"It has come to my attention recently that the position regarding IS Auto and AutoSens is not 100% clear, and there is some confusion as a result of both events being in the marketplace and who is organising each. As such I wanted to write to you personally to clarify the situation and ensure you have all the information so you can decide which event you attend in 2016.
In 2014, I was working with Smithers and set up the IS Auto conference along with conference chairman Patrick Denny, and several other advisors including Sven Fleck, Alain Dunoyer, Martin Edney, Martin Punke and Mike Brading. We ran two very successful events in 2014 and 2015.
In July 2015 I decided to leave the Smithers company and set up my own business (Sense Media) in order to focus on events in digital imaging and other sensor fields. The first of these events is AutoSens, which will retain focus on automotive imaging as a core topic, but which will broaden the scope slightly to include RADAR and LiDAR sensors, as well as more in depth discussion of image processing, standards, system architecture, computer vision and more.
My company will focus on growing this event and community year-round, and broaden the coverage for automotive imaging with increased engagement with the academic community, more international attendance and several new initiatives designed to benefit the engineering community.
All of the advisors who have worked with me previously have all decided to join the AutoSens board and prioritise this event, I am delighted and humbled to have their support and we all believe that AutoSens is the best way to support the automotive imaging community. In Patrick Denny's words, “I believe what Rob is doing with AutoSens is in the best interests of my customers, my suppliers, and my competitors and I give my full backing to this project”.
Other figures in the digital imaging world who have backed AutoSens include Albert Theuwissen, who will deliver an expert workshop at the AutoSens conference.
This message is just intended to present you with the facts, and clarify who is behind the AutoSens event. The AutoSens team and Advisory Board are highly motivated to deliver an event that is of high technical quality and helps engineers throughout the supply chain who are working to develop and improve automotive vision systems. We hope you will join us on this journey.
A full speaker announcement will come next week including confirmed speakers from both established and new entrant OEMs, as well as news about other exciting developments."