Smart Eye and STMicroelectronics announced their cooperative development of a high-sensitivity, 1-LED Driver Monitoring System (DMS). Combining Smart Eye's expertise in driver monitoring algorithms and optical system design with ST's high-sensitivity automotive-grade global-shutter VB56G4A imager, the new DMS reduces power consumption and system cost by using only one illumination LED. Current systems typically require two or more LEDs to adequately illuminate the driver.

The high-sensitivity DMS is demonstrated at this week's AutoSens and InCabin exhibitions in Brussels. The high-sensitivity DMS developed by Smart Eye and ST is being unveiled and demonstrated at the ST stand (#21) at AutoSens on September 12-14 at the Autoworld Museum in Brussels and in the same location at InCabin on September 15. The sensor achieves high Quantum Efficiency (QE), reaching 24% at 940nm near-infrared (NIR) wavelength, with linear dynamic range up to 60dB.

This enables a simple low-power, non-visible LED emitter to provide adequate illumination for the sensor. Operating outside the visible spectrum also ensures consistent response in day or night driving and in bright or overcast conditions, while minimizing potential driver-fatigue issues. In addition to the sensor's high QE, it implements a global-shutter approach that offers big advantages over rolling-shutter imagers.

The global shutter simultaneously exposes all pixels to the scene, allowing simple synchronization with NIR illumination. This lowers the illumination-subsystem power budget. Combining a pixel size of just 2.6µm with the high QE and global shutter helps optimize total power consumption and camera size.

In addition, integrated automatic exposure control eases use and simplifies the application-software design by minimizing system interaction with the sensor. The sensor also provides flexible operating modes that help optimize system features and performance. These include programmable sequences of 4-frame contexts, illumination control outputs synchronized with sensor integration periods, and an input for an external frame-start signal.

Additional features include automatic dark calibration, dynamic defective-pixel correction, image cropping, and a mirror/flip-image readout.