AssistWare Licenses Lane Tracking Technology to Visteon
IVsource.net
15 August 2002

After 17 months of negotiation, AssistWare Technology, Inc. of Wexford, Pennsylvania has completed a licensing agreement with Visteon Corporation, which will promote Assistware’s lane tracking technology to vehicle manufacturers.

After 17 months of negotiation, AssistWare Technology, Inc. of Wexford, Pennsylvania has completed a licensing agreement with Visteon Corporation, which will promote AssistWare’s lane tracking technology to vehicle manufacturers.

AssistWare is a spinoff of Carnegie-Mellon University, and was founded in 1995 by Drs. Dean Pomerleau and Todd Jochem.  Their aim was to commercial technology created for the National Automated Highway System Consortium and for military customers that enabled a vehicle system to know its position in its travel lane.  

SafeTRAC, AssistWare's lane departure warning system product, uses a small camera mounted to the windshield and computer power to analyze the scene ahead of the car, detect the lane edges, and then assess the position of the car within the lane.  If the car begins to deviate from the lane unintentionally (without a turn signal), a warning is sounded.  The system provides an effective countermeasure against road departure crashes, many of which occur due to driver drowsiness or distraction.

The current version of SafeTRAC represents seven years of product development.  150 units have been sold, mainly for evaluation and research purposes, to USDOT, Transport Canada, and research units of Ford, GM, DaimlerChrysler, Volvo, Suzuki, and Nissan.  The standard commercial unit sells in the range of $2,000 and research versions are available for around $20,000.  SafeTRAC units are being used and evaluated in the 36-truck fleet in the ongoing Mack Trucks Intelligent Vehicle Initiative field operational test, and several units are also installed in trucks in the Netherlands for a similar test there sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Transport. 

After the initial introduction of SafeTRAC, AssistWare focused on the heavy truck market and had some success getting the system into use with trucking fleets -- and on the options list for truck manufacturers.  However, their main strategy in recent years has been to land a licensing deal with a major automotive supplier – so the agreement with Visteon, after a variety of exploratory negotiations with other potential partners, represents achievement of a key goal for the company.  The licensing agreement is in effect for eight years, during which time royalties flow to AssistWare when the company’s technology is adopted for new vehicle sales.

To keep things interesting for the founders and to preserve their ability to develop next generation technologies, AssistWare spun off a sister company, Applied Perception, Inc., in January 2001.  API has primarily focused on technology contracts for robotic military vehicles, and in its first full year was able to realize revenue of $1M.

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For More Information ...

... on the SafeTRAC product, visit www.assistware.com.

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