Affected by the sluggish camera industry Canon was "forced" to develop cameras for autonomous driving

At present, Canon has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the open source autonomous driving company Tier IV, and the two have officially announced that they have become strategic partners, and Canon will produce special in-vehicle cameras for the company. Canon's move was also affected by the sluggish digital camera industry and was "forced" to develop new businesses.

Canon Zhuhai Co., Ltd. said last week that due to the sharp contraction of the global camera market and the epidemic, the company's operations have faced unprecedented difficulties, and the headquarters has had to adjust the overall operating structure of the group. Subsequently, Canon China said it plans to close part of its production line in Zhuhai, which mainly produces digital camera products.

It is understood that Canon will jointly develop related automotive camera products such as the Automatic Driving Assistance System (ADAS) with Tier IV and load them on Tier IV's autonomous vehicles for testing. Tier IV, a member of Hon Hai Group's MIH Electric Vehicle Alliance, received a $9 million strategic investment in 2019 and plans to launch its own L4 level autonomous driving system in 2022.

In addition, Canon will also devote itself to the development of a driving monitoring system (DMS), which can use cameras to monitor driver behavior in real time, and realize a variety of auxiliary driving functions such as fatigue driving reminders.