AMD in Driver and Occupant Monitoring Systems

AMD has a long history in the automotive industry and a strong heritage in Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS), which are deeply integrated in L2, L2+, and L3 Vehicles. Driver monitoring is essential to ADAS systems. As vehicles achieve higher levels of autonomy, the more requirements a vehicle's DMS must meet.

In 2026, the Euro NCAP will include more stringent criteria for 5-star rating, especially for its DMS and occupant monitoring systems (OMS). Other key requirements involve drowsiness detection, distraction monitoring, and unresponsive driver detections. NCAP 26 will award up to 60 points for “Safe Driving”, including Occupant Monitoring (30 points) and Driver Engagement (30 points).  Each subsequent year will include more scrutiny and weight to DMS, with 72 points in 2027 and 84 points in 2028. Colin Barnden, an analyst at Semicast, says, “What is evident is that NCAP26 is proving an earthquake for driver monitoring decision making at the OEMs. NCAP26 starts to meld ADAS with DMS, a trend which will develop further with the NCAP29 roadmap that looks set to integrate the driver state signals with airbag deployments. The long-term vision for road safety involves increasing the performance of the driver assistance and occupant safety systems by understanding more about the vehicle’s occupants. Regulators are quickly coming to realize that the key component to achieving this step change in road safety is with advanced driver and occupant monitoring systems that understand human behavior.”

The AMD product portfolio has the capability to address these complex changes in DMS requirements and help improve a vehicle’s ADAS systems. Automotive Tier 1 suppliers, such as Seeing Machines, have chosen AMD Adaptive SoC for their DMS because of its ability to combine programmable logic, AI inference, and CPU for highly optimized processing. Also, FPGAs and adaptive SoCs are highly scalable, allowing them to meet varying OEM platforms, security and safety requirements such as ISO26262 and ASIL-B certification.

Many OEMs have chosen AMD FPGAs and adaptive SoCs to be integrated into their driver monitoring system. "The functionality and performance required for driver monitoring systems is increasing year by year and there is a need to provide solutions that integrate multiple sensing devices inside the vehicle” said Takafumi Yamamoto, general manager, Sensing Equipment Design Dept., Safety & Comfort Systems Business Unit at Mitsubishi Electric Mobility Corporation. “The AMD SoC platform can flexibly meet these requirements in terms of both hardware and software, ensuring scalability for future feature expansion."

There will be many more updates to Euro NCAP rating, and AMD is an ideal silicon provider to meet these increased demands in DMS for different vehicle systems and architectures.

AMD in Automotive

As the pace of innovation continues to accelerate in the automotive industry, the need for high-performance compute, accelerators and graphics technologies is increasing. AMD is at the forefront of this inflection point, with the industry’s broadest line of high-performance CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and adaptive SoCs. From powering in-vehicle infotainment systems to advanced driver-assistance systems, autonomous driving and networking applications where functional safety is of paramount importance, AMD provides carmakers with a one-stop shop for silicon and software solutions. Visit here for more information.

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