There’s been no lack of innovation in the automobile over the past few years, particularly in the non-mission-critical department, where modern cars are getting all the bells and whistles that consumers have become accustomed to, like now-mainstream touch displays.

The IoT has required products to be developed in many ancillary categories, particularly when it comes to communications. For example, Synaptics recently announced the SYN4778, what it claims is the industry’s the smallest, lowest power, most accurate Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) IC.

Human presence detection (HPD), an application of visual sensing, is the art of knowing when a person is present, determining their status, and their environment. If implemented effectively, it has the potential to reap many benefits, particularly regarding security and lowering power consumption, when compared to traditional methods.

CES is back to help the tech industry ring in the New Year, and Embedded Computing Design is on the ground in Las Vegas tracking announcements that will help define electronics for the next year and beyond.

Use one of these headsets and you’ll be very impressed. Take one apart and you’ll be blown away.

SAN JOSE, Calif. Synaptics Incorporated aquired Emza Visual Sense Ltd. allowing for the expansion of edge hardware utilizing Emza’a ML algorithms to adapt to the challenges of an edge environment with AI inference per milliwatt for extended visual sensing. "Bringing together key enabling technologies in edge hardware and algorithms for computer vision, audio, and security, while leveraging decades of experience and deep knowledge of customers’ requirements, will allow us to together rapidly deploy, scale, and re-define the HPD experience," said Saleel Awsare, SVP & GM at Synaptics.

Just when you thought you had a vendor pegged for its area of expertise, you find out you were wrong, and wrong by a long shot.