Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EMP (Motion planning technology for autonomous driving)
Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2021-08-31
We address the problem of autonomous or highly-automated driving. This is an important societal challenge as it will drastically reduce or eliminate deaths by road accidents. According to the WHO, there are about 1.35 million road traffic deaths globally every year, with millions more sustaining serious injuries and living with long-term adverse health consequences. Globally, road traffic injuries are currently estimated to be the eighth leading cause of death across all age groups.
Autonomous driving will also alleviate traffic congestions, and make road transport more energy efficient. The overall objective of the project is to develop autonomous driving algorithms that are safe, certified, and accepted by the general public.
Autonomous driving will also alleviate traffic congestions, and make road transport more energy efficient. The overall objective of the project is to develop autonomous driving algorithms that are safe, certified, and accepted by the general public.
During the 24 months of this project, we have released and tested three software packages. One for structured and high-speed driving (such as highways), one for unstructured and lower-speed driving (such as parking areas) and one that combines and extend on the previous two. We have tested the software with several customers in Europe, North America, and Australia. Our customers are Tier 1 suppliers and automotive OEMs. We have showcased our software functionalities at trade shows in collaboration with other companies in the sector. We have filed 5 patents and we are in the process of obtaining functional safety certification for one of our core software components. We are now growing vertical within the logistics automation market and increase the scope of our offering.
We are the only company the specializes in motion planning for autonomous vehicles. Our approach is unconventional as we look at the autonomous driving problem holistically and let a physics-based mathematical optimization algorithm decide on the strategy. We do not pre-program scenarios, which means that our software can drive even in situations never encountered before. This has led to four patent applications and moved our technology beyond the global current state of the art. By the end of the project some of our products will have achieved ISO26262 (functional safety) certification, as well as extensive testing and validation with end customers. The impact to society is the availability of automated driving at a larger scale, which will improve efficiency in gated areas operations and a step forwards towards a safer and more sustainable road transport.