In connected car news this week were New York, Ouster, Scale.AI, STMicroelctrics, Lyft, Wind River, Renesas, AOPEN, Netradyne, ForeSight, Ouster, Scale.AI and Spireon.
Ride-Hailing Drivers Get Raise in NY
New York City set $17 an hour as the minimun wadge for Lyft, Uber and for-hire car service drivers.
Ouster Partners with Scale.AI
Ouster has announced a partnership with Playment and Scale.AI. Ouster is known to be one of the leading manufacturers of high-resolution lidar sensors, while Playment and Scale.AI are data labeling companies. The partnership aims to rapidly accelerate the implementation of deep learning models in self-driving vehicles and other real-time robotics by solving their biggest bottleneck.
New Shutter Sensors from STMicroelectrics
STMicroelectronics unveiled two new automotive global shutter image sensors, the VG5661 and VG5761, featured for driver monitoring. Both were demonstrated with automotive software innovator Jungo’s driver-monitoring solution CoDriver, at the recent AutoSens Imaging conference and at Electronica 2018.
These advanced image sensors enhance monitoring of vehicle occupants by capturing the scene as illuminated from the camera, eliminating unpredictable external effects such as sunlight or street lighting. Their superior image quality sharpens the responses of driver-monitoring systems, especially under near-infrared illumination close to 940nm, and makes possible new features, such as assessing driver attention, passenger comfort or child behavior. The new sensors embed ST’s automotive global shutter technology that strongly minimizes the illumination power consumption, even in high dynamic range mode.
Lyft Prepping to Go Public
Lyft announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The initial public offering is expected to commence after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.//
Wind River & Renesas Work Together
Wind River, a leader in delivering IoT software for safety-critical domains including automotive, and Renesas Electronics Corporation are expanding their collaboration for connected, advanced driver assist systems, and autonomous driving programs, including plans to pre-validate Wind River software with the latest Renesas R-Car systems-on-chip (SoCs). Software from the Wind River automotive portfolio is currently available on reference hardware for several existing Renesas SoCs. These include those for high-end, next-generation systems targeting vision and image processing applications relevant for autonomous driving, safety support systems, and also SoCs targeting in-vehicle infotainment.
Simon’s Permium 350KW Charging in SF Premium
Simon, a global leader in premier shopping, dining, entertainment and mixed-use destinations, announced its San Francisco Premium Outlets is California’s first location for electric vehicle (EV) charging systems featuring blindingly fast recharging speeds up to 350 kilowatts (kW) from Electrify America.
As part of its ongoing sustainability strategy, Simon teamed with Electrify America to open 10 DC fast chargers at San Francisco Premium Outlets today for public use. The charging site features eight 150 kW chargers and two 350 kW chargers. The 350 kW chargers are capable of recharging an electric vehicle at 20 miles a minute providing 200 miles of vehicle driving range in just 10 minutes.
AOPEN Kiosks for Volta
AOPEN, a multinational technology company that specializes in smart products and services for cloud-based applications, has partnered with Volta, the nation’s largest free car-charging kiosk provider, to scale its outdoor digital advertising network. The commercial-grade AOPEN Digital Engine media player enables Volta to meet the demands created by advances to their kiosk innovation and a rapid growth schedule.
Netradyne Parnters with Hyundai
Netradyne, a leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology focusing on driver and fleet safety, announced a global partnership with HYUNDAI MNSOFT, a Hyundai Motor Group subsidiary specializing in location-based services (LBS), cloud-based connected navigation software and future high definition (HD) maps for autonomous vehicles. Each bringing a unique skillset and expertise, this partnership seeks to develop HD maps to drive forward future vehicle technologies.
Grounded in the vision of ensuring our global roadways improve from a safety standpoint, these two organizations will create a strong collaborative environment for their individual artificial intelligence and research and development teams. HYUNDAI MNSOFT will leverage Netradyne’s dynamic crowd-sourced deep vision technologies for the development of HD Maps in its next generation vehicles.
Netradyne has been in a competitive proof of concept (POC) trail with HYUNDAI MNSOFT for close to a year, leveraging its Driveri™ camera to map parts of the United States in high definition. While several competitors have participated in partnerships surrounding Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR)-based mapping collaborations, Netradyne’s differentiated approach ultimately stood out to Hyundai as it relies on crowd-sourced deep vision analytics—a more affordable approach to HD Map generation which ultimately offers feasible dynamic updates.
