Malcolm Berman Director of Product and Marketing of Vayyar tells Electronics Media about the New kind of imaging device, which can track everything in real time without Camera. Serving the variety of consumer industries, including smart home, automotive, retail, robotics, medical, construction, agriculture. Vayyar also provides off-the-shelf kits to give companies hands-on experience and the ability to develop applications in-house.
Electronics Media: Kindly introduce Vayyar’s camera-less solution for imaging needs?
Malcolm Berman: Vayyar’s sensors create a 3D image of everything happening around you in real time, without the use of a camera. These sensors can see through solid objects, map large areas and since they don’t take a picture, they can be used in privacy-sensitive locations where optics cannot.
What makes our radio wave imaging devices different is that they are able to support dozens of transceivers, which transmit on wide and flexible frequency bands. Multiple signals are sent, received and analyzed, which enables the creation of high-resolution, 3D images, in real-time.
Vayyar has taken the capabilities of advanced imaging systems and finally brought them to a variety of consumer industries, including smart home, automotive, retail, robotics, medical, construction, agriculture and more. Vayyar’s mission is to help people worldwide improve their health, safety, and quality of life.
EM: What are your off-the-shelf offerings for design engineers and various companies?
Berman: Vayyar facilitates long-term partnerships with corporations to develop tailored solutions to meet specific needs. It also provides off-the-shelf kits to give companies hands-on experience and the ability to develop applications in-house. Vayyar has a line of consumer products launched under the ‘Walabot’ brand.
Vayyar is addressing the need for accurate and affordable sensors capable of 3D imaging that can be integrated across many platforms. New sensor innovation is critical to the advancement of key industries including autonomous vehicles, IoT, medical devices, and robotics. In general, our systems are custom developed through corporate partnerships.
EM: Kindly mention the imaging solutions Vayyar has for its Automotive, Smart Home, Robotics and Medical verticals with few key features?
Berman: Vayyar’s imaging solutions provide capabilities across a range of industries:
Smart Home: Vayyar sensors create a 3D image of everything happening in your home in real-time. It can monitor people’s presence, location, posture and vital signs without the use of optics and wearables. Our home sensors can detect if someone has fallen, intruders on the premises, people’s presence in case of emergency, and make your home appliances smarter and more proactive.
Automotive: Vayyar’s Automotive sensors detect over 150K points of interest per second, inside and outside of vehicles. Our sensors can be embedded into cars for monitoring drivers, passengers and outside surroundings. For drivers, we can monitor their breathing rate or identify body positions for safer airbag deployment. We can also identify what’s happening in each seat in the car, alert if a baby was left behind in the car, and conduct mass-classification of passenger’s sizes.
Our sensors also deliver 360 degree out of car sensing that can differentiate between pedestrians and cars to provide collision avoidance and parking assistance.
Robotics: Vayyar sensors are designed for both home and commercial robots. Our technology can monitor, classify and map the location of obstacles in the home. We can also detect and monitor people around the robot. Vayyar sensors can assist in robotic navigation through rooms or offices.
For manufacturing and industrial uses, Vayyar’s sensors can be used for presence awareness and to identify when humans enter environments with manufacturing robots and monitor their proximity to increase safety. Another use case is in the area of robotic limb safety, as our sensors can accurately direct robotic arms towards targets and provide surface-level monitoring.
Medical: In the medical field, Vayyar has developed an early stage breast cancer screening device which provides a 3D scan of breast tissue and can identify tumors in under five seconds. The Vayyar breast cancer screening device is a handheld device which is low cost, non-ionizing, and non-painful. It is now being used in in-vivo trials in Israel.
EM: What was your latest pick for CES 2018?
Berman: We saw a lot of great technology at CES. We were very impressed with Aflac’s Special Duck. It was designed to support children diagnosed with cancer and has interesting features like a port-a-cath with an RFID chip for children to familiarize themselves with chemotherapy treatment, as well as emoji cards, which allow the duck to express the child’s emotions for them. We especially admire that their plan is to provide them free of charge to every kid with cancer in the US.
EM: Point out few key features which are unique from other imaging sensors in the market?
Berman: What makes us truly unique is that our sensors do not use any cameras, work under any lighting condition, and can be used in situations where privacy is of the utmost importance.
- See-through materials – Our sensors penetrate through objects to provide 3D view of any environment
- There is no privacy violation
- Robust solution – our sensors are not sensitive to different light condition, smoke, fog, ice, snow, rain, etc.
- Concealed installation and no design damage
- Leveraging breakthrough number of antennas for high field-of-view and accuracy detection
- Customizable system to fit different form-factor and performance/FoV requirements
EM: Tell us about Vayyar collaborations and future projects?
Berman: We work with top fortune 500 companies in key industries to provide solutions for them to embed our sensors in their products and will be announcing future partnerships shortly.
Some recent collaborations include working with Softbank as their priority partner in Japan to combine their AI with our IoT technology. At CES 2018, Valeo showcased a solution powered by Vayyar that detects whether the car is occupied when the engine is off. Sensors in the vehicle cabin identify the number, location and morphology of people present. Many more announcements to come!
