In the year of 1987, I entered university.Like every other freshman in the world, new friends were fulfilled withexcitement of the lives. We were masters of a new world. Even sunshine lookedbrighter. I never had this feeling later in my life - it is not about money,career, or any other kind of ‘achievement’, it is just how good to be young!
In the first semester not long after theenrollment, a traffic accident happened near the university main entrance - amath associate was crushed by a Route 16 bus when he was riding bike to enterthe school. He died immediately. He is the father of one of my friends.
This seems a small event for others dayslater, but for my friend, it is not. In the following four years, we friendsalways played together, drinking, playing soccer, watching movies... Hesometimes also laughed when we had fun together, but usually stopped laughingearlier than the others. I think I can ‘see’ the sadness hidden inside him. Itis difficult to forget the sudden leaving of your loved one.
In the third year of my college life, theson of my adopted mother was also killed in another car accident, also near theuniversity. We had been like brothers.
Two year after my graduation, the fiance ofmy cousin died in another car accident before their wedding.
Guess I don’t need to explain more why weteam start to do ADAS, because the pains brought by traffic accident has beenhurting people for too long. Fortunately, with the recent development ofcomputer vision and high-speed hardware platform, we may do some thing togreatly reduce potential traffic accidents, even if we can not completelyeliminate them.
Our desire is to save 100 peoples' livesevery year, by our system.
We plan to achieve it in this way: as thefatal rate of traffic accident is about one vehicle out of every 10,000vehicles every year on average globally, if our systems could be installed intohalf million cars every year, from the second year, mathematically inprinciple, we can save 100 lives every year.
It is a great idea, and we are working hardon it.