Anybody who has driven in Israel might be a bit skeptical about the positive connotations of a sentence that includes the words ‘Israeli’ and ‘Driving’ in it. But add the word ‘Autonomous’ and it's a whole other story.
What's the big fuss about Autonomous Vehicles? Well, for a start, in the United States alone, 100 people die per day from driving accidents. But even as health and safety continuously improves, the greatest cause of driving fatalities is human error. The prospect of eradicating the many thousands of road fatalities world wide is a hopeful one, but also one thought to be within reach with the development of autonomous vehicles.
Not only will driverless vehicles be advantageous from a safety perspective, but it will also give us back the most precious gift of all; time. We spend on average 100 minutes per day in our cars. Over the average person's lifetime that equates to between 2-4 years behind the wheel. Imagine if we could reclaim that time, and spend those hours travelling to work doing something a little more productive?
Many companies around the world are striving to make these dreams a reality, but one tiny nation seems to be in the driving seat when it comes to its efforts to build autonomous vehicles - you guessed it - Israel. According to one source, there are 45 Autonomous Vehicle startups in israel - this article will outline some of the Israeli companies and innovations making waves in the field of driverless cars.
Mobileye
The first, and perhaps most obvious example is Mobileye. Acquired by Intel for $15.3 billion in 2017, Mobileye are the brains behind the technology that allows your car to sense its surroundings. Essentially, Mobileye provides the technology that allows a car to be autonomous, to drive & ‘make decisions’ itself.
Its technology can be found in over 60 million vehicles and has been adopted by 27 leading vehicle manufacturers. Its advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) uses a camera to scan the road ahead, and using AI algorithms, processes the images to identify potential hazards, either warning or assisting drivers in time to avoid a collision.
One major prerequisite for autonomous driving are highly accurate, high definition maps. Using their award-winning REM technology, Mobileye collects the data from the vehicles in which its technology is operating, enabling them to compress the data and form high-definition maps, which are accurate down to centimeters. The mapping technology is not only crucial for safety and Autonomous Vehicles, but is also used to provide important information to cities,departments of transportation, road operators and others.
“While scanning for road hazards, our AI technology can also be used to identify, locate and classify roadside assets and mobility information. This means that vehicles equipped with our technology are also able to identify pavement cracks, potholes, worn road striping, traffic signs, manhole locations and much more” (Mobileye Website).
Over the years, many giant car manufacturers have partnered with Mobileye to install its technology into their motors. One example is Volkswagen, who hopes to roll out Israel’s first autonomous ride hailing service in 2022. The project proposal, which goes by the name of ‘New Mobility in Israel’ and has already been accepted by the government aims to have hundreds of cars in its fleet over the next few years.
Stephanie Vox, the Head of Volkswagen Group’s ‘Konnect’, a Volkswagen subsidiary based in Tel Aviv, said “Israel is a valuable source of new mobility technologies as well as Cyber security, AI, smart data and sensors. Therefore it is important that Konnect is present locally and initiates collaborations and projects with relevant startups for our Group brands”.
Cognata
Have you ever considered how much testing needs to be done before Autonomous Vehicles are permitted on the road en masse? The Rand Corporation, an American Think Tank, reports it’ll take 11 billion miles of testing before it can be proved that autonomous vehicles are safer drivers than humans. But to collect this data it would take 100 cars running non stop for 500 years! That's where Cognata comes in. Cognata simulates real cities in 3D, encapsulating millions of details from trees, to buildings to gates. Cognata’s first virtual city was San Francisco. Every building, tree was included as well as various traffic models to study how autonomous vehicles drive and react. This technology allows companies to ‘drive’ millions of miles in a few hours, collecting the necessary data to ensure our safety and help prepare for the mass rollout of autonomous vehicles.
Phantom Auto
Phantom Auto is another company tackling issues related to autonomous driving. Though driverless cars will reach high levels of intelligence, they are bound to encounter extenuating circumstances - i.e events that the car has not been programmed well enough to deal with - for example, a deer stood frozen blocking the car. Phantom Auto are able to control vehicles in real time from thousands of miles away. That is, they could control a car driving in LA, from offices in Israel, or anywhere in the world.
The Covid 19 pandemic has helped to highlight the potential for what a company such as Phantom Auto could achieve. While some professions were able to shift their work out of the office and into their homes, others simply couldn’t - or at least they couldn’t without the help of a technology provider such as Phantom Auto.
Thier proprietary real-time streaming technology maximizes performance of all available networks—including 4G/5G/WiFi and would thus enable companies to virtualise its logistics operations, essentially allowing workers to operate vehicles from their own homes.
Phantom Auto could revolutionize the way we work, by removing human operators from risky environments by empowering them to work in remote office locations from up to thousands of miles away. Companies could then recruit from previously-inaccessible labor pools such as the physically disabled or geographically isolated, and increase labor retention by providing tech-empowered, future-proof jobs.
Furthermore, on-demand control of any vehicle at any location increases operator productivity and reduces the cost of flex and surge staffing. It will also eliminate walking time between vehicles in a single site, and tap into remote flex staff to smooth out surges in operational demand across multiple sites.
Innoviz
Innoviz is a ‘Lidar’ technology provider. LIDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging, are laser-based sensors that allow a vehicle to ‘see’ its surroundings, a method for measuring distances by illuminating the target with laser lights. Though an expensive component on any vehicle, they are considered to be a critical element for AV’s.
Innoviz, founded in 2016 by former IDF members with experience in electro-optics, computer vision and signal processing, supplies many top car manufacturers; their proprietary sensing solutions will be integrated into UK-based Delphi Automotive’s systems to provide automakers with a comprehensive portfolio of autonomous driving technologies, provide laser sensors for BMW’s iX model due in 2021 and much more.
The upcoming years, including 2021 are expected to be big years in the rolling out of Autonomous Vehicles. As industries are revolutionised and road safety is enhanced significantly, you can be sure that the innovative drive of Israeli tech companies have played an important role.
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