AImotive

AImotive (formerly AdasWorks) is an autonomous vehicle technology company working towards Level 5 autonomous vehicles.[3][4][5][6][7] The company describes its approach as "vision-first", a system that primarily relies on cameras and artificial intelligence to detect its surroundings.[8][9][10][11][12][13] The technology is designed to be implemented by automobile manufacturers to create fully autonomous vehicles, which can operate in all conditions and locations.[3][4][7][14] In September 2017, PSA Group teamed up with AImotive.[15][16]

AImotive
FormerlyAdasWorks
IndustryAutomotive Technology
Founded2015 in Budapest, Hungary
Headquarters
Budapest
,
Hungary
Key people
László Kishonti, founder and CEO[1]
Number of employees
170[2]
Websiteaimotive.com

History

The company was founded in Budapest, Hungary as AdasWorks by Laszlo Kishonti in 2015.[4] AImotive is a spin-off of the founder's previous company, Kishonti Ltd, which was a computer hardware benchmarking company.[17][18] In November 2016, the company changed its name to AImotive.[6][19]

The company has secured three rounds of funding. The first investment round of $2,500,000 was announced on 15 May 2015 and was led by Inventure Oy.[20] In a second round of funding the company received $10.5 million in funding from Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Draper Associates, Nvidia, Tamares Group and others.[4][18] On 4 January 2018 AImotive announced a Series C round of $38 million funded by investors B Capital Group, Prime Ventures and others.[21][22] This round made AImotive the second largest Hungarian-based startup based on venture capital investment.[23]

The company first created a prototype which it tested on the Hungarian Formula 1 Grand Prix track, Hungaroring.[24] As of January 2018, the company tests its technology on Toyota,[10][13][25] Citroen[9][26] and Volvo[27] models.

Three AImotive test vehicles, a Citroen C4 Picasso, a Volvo XC90 and a Toyota Prius.

In the spring of 2017 AImotive announced it had been granted a license to test its autonomous vehicles on public roads in Finland.[6] This announcement was followed by similar licenses in Hungary and the State of California.[17][28] In December 2017 the company indicated that it had acquired a self-driving test permit in the State of Nevada.

An AImotive prototype Toyota Prius equipped with autonomous vehicle testing plates issued by the State of Nevada.

The company's headquarters have remained in Hungary, while it has expanded to the U.S. with an office in Mountain View, California.[4][8][5] AImotive also has offices in Helsinki, Finland[9] and Tokyo, Japan.[13]

In 2016 Nvidia confirmed it was working with AImotive (AdasWorks at the time) and Volvo within the DriveMe project.[27] In September 2017 AImotive and PSA Groupe announced a partnership to develop a highway autopilot.[9][26][29][30] The same year AImotive announced it was developing an artificial intelligence accelerator, branded as aiWare. AImotive partnered with VeriSilicon and GlobalFoundries to create test chips of the architecture for use in its prototypes.[17][31] At the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center announced its DRVLINE platform in which AImotive is listed as a software technology partner.[32]

Technology

As of December 2017, AImotive is developing three branches of technology connected to autonomous vehicles. aiDrive is a self-driving software stack. aiSim is a virtual simulation environment, and aiWare, a silicon IP for chips that compute artificial intelligence.[25][31]

aiDrive is a self-driving software solution that utilizes artificial intelligence and data from cameras and other secondary sensors.[25] AImotive focuses on processing visual information, this approach is similar to that of Tesla,[33] and some industry experts consider it risky.[34] However, the company has successfully demonstrated its technology on US highways.[10][25][34] The software consists of four engines: recognition, location, motion and control.[3] The first two engines are responsible for recognizing objects around the vehicle and localizing it on a map.[7] The motion engine plans the trajectory of the vehicle incorporating artificial intelligence.[7][25] The control engine communicates commands to the car's drive-by-wire system.[18]

AImotive prototype Toyota Prius driving on highway.

aiSim is a virtual simulation environment for testing autonomous vehicles.[25] AImotive CEO, László Kishonti has stated that simulation technology has been used by the aviation industry to enhance safety effectively, and that the same technology will lead to safer self-driving cars, and also accelerate development.[35][34]

The hardware architecture by AImotive is a dedicated embedded artificial intelligence accelerator for computer vision with high-resolution input.[6][36] The company hopes to use these chips in its prototype cars.[10][25] AImotive leads the Neural Network Exchange Format (NNEF) working group of The Khronos Group.[31] NNEF is a standard for exchanging artificial neural networks between inference engines.[37] aiWare is the first hardware solution that follows the NNEF standard.[31]

AImotive was featured among the CB Insights 100 Promising Artificial Intelligence Startups in January 2017. The list collected startups that were "accelerating research, improving efficiency, and making many game-changing advancements that will be felt for decades to come"[38] stated CB Insights CEO, Anand Sanwal.

