„Harman” is a company best known for producing audio systems under several trademarks, such as JBL, AKG, Becker etc.. However, I was employed in the Automotive division, and worked on the VitalCaare™ system, — a sophisticated solution developed by startup „Caaresys” that monitors the vital signs of the driver and passengers in a car. The solution is based on a radar that is located in the back of the seat and constantly emits radio waves; a detector located nearby receives the waves altered by human’s movements, and the Doppler effect is used to calculate human’s breath rate, heart rate and heart rate variability. „Harman” became an independent subsidiary of „Samsung” in 2017. „Caaresys” was acquired by „Harman” in 2022.
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The program was intended to run on the car’s computer, with information being logged and possibly displayed on the infotainment screen.
The clients who already bought the product are, for example, Bentley, BMW, Rolls Royce and other luxury brands.
Work Experience
- Started in April 2024, finished in October 2024.
- Position: Embedded Software Engineer.
- In the fall of 2024, „Harman” has decided to halt the development of VitalCaare™ system and laid off all employees in the responsible departments.
My accomplishments
- I received complex algorithms in (mostly) Matlab or (rarely) Python and re-implemented them in C / C++ code, with emphasis on performance and optimizations. The code had to be adapted to Samsung Linux (yes, there is such thing as Samsung Linux!)
- I single-handedly created an easy-to-use solution for testing, using Microsoft® Hyper-V, Ubuntu Linux and port forwarding, instead of using a single laptop per department with Linux installed on hardware. The virtual machines were standardized, greatly reducing the number of bugs that appeared because of differences in the installed libraries.
- I took part in porting the application to the new hardware (from Nvidia Jetson to Samsung Exynos).
- Took part in bringing the UI from non-functional mock-up to fully functional application.