Executive Interview – Seeing Machines

Seeing Machines (SM) is an AIM-listed technology company based in Canberra, Australia. Its intellectual property is based around three sets of algorithms covering eye gaze, head tracking and eye aperture. Following its recent £16m fund-raisings, SM has chosen to focus on areas where its IP can be used to enhance operator safety and performance and has identified five safety-related areas to focus investment – mining, commercial road transport, consumer automotive, rail and simulators/aviation and consumer electronics.

CEO Ken Kroeger gives an overview of SM’s core technologies and their applications. He discusses the alliance with Caterpillar, which was announced in May 2013, as well as the three significant announcements in September 2014. These announcements include an alliance with Takata, the tier one automotive components supplier, to take SM’s IP to the automotive OEM sector in volume, a strategic agreement with EMD, a unit of Caterpillar, related to in-cab operator fatigue and distraction monitoring systems for use in locomotives and an MOU with SEMCo, a Samsung unit, to jointly develop face- and eye-tracking technology for the consumer electronics industry. Mr Kroeger also discusses how SM’s technology complements the technology of Mobileye, which delivers technologies for camera-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).