Driveri is a vision-based driver recognition safety program that captures every minute of the driving experience, delivering safety managers a complete view of their driver’s day, now including advanced HD Map data capabilities.
Close collaboration to develop HD maps globally between the AI research and development (R&D) and product teams at both HYUNDAI MNSOFT and Netradyne is expected to enable safer next-generation vehicles.
ForeSight Installs QuadSight for Leading European Automaker
Foresight Autonomous Holdings has successfully delivered and installed its first QuadSight prototype system for evaluation by a leading European manufacturer of commercial vehicles. QuadSight was successfully installed on the manufacturer’s truck and passed all initial performance testing. The customer will continue independent evaluation of the system’s performance.
By collaborating closely with the vehicle manufacturer at the prototype evaluation stage, Foresight collects important feedback in order to develop a commercial product that fits the exact customer’s requirements. Customer satisfaction at the end of the evaluation process may lead to future orders of QuadSight systems by the vehicle manufacturer for mass production.
Ouster Partners with Playment & Scale.AI
Ouster, a leading manufacturer of high-resolution lidar sensors announced a partnership with leading data labeling companies Playment and Scale.AI to rapidly accelerate the implementation of deep learning models in self-driving vehicles and other real-time robotics by solving their biggest bottleneck: accurate, multi-layer labeled training data. The faster development enabled by the partnership will help put safer autonomous vehicles on the road sooner.
The teams have worked together for months to establish a common data format and labeling process that combines the image-like output from Ouster’s lidar sensors and the industry-leading capabilities of Playment and Scale.AI’s labeling toolchains to save perception teams both time and money. The new approach removes some of the most difficult and time-consuming aspects of data labeling for companies working on everything from autonomous vehicles to industrial robotics and drones.
The initial result of the partnership is a dramatic simplification in the process required to feed lidar data through the data annotation APIs provided by Playment and Scale.AI, and promises to reduce the cost of data labeling by up to 50%.
Mender.io’s Mender Hub
Northern.tech, Inc, the company behind the Mender.io open source project to manage over-the-air (OTA) software updates for IoT devices, announces Mender Hub: a community repository to enable OTA updates for any connected device and OS. The aim of Mender Hub is to create the world’s largest community repository for developers to easily implement a secure and robust OTA update manager for any device fleet to enable IoT security
Spireon’s Patent
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Spireon, the vehicle intelligence company, a patent for its technology approach to managing an automotive dealership’s vehicle inventory by pairing a tracking device to a vehicle. Patent number 10,089,598, “Methods and Apparatus for Monitoring and Control of Electronic Devices,” covers the technology used in Kahu, Spireon’s connected car solution built for dealers. This is the 30th patent secured by Spireon for advanced connected vehicle technologies.
DENSO Invested $100M in Start-Ups
DENSO, the world’s second largest mobility supplier, has invested nearly $100 million over a four-year period in startup companies around the world as part of its long-term vision to provide software-based solutions focused on electrification, automated driving, connectivity and shared economy. From cyber security to semiconductors and sensors, DENSO is investing in startup companies working on key technologies that will play a major role in advancing mobility services that are safe, secure and efficient.
- Autonomous and Shared Mobility: DENSO invested additional dollars into Ridecell’s Series B funding round for the development of shared mobility. Its partnership with Thinci™ is enhancing deep learning capabilities required for autonomous vehicles.
- Cybersecurity: DENSO led Dellfer’s initial funding round to help the company develop cybersecurity safeguards for connected and autonomous vehicles.
- Electrification: An investment in FLOSFIA is focused on a semiconductor device expected to reduce the energy loss, cost, size and weight of inverters used in electrified vehicles.
- Sensing: Along with a handful of other strategic investors, DENSO invested in Metawave Corporation to accelerate the development and improve performance of in-vehicle, “smart” radar sensors for autonomous cars
Toyoda Gosei Wireless Charged LED A/C Register
Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd. has developed an air conditioner register with LED illumination that uses wireless power transfer technology based on magnetic resonant coupling,* the first such application in an automotive part.
The new vent register, used on the LEXUS UX, has LED illumination to improve the night visibility of the knob that adjusts the direction and strength of air flow. With a conventional wired power supply, the wire harness could break from repeated manipulations of the knob and other problems could occur. These issues are avoided with the application of a wireless power transfer technology. A wireless system also allows for greater freedom of design.
The new register also employs coupled mirrors within the lens of the LED light. This gives the ring of light an appearance of depth and creates a futuristic feel.
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