The autonomous driving technology firm Nauto has announced new strategic partnerships with BMW i Ventures, Allianz Ventures, the Toyota Research Institute, and others.
The new strategic partnerships (and investments) will be based around autonomous driving technology development utilizing the Nauto cloud-based data learning platform.
The press release provides more: “Nauto has developed deep learning capabilities that run both in the cloud and on retrofit devices that can be mounted in any vehicle. Nauto is already deployed into commercial passenger, logistics, and delivery fleets and enables these fleets to manage vehicle and driver safety and operate more efficiently. The agreements enable Nauto to significantly grow its artificial intelligence-powered deep learning network and accelerate deployment into shared vehicle fleets and eventually migrate from retrofit device into new production vehicles.”
Continuing: “Under the agreements, Nauto and its auto and insurance industry partners will license data and technologies, including Nauto’s artificial intelligence-powered vehicle network. As more and more vehicles deploy Nauto, its connected car network will be populated with greater volumes of precise information on how drivers and vehicles behave and perform — — understanding both how excellent drivers handle vehicles in real urban conditions as well as the combinations of errors, distraction, and challenging circumstances that lead to crashes. The resulting insights will improve fleet safety and operations near term to save lives and reduce liability and expenses. Over time they will usher in a new era, from human-driven to autonomous vehicles.”
As a note, Tesla has been implementing deep learning in its Autopilot tech for a while now, and this is part of why Tesla Autopilot is so far ahead of industry competitors … but only part of the reason.
“As the auto industry experiences this period of unprecedented innovation, we’ve also reached a need for a learning network that will allow human and autonomous vehicles to operate together harmoniously. We want drivers, passengers, and everyone in the manufacturing and infrastructure supply chain to unlock the value that can come from pooling precise, but secure and anonymous data from Nauto’s network,” commented Stefan Heck, CEO of Nauto. “Having the participation of major players in the auto and insurance industry is essential in establishing a cornerstone as we re-imagine and build a safer, smarter and congestion-free transportation system. We are honored to have Nauto play an important part in building an onramp that will benefit the automotive and insurance industries, their supply chain, as well as human drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.”
The strategic partnership with Allianz Ventures is particularly interesting. The insurance industry no doubt has a lot of interest in getting its hands on the sort of data provided through such partnerships.