AImotive was featured on the British television show Guy Martin vs The Robot Car which aired on 26 November 2017. In the show, British motorcycle racer and television personality Guy Martin visits the company's headquarters and participates in a test drive on a Hungarian Motorway.[39]

References
  1. Higgins, Tim. "Driver's Ed: Startup Uses Video Games to Teach Cars to Drive themselves". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 28, 2017.
  2. Tara, Roopinder. "Hands Off the Wheel at 65mph - And Alive to Tell About It". Engineering.com. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  3. Kite-Powell, Jennifer (November 30, 2016). "This Start Up Uses AI and Cameras To Create New Autonomous Driving Platform". Forbes. Retrieved February 23, 2018.
  4. Etherington, Darrell (November 15, 2016). "Fully Autonomous AI Driving Company AImotive Expands to the US". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 23, 2018.
  5. "This fully autonomous AI company could be crucial for self-driving cars". Business Insider. November 16, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  6. "AImotive launches self-driving automotive technology powered by artificial intelligence". Robotics & Automation News. November 14, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  7. Collie, Scott (November 14, 2016). "AImotive develops "worldwide any weather" self-driving software". New Atlas. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  8. "Autonomous vehicle tech company AImotive positions itself for sale". Economic Times. November 14, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  9. Burke, Katie (September 6, 2017). "PSA partners with AI startup for self-driving pilot". Autonews. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  10. Bates-Ramirez, Vanessa (December 18, 2017). "This Self-Driving AI is Learning to Drive Almost Entirely in a Virtual World". Singularity Hub. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
  11. Mukherjee, Sharmistha (March 6, 2017). "Here's how AImotive is making systems for driverless cars inexpensive". Techseen. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
  12. Stumpf, Rob (May 15, 2017). "Software Company AImotive working to create affordable lidar alternative". The Drive. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
  13. Wolverton, Troy (December 12, 2017). "A Hungarian startup is betting cameras will help it deliver self-driving cars more quickly and cheaply than Waymo". Business Insider. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
  14. Baldwin, Roberto (May 12, 2017). "Self-driving cars could soon be cheaper and easier to build". Engadget. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  15. "PSA Group and AImotive team up for French self-driving pilot – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2018-06-27.
  16. King, Alanis. "Here's How Volkswagen Aims To Sell Its Earliest And Dirtiest Cheating Diesels". Jalopnik. Retrieved 2018-06-27.
  17. Brown, Peter (September 25, 2017). "Q&A: AImotive's Vision-first Approach Propels Its Self-driving Car Strategy". Electroics 360. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  18. Takahashi, Dean (November 14, 2016). "AImotive demos recognition software for self-driving cars". VentureBeat. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
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  20. "Automotive and AI startup AdasWorks closes $2.5 million Seria A round" (Press release). Day One Capital. July 29, 2015. Retrieved 2018-02-23.
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  22. Takahashi, Dean (January 4, 2018). "AImotive raises $38 million for self-driving car software". VentureBeat. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
  23. Zsiborás, Gergő (January 4, 2018). "Rég láttunk ilyet; 10 milliárdos befektetés a magyar autós startupnak [We haven't seen anything like this in a while: 10 billion HUF investment for the Hungarian Automotive Startup]". Forbes.hu.
  24. Gere, Tamás (January 25, 2015). "Vezető nélkül körözött egy Mercedes a Hungaroringen [A Mercedes laps the Hungaroring without a driver]". Autonavigator.hu. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  25. Tara, Roopinder (December 13, 2017). "Hands Off the Wheel at 65mph - And Alive to Tell About It". Engineering.com. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
  26. Etherington, Darrell (September 6, 2017). "PSA Group and AImotive team up for French self-driving pilot". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 23, 2018.
  27. "Automotive Innovators Motoring to NVIDIA DRIVE | NVIDIA Blog". The Official NVIDIA Blog. January 4, 2016. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  28. "Testing of Autonomous Vehicles". State of California Department of Motor Vehicles. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
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  31. "AImotive Expands Into Silicon IP for Deep Learning Inference Acceleration | Berkeley Design Technology, Inc". www.bdti.com. July 27, 2017. Retrieved February 23, 2018.
  32. "Samsung Reveals DRVLINE™ Platform, Takes Bold Step Toward Autonomous Future - Samsung Newsroom". Samsung Newsroom. January 8, 2018. Retrieved February 23, 2018.
  33. Hawkins, Andrew J. (February 7, 2018). "Elon Musk still doesn't think LIDAR is necessary for fully driverless cars". The Verge. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
  34. Wolverton, Troy (December 12, 2017). "A Hungarian startup thinks it has the key to cheaper self-driving cars – but a ride in its test car suggests it has a lot of work ahead". Business Insider. Retrieved January 22, 2017.
  35. Takahashi, Dean (May 27, 2017). "The crossover between car simulations and autonomous vehicles". VentureBeat. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
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