In this episode of Visions: A Machine Vision and  Automation Solutions Podcast, host Jim Tatum takes a closer look at Bitsensing's retrofit ADAS kit deployed on passenger buses in South Korea, combining radar, cameras, and AI to increase driver awareness in dense urban traffic. Initial deployment reported results of more than 50% improvement in driver safety scores and a 24% drop in pedestrian collision warnings.

Related: Bitsensing Unveils ADAS Kit for Commercial Vehicles

Visions: A Machine Vision and Automation Solutions Podcast, is the podcast for engineers, designers, integrators, and end users who want to keep an informed eye on the imaging and machine vision industry. Every Tuesday we will explore the latest in imaging trends, developments and solutions. Here you will find interesting, useful insights and observations from expert interviews, solo episodes, even the occasional panel discussion, all of which aim to expand your knowledge on imaging and machine vision.

Transcript

Well, hello and welcome to visions, a machine vision and Automation Solutions podcast. I'm your host, Jim Tatum, senior editor of Vision Systems design and visions is an endeavor business media production from your friends at Vision Systems Design. Here you'll find the latest on everything from end user machine vision solutions to trends, developments, and perspectives on all things machine vision and imaging. Whether you've been working in the industry for a while or you're just starting to take a closer look at it, this podcast is designed to grow your knowledge and bring greater focus to your understanding of the imaging and machine vision industry. And now on to our show.

Well hi everyone. Welcome back to visions. Today we're going to take a closer look at an interesting piece of technology that aims to bring greater safety to commercial transport. Specifically, we're looking at an advanced driver assistance system that's already on the road, that's been quietly operating on passenger buses in one of South Korea's busiest urban environment. It's a real world deployment, not a lab demo. And it's coming from Seoul, South Korea based company business, which specializes in radar based sensing solutions.

Commercial vehicles, whether they're buses, delivery trucks or heavy goods vehicles, often operate in some of the most demanding road environments imaginable dense cities, constant pedestrian traffic, tight intersections, long braking distances all too often major blind spots. South Korea is no exception to this, but South Korea is also a place where transit operators are actively looking for ways to reduce risk, and bit sensing has introduced an advanced driver assistance system, or Adas kit, specifically designed for commercial vehicles and, crucially, for retrofit onto vehicles already in service.

To understand why that matters, you need to consider the broader safety picture. Think about it a minute. According to the European Commission's twenty twenty four report on buses and heavy goods vehicles of roughly twenty one zero zero zero road fatalities across the European Union in twenty twenty two, nearly three thousand involved heavy trucks and another four hundred involved buses and motor coaches, and about half of those bus related crashes occurred in urban settings. Here in the U.S., the numbers are just as sobering. Data from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that five thousand four hundred and seventy two people were killed in crashes involving large trucks in twenty twenty three alone.

So the danger is real. The challenge is global, and it's an urgent need that needs to be filled. And as it turns out, that's the very gap Bitsensing says it's trying to close. In a recent exclusive interview with visions and with vision systems design. Bit sensing CEO Jae Eun Lee put it this way. Commercial vehicles operate in some of the most demanding road environments. Yet many fleets still lack access to modern driver warning systems. Our Adas kit was developed to close that gap, delivering a complete system level Adas solution that can be deployed on existing vehicles without redesigning the vehicle platform.

Now, before we go any further, we need to put in a very important clarification. And that is this. This is not an autonomous driving system. The bit sensing ADAS kit is designed to assist and augment human drivers, not replace them, especially in vehicles that have little or no built in driver assistance technology. Think of it as an extra set of highly aware digital eyes and ears, constantly scanning the space around a vehicle and alerting the driver to potential hazards.

So how does it work? Well, the system combines radar, cameras and AI powered software into a single retrofit kit. Specifically, it includes three radar units for two megapixel RGB cameras with wide angle lenses and a central controller running bit sensing AI software. As Lee explains, this is a sensor fusion system designed to enhance driver situational awareness by combining surround view monitoring with multiple radar sensors. The hardware layout is carefully designed for full coverage. Radar units are mounted in front and on both sides of the vehicle. Cameras are placed at the front, both sides and at the rear, giving the system a full three hundred and sixty degree view. All of the sensors are hardwired into a controller unit, paired with a display screen positioned near the driver.

When the vehicle starts, the system starts with it automatically waking up that is synchronizing all sensors and scanning the environment in real time. An image and radar data are continuously analyzed by the onboard AI software, which looks for predefined safety scenarios. If a risk is detected, say, during a lane change, or maybe when a pedestrian enters a blind spot, the system immediately alerts the driver. The software supports a wide range of warning functions, including blind spot monitoring, surround view monitoring, rear collision warnings, forward collision warning, front vehicle start alerts, and moving off information. All of this is running in real time.

As Lee notes, the goal isn't to replace drivers, but to give them earlier, more reliable information in complex, fast changing environments. Radar, in particular, is where Bitsensing really brings deep expertise, Lee says. Many of the core engineers on this project, including himself, were among the first teams to develop automotive radar systems in South Korea. Even so, this ADAS kit wasn't built off an existing template, according to Lee. The team effectively started from scratch, developing the system from A to Z because there was nothing quite like it already on the market. From concept to deployment, development took about a year and a half, but now it's out in the real world. In November 2025, Bitsensing deployed ADAS kits on three buses operated by Korea Wide Express Group. These buses run in downtown Daegu, a city of about two to three million people. Each bus travels about a thousand kilometers a day, operating for roughly seven hours daily in dense urban traffic. That makes them a pretty demanding test case by any measure.

So how did it perform? Well, according to feedback from Korea Wide Express Group, the results have been strong. Lee says the operator reports a more than fifty percent improvement in driver safety scores, along with a twenty four percent reduction in pedestrian collision warning events. Those are meaningful numbers, especially in an urban environment. In fact, the results have been strong enough so that Ben Sensing has now signed a contract to install its Adas systems on more than five hundred Korea wide express buses later this year. The company is also in discussions with Korean insurance providers about potentially lowering insurance rates for commercial fleets equipped with Adas technology. If that happens, it could create an additional economic incentive on top of the safety benefits for broader adoption. That's pretty much where this story gets really interesting, because think about it like this. While fully autonomous vehicles, while out there, are still facing regulatory, technical and public trust hurdles. Systems like this one show how incremental assistive technologies are already delivering real world safety gains today not in theory, not in simulation, but on busy city streets with real passengers, real drivers, and, yes, real risk.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode of visions, produced by Endeavor Business Media, a division of endeavor B2B. Thanks very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's show, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share this episode with a colleague who would find it helpful. Until our next episode, you can find us at vision dash systems dot com or on LinkedIn, Facebook, or for more insights, updates, and breaking news to keep you in the know. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay focused on your visions.