Caruma Partners with Flex to Develop AI to Alert Distracted Drivers

AGM Automotive, recently acquired by Sketch-to-Scale solutions provider Flex has entered into a joint development and licensing agreement with Caruma Technologies, Inc., an Intelligent Connected-Vehicle Platform company, to develop AI-powered, vision-based interior systems for automakers.

The two companies will collaborate on the integration of AGM’s Intelligent Interior System with Caruma’s system empowering the automotive data platform, which combines artificial intelligence, computer vision, and big data analytics —the underlying technologies found in self-driving cars—to alert drivers of unsafe driving behaviors, roadway hazards and vehicle security risks. These systems are designed to connect to the cloud to provide Advanced Driver Assisted Systems (ADAS) and Driver Management Systems (DMS).

Chris Obey, president of Automotive at Flex, said, “One of the specific reasons Flex acquired AGM was for the enhanced ability to develop collaborative industry synergies such as this partnership with Caruma. We believe our automotive OEM customers will be very interested in the advanced technologies resulting from these collaborations.”

Flex intends to offer the Intelligent Interior System to automakers for integration into new vehicles and for aggregating anonymized data on driving patterns, road infrastructure changes, and traffic congestion to ramp up their autonomous vehicle strategies.

“We chose to work with Caruma because of their expertise in intelligent transportation technology. This partnership will allow AGM and Flex to quickly deliver a comprehensive technology solution at the most efficient cost to our automotive customers,” said Robert Blinstrub, Vice President and General Manager of AGM, a Flex Company.

The Caruma platform connects cameras and sensor hardware to a continuous learning cloud and an artificial intelligence powered vehicle network, which ‘learns’ behavioral patterns of drivers and passengers, situational factors external to the vehicle and road infrastructural changes.

Chris Carson, founder and CEO, Caruma Technologies, said, “The partnership between Flex, AGM and Caruma will allow automakers to offer a wider range of advanced features and services in vehicles, including adaptive intelligence gained from a smart network and continuous learning cloud, as part of Caruma’s autonomous development efforts.”

Flex, AGM and Caruma anticipate their advanced hardware technology and AI, computer vision based software platform to be available to automakers by Q4 2017.

Caruma is an Intelligent Connected-Vehicle Platform that utilizes the underlying technologies found in autonomous driving vehicles to improve safety, security, and convenience.  Caruma’s AI-powered connected-vehicle platform collects data that empowers fleet managers with context-rich information, insurance sector with a vision-augmented driver score, smart cities with deep insights about road segment infrastructure anomalies, and automotive sector with real data sets needed for ramping to level 4 autonomy.