Wafer Space eyes major chunk of autonomous vehicle biz, showcases its solutions in IESA Vision Summit 2018

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India-based embedded technology major Wafer Space has developed multiple solutions in smart automotive sector, autonomous vehicle segment in particular.

The automotive scenario is taking a new shape as electronics cum software-driven industry in the recent years from the traditional form of Mechanical one. While the OEMs are showing interest towards autonomous vehicles, various federal governments across the world including India are implementing smart city solutions, which require various advanced mobility solutions.

Wafer Space, which is known as the semiconductor and embedded software service solution provider, is flexing its muscle in providing various solutions in these segments, focusing the Indian and international markets.The company has showcased and demonstrated many of  its solutions at IESA Vission Summit 2018 in Bangalore.

Sharing details with Automotive Lead at IESA Vision Summit 2018, Rahul Malvi, Chief Executive Officer of Wafer Space, said, “Not only we have expertise in the software but also in the semiconductor space. We are building expertise in connected car, autonomous driving, ADAS and Infotainment. The goal is to project our company as one of the well-known automotive engineering services company in the next two years worldwide.

Lot of semiconductor companies are heavily investing in the automotive sector to make chips targeting the automotive segment. For instance, the companies like Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Renesas are releasing chips targeting the autonomous vehicle verticals like Advance Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), In-car infotainment, Powertrain etc. “We have strong relationship and running engagement with these semiconductor companies. We have an edge in automotive space because we have tieup with semiconductor companies and we can do designs around the semiconductor companies. We are already serving to Qualcomm, Nvidia and Texas Instruments,” Malvi added.

Wafer Space has design centres both in India and the United States. Currently it has around 300 employees and looking to increase it to 450 in the next two years. We only hire the best talents in the industry. The normal experience of our staffs are in the range of seven years and above.

Wafer Space R&D in connected cars

One of the areas of research in Wafer Space is an ADAS based connected-car. The core concept is based on Image Processing and Decision making capabilities to demonstrate automatic lane detection of the car and ability to respond to various real-life scenarios such as traffic signals, zebra crossings, school zones or detecting silent zones and others. The car also uses smart sensors to provide a host of real-time parameters such as cabin temperature, air-quality, quality of ride, detection of other cars driven close by, harsh acceleration or braking and others. Applications for the car include areas like Smart Fleet Management, Passenger Safety and Comfort, Predictive Maintenance and others.

Endorsing this, Srinivas NS, Sr Director, Wafer Space said, “We are the services company. We build product based on the customer requirement. Its like Outsourced Product Development (OBD).  We have required capabilities with multiple disciplines of technology like hardware and software, embedded integration and development of complete product.

The company has already developed products and delivered to industrial control and automotive like data acquisition system for an example. Wafer Space is also focussing on solutions based on IoT. It has developed solution for Smart Parking. In the next one year the company is planning to develop several such solutions and all of them can be integrated in one comprehensive solution which can be used by large corporates.

Wafer Space is also into developing solutions in the space of driver drossiness detection. When the driver is falling asleep, the solution will detect it and then alert the driver. Or in the case of driver distraction, like the driver is not looking at the front and occasionally get districted by looking at some other thing, our solution will help to alert the driver We are building some of those modules independently based on image processing. So the image processing is one area where we are trying to build strong expertise interms of algorithm development, so that we can give solution around the customer preferred DSPs because each one is aligned with one particular platform.

Similarly modelling the behaviour or performance of particular system, capturing the data through OBD and then modelling that and then predicting when exactly the next due for maintenance. So these are the three solutions we are working in. Drowsiness detection, Driver Distraction detection and predictive maintenance based on OBD

The latest solution that the company has developed is Smart parking, which is nothing but parking space management. When we enter the campus we should know where the parking space is available. This is an application that runs on top of the IoT technology. The complete solution is developed by us. It’s a cloud application.

With the government promoting the smart cities project this kind of solutions will get attention in the private sector.

According to Malvi, as of now around 35 percent of the company’s share comes from the automotive industry and rest is from semiconductor and embedded. Over the time Wafer Space expects that  the automotive share will increase to 60 percent in the next one or two years. The company is active in the areas like ADAS,, AUTOSAR, HMI development, verification and validation for different sub system like Driver assistance system, connected car etc.

The company’s overall client base remains in the range of 18-20 spread across semiconductor, system company, automotive, industrial and wireless.

With the global automotive industry attracted towards smart solutions, no doubt that Wafer Space has a big role to play in the years to come.