Case Study
NetraDyne’s Artificial Intelligence Platform
Improves Road Safety
A Sierra Wireless Fleet Management Solution
CUSTOMER CRITICAL CHALLENGE
ŸŸ NetraDyne needed their Artificial Intelligence platform to analyze video content and
deliver actionable business intelligence to drivers in real-time.
SOLUTION
BACKGROUND
ŸŸ NetraDyne’s Driveri™ uses Sierra Wireless AirPrime WP Series modules to provide
continuous, high-bandwidth 4G LTE connectivity.
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BENEFITS
ŸŸ Through high-bandwidth connectivity, Driveri™ is able to provide automatic safety
alerts to drivers in near real-time, resulting in improved road safety.
Founded in 2015, NetraDyne has
forged ahead quickly and established
technology innovation centers in
California and India, focusing on
creating groundbreaking artificial
intelligence (A.I.) platform to disrupt
commercial vehicle and driver
analytics. The company was the
first commercial vehicle technology
provider to combine A.I. with video to
detect, reason and determine causality
of events. This allows the fleet to
quickly apply resources; recognizing
superior performance or addressing
at-risk driving before it becomes a
severe event.
“We couldn’t function without the video uplink provided by
the Sierra Wireless LTE modules. Where most IoT applications
only require hundreds of kilobytes, our application needs the
full power of LTE to upload all the near real-time video feed
to the cloud for analysis. Sierra Wireless takes care of all the
radio complexity involved in keeping a strong connection in
our mobile application.”
Sandeep Pandya
President, NetraDyne
Business Challenge
With approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States alone
and the average driver expected to travel between 2,000 and 3,000 miles per week,
accidents are inevitable hazards. Keeping this major issue in mind, fleets are looking
to leverage advanced technology that enables fleets to make the right decisions
with confidence. According to a May 2015 (revised) report from the US Department
of Transportation and The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the
economic cost of motor vehicle crashes that occurred in 2010 totaled $242 billion; lost
workplace productivity costs totaled $57.6 billion, while lost household productivity
totaled $19.7 billion.
In addition to the cost of crashes, in 2014, according to the ATA Truck Driver Shortage
Analysis, the trucking industry was short 38,000 drivers, with the shortage expected to
reach nearly 48,000 by the end of 2015. Today, motor carriers struggle to find enough
qualified drivers, which makes the shortage “feel” much worse than the numbers in
this report. Many carriers, despite being short drivers, are highly selective in hiring
drivers because they have made safety and professionalism high priorities.
In order to avoid lost productivity and improve road safety for their drivers, fleet
managers are turning to video-based driver performance solutions. However, most
current fleet management applications that utilize video data simply record video
when prompted by an inertial sensor (e.g., when brakes are engaged or the truck
swerves out of position). This type of video feed is helpful in understanding why
an incident happened, but is prone to false alarms and ultimately does little to help
provide a complete view that can prevent that incident from reoccurring in the future.
Fundamentally, video footage analysis, today, is manual. Complicating matters, less
than five percent of all video surveillance being captured in the world is reviewed by a
human, which still represents huge amounts of data and can lead to reviewer fatigue
and inconsistency in the analysis.
There is a company with a solution focused on capturing positive driving along with
coachable events, that has pioneering a new approach to driver safety. Founded
in 2015, NetraDyne is creating a groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI) platform,
called Driveri™ that is designed to disrupt commercial vehicle and driver analytics, and
improve driver safety. The company introduced the first commercial vehicle technology
combining AI with video to detect, reason, and determine causality of both positive and
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negative driving events. When used in the transportation industry, fleets can quickly
apply resources to recognize superior performance or address at-risk driving before it
becomes a severe event.
