Connected Car News Tips: Toyota, Ford F-150, Moibleye, Swift Navigation, Mentor, Azure, Daimler, GRIMM, Check Point & ALG

In connected car news this week were Toyota, Ford F-150, Moibleye, Swift Navigation, Mentor, Azure, Daimler, GRIMM, Check Point and ALG.

Double Connections for Toyota Connected

Just a year after its launch, Toyota Connected is planning to double its headcount and expand its office space at the Legacy West Urban Village, adjacent to Toyota Motor North America’s new headquarters.

Toyota Connected is the data science hub for Toyota’s global operations. Toyota Connected has begun to develop Toyota’s Mobility Services Platform, a global, cloud-based digital ecosystem that will enable a host of mobility services such as ride sharing, car sharing, remote delivery and much more.

Founded in April 2016, the startup initially planned to employ 100 and has already hired about 55 technologists, including data scientists, engineers and software developers. It now plans to employ 200. Toyota Connected also is adding 13,500 square feet to its existing 20,000-square-foot lease in the Urban Village office block in Plano.

Zuckerberg’s Timeline Includes Ford Plant & F-150

Facebook’s CEO  Mark Zuckerberg helped assemble a Ford F-150. He met with Ford employees to learn about their work and how they are incorporating new technology and innovation into design, product development and manufacturing.

As part of the visit, he worked on the line at the Dearborn Truck Plant, saw how the company prototypes and designs vehicles at our Product Development Center, and rode in the Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle to get a feel for how the company is preparing for the future as it transforms to be an auto and mobility company.

Mentor Certified for Microsoft Azure IoT

Mentor Graphics announced it has joined Microsoft Azure Certified for Internet of Things (IoT), ensuring customers get IoT solutions up and running quickly with hardware and software that has been pre-tested and verified to work with Microsoft Azure IoT services. Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT allows businesses to reach customers where they are, working with an ecosystem of devices and platforms, allowing for faster time to production.

GRIMM to Open Car Hacking Lab in Michigan

GRIMM, a leader in security engineering, is ramping up its Michigan team as the automotive industry continues to seek security help. Later this year, GRIMM will break ground on an innovative car-hacking lab in Michigan.  The Lab will have a combination of hardware and software tool sets found in automotive, aviation, and industrial control systems. It will also have classroom training space where GRIMM experts will teach hands-on advanced courseware for automotive and ICS security.

Daimler Sure of Azure

Daimler is consistently working on innovative cloud-based solutions to further increase its customers’ efficiency and to create the basis for future services. In contrast to a server-based infrastructure which is still commonplace today, cloud solutions offer permanent availability, higher levels of flexibility and economic efficiency. In future, Daimler FleetBoard GmbH and Mercedes-Benz Vans will opt for the cloud platform Azure by Microsoft, among others. Microsoft Azure is to support the infrastructure for new digital products relating to commercial vehicles.

Mobileye Eyes Nissan for Anonymized Crowd-Sources Maps

Mobileye announced that it has entered into an agreement with Nissan Motor to generate anonymized, crowd-sourced data to create next-generation precision maps utilizing Mobileye’s Road Experience Management (REM) data generation technology. The maps will be used as a source of localization, foresight, and redundancy in order to enable safe, robust autonomous vehicles in the future.

The agreement is the next step after successful proof-of-concept work in 2016 that culminated in Mobileye’s REM mapping technology being utilized in Nissan’s recent autonomous vehicle demonstration in London.  And it extends an important technology relationship, the most recent example being ProPILOT, Nissan’s system that utilizes significant Mobileye technology to enable single-lane highway driving with autonomous control of steering, acceleration, and braking functions.

Strategy’s Automotive Connected Mobility Strategy

Strategy Analytics has announced the launch of a new research advisory service: Automotive Connected Mobility.  The new subscription-based service is introduced to address emerging opportunities in connected mobility that are altering the transportation landscape and the nature of vehicle use and ownership.

