It is an open platform that all car manufacturers will be able to use, mainly to reach uniform safety standards. BMW will contribute its automotive knowledge to the platform, Intel will develop more powerful chips that can enable the car's computer to learn machine learning to understand the road better. Mobileye provides the field of sensors and the collection of information from them for real-time processing. The three also referred to the first fatal accident involving an autonomous vehicle.
Prof. Amnon Shashua President of Mobileye, CEO of Intel Brian Krzanitz and CEO of BMW Harald Krieger presented on Friday at a press conference at the headquarters of the German automobile company in Munich, the details of the announcement of the development of a joint platform that will also be open to other manufacturers, for cars autonomy, the first of which will be marketed starting in 2021.
The announcement happened to come at a troubled time when a Tesla car equipped with a Mobileye sensor system collided with a car in the first fatal accident involving an autonomous vehicle.
Unlike the existing self-driving technology, the new generation of cars should be able to drive independently from the beginning to the end of the trip. BMW and its partners want to replace the existing device driver in cars that is being developed simultaneously by Google and a number of car manufacturers with a standard system, which will be mainly responsible for the safety aspects of autonomous driving, and over which the manufacturers will be able to
An analyst quoted on the TECHCRUNCH website said: “Everyone in the world knows BMW and Intel but Mobileye has quietly become a key player in the driverless car industry. For the past two decades, the Israeli company has been developing camera sensors for cars as a safety aid. This development paved the way for today's self-driving cars."
"In recent years, the company has expanded its product line from car sensors to developing systems that will include all the technologies needed to operate self-driving cars. In fact, Tesla is already using Mobileye's technology for its self-driving feature."
However, the three are aware that self-driving cars are not smart enough and it will still take years before end customers can purchase fully autonomous vehicles (currently Tesla cars are sold with the option to select an autonomous mode) and one of them is expected to be the BMW Inext model that was also demonstrated at the press conference. Test trips will begin next year.
Also, the company states that it will be possible to carry out shared trips using the platform developed by BMW to manage a fleet of autonomous vehicles. This feature can affect many areas of the transportation industry, even trucks and engineering cars will be able to be autonomous.
During the press conference, the three were asked about the fatal accident that happened a few days earlier and which involved an autonomous Tesla car whose driver was busy watching a movie from the Harry Potter series. Prof. Shashua replied in response: "This is the reason why it is still not possible to start mass marketing of vehicles, and that for the time being they only meet level 3 of the standard - which allows them to travel on highways. Within the city, with all the obstacles, and surprises along the way, further development will be required, so they are talking about the year 2021.
In a statement published by Mobileye, it refers in detail to the accident: "We have read the report of the incident. Today's collision avoidance technology, or Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) is designed to prevent a collision with the rear of the vehicle in front (chain crash), and is specifically designed for this. This incident involved a vehicle crossing sideways, for which the current generation AEB systems are not designed. Mobileye systems will include turn-on lateral alert beyond lane recognition capabilities (LTAP) starting in 2018, and the European NCAP safety standard will include such a regulation in 2020.
Regarding the opening of the standard, BMW CEO Harald Krieger said that even after the development, each car company will have room to express its own uniqueness, "only when there is an agreed upon standard does the product become mass, see USB devices as an example."
The CEO of Intel Kraznich added that it is necessary to increase the computing power and develop computers that operate in neural networks, and it is also necessary to develop the field of machine learning, so that the car can be trusted and avoid the need for human intervention, which the accident showed is still mandatory. Krzhanitz also said that it is necessary to share many sensors - cameras, radar, LIDAR and more, to ensure the self-driving of the car.
The article was first published yesterday on the CHIPORTAL website
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Shashua, if he has left the world of academia, will engage in business that is legitimate, but will sign articles by young researchers. This is not scientific research. This is engineering development. It is usually impossible to combine scientific research with the ownership of 3 companies and a commitment to BMW and Intel.