Another look at auto and the IoT came from TI, who leveraged sensor fusion technology for a couple of active safety demonstrations and took wearables beyond fitness and geo-location.

Showing off some of their active safety technology, TI engineers displayed how the TDA2x and TDA3x SoCs can be deployed in automotive safety systems to provide a full 360º picture of vehicles and their environment by stitching together various camera and sensor inputs. Using FPD-Link interfaces, the SoCs actually receive uncompressed video streams from a car’s vision systems so that no data is lost during compression and an exact picture of a car’s surroundings can be constructed using advanced sensor fusion algorithms – the high-end TDA2x SoC can perform this type of fusion for six cameras using only 20 percent of its processing capacity.

Admittedly, I have been one to write off wearable technology as a collection of glorified pedometers – until I saw some examples of how they have evolved over the past year. Here, TI’s IoT experts showed one example in a youth wearable that acts as a geo-location tracker (ho-hum), but also integrates a cloud-based payment system so that thirsty kids can grab a drink without having to reach into mom’s coin purse. Just a couple taps and a world of fizzy refreshment can be yours – provided that it fits into Michelle Obama’s nutritional plans.

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