The Automotive Connected Mobility (ACM) service reports on emerging mobility services with particular emphasis on car maker strategies, programs, acquisitions, investments and organizations.  Mobility services include car sharing and ride hailing in all of their forms as well as new vehicle ownership and usage models including on-demand vehicle access, concierge services, fractional ownership and the like.

The Automotive Connected Mobility service will incorporate a consumer insights component with survey, focus group, and customer clinic elements tracking the rise of evolving mobility services with an emphasis on best practices.

The service focuses on global and regional market adoption and penetration with emphasis on regulatory activities, subscription and service pricing, the number and types of vehicles in use and the impact on vehicle sales.  Particular attention is paid to supporting and evolving business models and competitive factors.  All of these factors are weighed in the context of maintaining a forecast for market adoption and impact.

NorCom Selects MapR

MapR Technologies, Inc., the provider of the Converged Data Platform enabling organizations to create intelligent applications that fully integrate analytics with operational processes in real time,  announced that NorCom, a full-chain supplier for big data solutions, has selected the MapR Converged Data Platform to serve as a foundation for its autonomous driving applications that leverage deep learning technologies. The partnership enables joint customers to deploy deep learning frameworks that can provide fast and reliable analysis in critical compute environments.NorCom leverages a purpose-built deep learning framework for the automotive industry. To fully take advantage of it, they needed a way to efficiently manage the massive data sets generated by sensors and cameras in self-driving cars. Running containerized deep learning applications on the MapR Platform provided the required speed, scale and reliability to successfully analyze continuous data in an autonomous driving environment and achieve the benefits of deep learning.

PolySync Builds Driver for Swift Navigation

Swift Navigation, a San Francisco-based startup building centimeter-accurate GPS technology to power a world of autonomous vehicles, has teamed up with PolySync, a leader that is building the tools and software infrastructure at the center of autonomous vehicle development. As a result of this technology-focused alliance, PolySync has built a driver for Swift Navigation’s flagship product, Piksi Multi.

Swift recently shipped its newest product, Piksi Multi, a multi-band, multi-constellation high-precision GNSS receiver, perfectly apt for the autonomous vehicle market. Ushering in a new era of precision GPS affordability, Piksi Multi represents a revolution in centimeter-accurate GNSS capabilities for the mass market. Swift Navigation solutions utilize real-time kinematics (RTK) technology, providing location solutions that are 100 times more accurate than traditional GPS, at a fraction of the cost.

ARCCORE, BayLibre, IoT.bzh, Nexius, SELTECH and Voicebox Join ALG

Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative open source project developing a Linux-based, open platform for the connected car, today announced that ARCCORE, BayLibre, IoT.bzh, Nexius, SELTECH and Voicebox have joined Automotive Grade Linux and The Linux Foundation.

AGL is the Diamond Sponsor for Automotive Linux Summit on May 31-June 2 in Tokyo, Japan. The Automotive Linux Summit gathers together the most innovative minds from automotive expertise and open-source excellence to drive the future software solutions in the automotive arena. ALS provides the unique opportunity to hear directly from members and the AGL community.

Cyber Security HDBaseT Alliance with Check Point, Argus & Valens

The HDBaseT Alliance, the cross-industry group tasked with promoting and advancing HDBaseT technology, announced the establishment of a Cyber Security Working Group, with the participation of Check Point, Argus and Valens. The Working Group will define the necessary specifications for a more secure connected car.

Check Point Software Technologies, the leader in cyber security solutions in the market, has joined the Alliance as a Contributor member, and will lead the Cyber Security Working Group.  Argus Cyber Security, the world’s largest independent automotive cyber security company, is also joining the Alliance as a Contributor member of the Cyber Security Working Group. Valens, inventor of HDBaseT and HDBaseT Alliance founder, will play a central role in this collaboration to accelerate development of these requirements.