"I lost my cousin Yara in a traffic accident. The driver, who had been drinking, took the wheel without any sense of responsibility, and that choice ended a person's life."
Dor Heller Zabel, head of the Israeli startup DYM Touch & Drive, explained the background of the founding this way. Zabel said, "The starting point was the awareness that the 'human factor' in road accidents needs to be controlled through technology," adding, "I wanted to build a structure in which the system determines in real time whether driving is possible, rather than relying on the driver's subjective judgment."
The Economic and Trade Mission of the Embassy of Israel in Korea on the 10th showcased the technologies of Israeli corporations that perform AI computation in on-device environments such as sensors, video, and semiconductors at the COMEUP startup event at COEX in Samseong-dong, Seoul. These corporations commonly highlighted "Edge AI" technology, which performs real-time judgment and processing on the device itself without sending data to the cloud.
DYM Touch & Drive is developing a contactless sensor that detects a driver's blood alcohol concentration in real time using an optical method, without breath, saliva, or blood sampling. The technology is being reviewed for potential applications not only in vehicles but also in medicine. Global telecommunications and security corporation Vodafone is participating as a key sponsor, and pilot tests are underway with vehicle security corporations. The company said the technology is designed as a system for prevention, not post-violation enforcement. Zabel said, "Before a driver overestimates their own condition, the system first makes the judgment, 'You cannot drive now.'"
In video, Visionary.ai showcased AI-based image signal processing (ISP) technology. The technology improves brightness, color, and sharpness in real time across various environments, including dim laptop screens, backlit scenes, nighttime CCTV, and drone and medical endoscope footage. It can also correct the effect of faces turning dark and smudged in HDR (high dynamic range) settings. On laptops and webcams for video conferencing, it improves image quality, and on mobile, it can raise nighttime image quality on low-cost smartphone cameras to a certain level or higher, the company said.
In security cameras, color-based object identification is possible even at night, and on drones, the AI corrects image distortion caused by vibration, wind, and rain. In medical endoscopy, the company said it enables precise imaging at lower light levels, supporting surgical environments with less invasiveness.
Senior Vice President David Zarman said, "This technology is already being applied by Korean security camera makers and is installed in products from global IT corporations such as Qualcomm and Lenovo," adding, "Real-time image processing technology is expanding its scope to robots, in-cabin cameras in cars, and AR/VR devices."
In semiconductors, POLYN Technology introduced its analog neuromorphic (brain-inspired) AI technology. POLYN Technology is a fabless (chip design) corporation with research teams in Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France, developing an ultra-low-power chip that performs AI computation in analog directly on raw sensor data without digital conversion. Eugene Zaitsev, executive vice president of marketing, said, "POLYN's NASP (Neuromorphic Analog Signal Processing) combines academic theory with the needs of industry," adding, "The biggest differentiator is that Deep Learning computation is possible in ultra-small, ultra-low-power, low-latency environments." Zaitsev added, "It is a completely different paradigm from conventional AI chips that are heavy and power-hungry."
The area POLYN Technology is currently most focused on is "smart tires." By inserting this semiconductor inside the tire, it calculates road surface conditions and grip in real time and immediately reflects that in braking, vehicle stability control, and Autonomous Driving systems. The company said it is discussing collaboration for vehicle application with Korean finished car makers such as Hyundai Motor and Kia, and is also in talks with Hankook Tire on the potential for tire applications.