According to the NHTSA, the Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US (yes, the same one that examines every Tesla autonomous venture with seven eyes and issues warnings about it once a month), published that in 2021 over 5600 people were killed in truck accidents caused while driving in reverse, i.e. on of 13% in relation to the data of the previous year. To try to reduce the phenomenon, the Israeli start-up company Valence Semiconductor, a supplier in the field of chips and communication for the automotive industry, has developed an audio-visual system that contains a safety technology solution that will respond to those fatal accidents caused when reversing.
Valens works with many car companies and, among other things, is responsible for the upgrades that were also made to the luxurious Mercedes vehicles and the MBUX systems that have become a benchmark in this field. In recent years, they have turned their attention to the field of trucks, and according to them, they have succeeded in solving three complex challenges due to the blocking of the truck drivers’ field of vision, and in fact Valens’ chips are the only ones that allow the installation of a reversing camera, a safety solution known from the private car market, even for heavy trucks with a trailer, which is still the case today. was impossible.
“The first, transferring information between the truck and the trailer behind while connecting two separate communication units, in one of the most difficult electromagnetic environments in the world (the jumper cable that connects to the various units),” explains the company. “The Valance chips transfer data at a low frequency of 125Msps which helps maintain a strong single throughout the connection, plus Digital Signal Processing (DSP) which provides the industry’s best ability to deal with electromagnetic noise.
Another challenge Shulens overcomes, so they say, “is the requirement to work over an existing cable infrastructure in order to preserve the ability to connect and disconnect the trailer – while maintaining the ability to transmit video between the trailer and the front of the truck. The solution of Valens actually runs on an existing cable infrastructure and maintains the ability To transfer data over an existing infrastructure in a rear view, also at the end of the truck manufacturing process (after-market).
The third challenge Scholens cracks is the distance the signal has to travel in a heavy and long truck with the impact of the distance on the quality of the signal. “Thanks to its unique DSP (digital signal processing), Valens manages to offer a solution that supports fast and error-free data distribution at distances of up to 40 meters, an unprecedented achievement that enables a solution for trucks with a standard size of up to 16.2 meters. The solution we are working on for the heavy truck market , is based on Valence’s VA6000 series of chips and enables a safer driving experience for truck drivers with a trailer around the world,” says Gideon Ben Zvi, CEO of Valence Semiconductor. “With the help of our unique technology, we contribute to making the roads safer, both for truck drivers and to the people and vehicles around them.”