“There are other video recording systems out there, but no one else is combining
artificial intelligence and computer vision to automate safety alerts and provide
actionable business intelligence in near real-time,” explained NetraDyne President
Sandeep Pandya. “This represents a revolution in fleet video analytics, as it proactively
ensures road safety. Most video telematics applications simply record video for
analysis afterward in case of a problem, and the delay may be hours or even days
between event and fleet notification. Our system identifies cars, trucks, pedestrians,
traffic signals and road signs and processes the video at the vehicle level, delivering
meaningful information within minutes”
Sierra Wireless AirPrime® Solution
So what is the key to providing analyzed content to drivers in real-time? It’s a
combination of NetraDyne’s Artificial Intelligence with the high-speed reliable 4G LTE
networks for streaming the content.
NetraDyne’s core business opportunity lies in the ability to create alerts with actionable
business intelligence garnered through its proprietary AI. NetraDyne’s Driveri™
platform incorporates Sierra Wireless’ WP Series module, providing continuous, highbandwidth connectivity to accommodate the transfer of analyzed video footage from
device to cloud, then from cloud to driver in the form of actionable alerts.
Utilizing the benefits of 4G LTE networks is critical for today’s mobile applications.
4G LTE networks are ten times faster than 3G networks, allowing improved data
transmission times while eliminating dropped connections. The all Internet Protocol
(IP) architecture enables unified communication between mobile and stationary
devices for more efficient resource sharing, while wideband services provide improved
audio quality often critical to surveillance applications. In addition, built-in security
features make 4G LTE a viable option for applications incorporating communication to
the cloud.
“We couldn’t function without the video uplink provided by the Sierra Wireless
LTE modules,” said Pandya. “Where most IoT applications only require hundreds of
kilobytes, our application needs the full power of LTE to upload all the near realtime video feed to the cloud for analysis. Sierra Wireless takes care of all the radio
complexity involved in keeping a strong connection in our mobile application.”
In addition to the LTE modules, Driveri™ incorporates a graphics processing unit (GPU)
that can handle a TeraFLOP (a trillion calculations per second) of data, which is 1000
times more powerful than the processor found in an average laptop. But the true star
of the show is the deep learning capabilities in NetraDyne’s artificial intelligence engine.
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Results
“There is a sense of urgency with this set of live data since it affects driver safety,” said
Pandya. “Our goal is to bring intelligence and immediacy into mobile IoT.”
Industry research shows that five to ten percent of drivers in a fleet consistently drive
faster than posted speed limits, drive fastest on highways, and have more “hard
stops” and “hard turns” than the other 90–95 percent of the workforce. According
to the US Department of Labor, an on-the-job crash that results in an injury will cost
an employer an average of $74,000 USD, which is why the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration has encouraged implementation of driver safety programs that
include timely telematics data. With NetraDyne’s Driveri™ platform incorporating Sierra
Wireless’ WP Series modules, the ability to provide meaningful information to the fleet
allowing them to recognize and reinforce with confidence.
“Right now our video-based system is focused on reducing accidents on the roads
by providing the fleet leadership with the most complete view into driver behavior
as it is happening, therefore saving fleet management companies millions of dollars
by enabling immediate intervention and better long term coaching,” said Pandya.
“Measuring weather, traffic signals, driver performance, vehicle diagnostics… we can
use our AI for video surveillance in many other industries that rely on the gathering and
analyzing of data from disparate sources.”
According to Pandya, NetraDyne is relying on Sierra Wireless’ breadth of LTE product
lines in the same CF3™ form factor to make it easier for them to enter these new
markets at any time.
“Bottom line is that our system improves road safety,” said Pandya. “Alternative
systems simply record events, but we’re providing the ability to the fleets to work
with their drivers, identifying at-risk driving and adjusting their driver’s day before a
potential accident occurs.”
About Sierra Wireless
Sierra Wireless is building the Internet of Things with intelligent wireless solutions that empower organizations to innovate in the
connected world. We offer the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of 2G, 3G, and 4G embedded modules and gateways,
seamlessly integrated with our secure cloud and connectivity services. OEMs and enterprises worldwide trust our innovative
solutions to get their connected products and services to market faster. Sierra Wireless has more than 950 employees globally and
operates R&D centers in North America, Europe, and Asia.
For more information, visit www.sierrawireless.com.
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trademarks that appear on this brochure are the property of the respective owners. © 2016 Sierra Wireless, Inc. 2016.10.31