that Enables Cars to Sense Driver’s Emotions

Renesas Electronics, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, has announced that it has come up with a development kit for its R-Car that is fitted with an “emotion engine”. It’s an artificial sensibility and intelligence technology pioneered by cocoro SB Corp., a SoftBank Group Company.

The new kit allows cars to sense the drivers’ emotions and optimally respond to their needs depending upon their emotional state. It includes cocoro SB’s emotion engine developed by leveraging its sensibility technology to recognize emotional states like confidence or uncertainty based on the driver’s speed.

The car’s response to the driver’s emotional state is displayed by a new driver-attentive user interface (UI) implemented in the Renesas R-Car system-on-chip (SoC). Being able to understand the emotional plight of the driver, the car can ensure optimal driver safety with its responses. In addition, the technology is linked to artificial intelligence (AI) based machine learning, which makes it easy for the car to learn from conversations with the driver and provide the best possible response.

Renesas Electronics Develops a Kit that Enables Cars to Sense Driver’s Emotions (Image Courtesy: Renesas)

The release of the development kit is scheduled to take place later this year. The company will also demonstrate its connected car simulator incorporating the new development kit based on SB’s emotion engine at the SoftBank World 2017 event to be held from July 20 to 21.

As per Renesas, the driver’s emotional state, facial expressions, and eyesight direction are some of the key features that combine with their vital signs to improve the car and driver interface. This also helps in placing the driver closer to the modern era of self-driving cars.

For example, if the driver showing an uneasy emotional state then even if he/she has chosen the switch to hands-free autonomous driving, the car will ask “Would you prefer to continue driving and not switch to autonomous-driving mode for now?” Besides, the car will also be able to control the speed in accordance with the driver’s emotional state.

Renesas is planning to provide this development kit to the IT companies and carmakers so as to expand the possibilities for this service model to the development of new interfaces between cars and drivers and other mobility markets that can avail the benefit of emotional state information.

The technology is based on Renesas’ newly-launched autonomy, a new advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving platform. It helps in delivering a safe, secure, and convenient driving experience by providing next-gen solutions for connected cars.

About Renesas Electronics Corporation

Renesas Electronics Corporation delivers trusted embedded design innovation with complete semiconductor solutions that enable billions of connected, intelligent devices to enhance the way people work and live—securely and safely.

The number one global supplier of microcontrollers and a leader in Analog & Power and SoC products, Renesas provides the expertise, quality, and comprehensive solutions for a broad range of Automotive, Industrial, Home Electronics (HE), Office Automation (OA) and Information Communication Technology (ICT) applications to help shape a limitless future.