- Startup’s business model is to monetise data to other players such as OEMs, municipalities, fleets, mapping companies and insurance companies.
Dubai: Israeli-based autotech startup Tactile Mobility expects more manufacturers to analyse data from car sensors and enable autonomous vehicles to get a feel of the road, using tactile data and artificial intelligence.
The startup has already signed deals with Porsche and BMW Group to integrate tactile technology into their smart cars.
Porsche is also a shareholder in Tactile Mobility.
It was co-founded in 2012 and has a presence in Europe, the US, and Asia.
Eitan Grosbard, Vice-President for Business Development and Marketing at Tactile Mobility, told TechChannel News that they have been testing some of the cars on the road for some time but the mass production will start only next year.
“We are a software and data company. We are the first to offer sensing-based innovation in the automotive industry. The technology analyses the road surface attributes under the tyres, enabling accurate detection of road conditions and unprecedented vehicle dynamics management functions to enhance availability and performance,” he said.
Moreover, he said that they are working with four other global manufacturers.
The company started as an after-market device for fuel consumption in trucks but led the firm to reposition itself four years ago into the sensing technology due to change in oil and gas prices, Grosbard said.
How does it work?
The software is located in two areas – in the electronic control unit (ECU), an embedded system in automotive electronics that controls one or more of the electrical systems or subsystems in a vehicle and in the cloud.
It can collect raw data or signals from existing sensors in the vehicle such as wheels speeds, RPM, brake paddle positions.
Utilising Tactile’s own proprietary algorithms, physical modelling and AI, they create a unified signal that represents three things – understand what is happening on the surface of the road (detect speed bumps, potholes, manholes), detect grip measurement (how good the vehicle is holding the surface)and slipperiness (ice, snow and water).
With the software, they can understand what the state of the vehicle is and they create a digital twin of the vehicle such as chassis health, suspenders health and tyre wear.
All the sensing is done in the vehicle, in real-time, and the startup collects a variety of data from different vehicles and creates a normalised ground truth in the cloud.
The startup creates a tactile map of the road in the cloud and that map can be utilised by other vehicles coming behind.
Data monetisation
Today, Grosbard said that there aren’t similar technologies to theirs but there are other visual-related technologies such as cameras, Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) and Ladar (Laser Detection and Ranging) are methods for measuring distances by illuminating the target with laser light and measuring the reflection with a sensor.
The big difference, he said is that other technologies cannot distinguish what is a road and what is black ice, created by many cars driving on the snowy road.
“With our technology, it can detect the slipperiness of the road. In the future, he said that data from the cloud would be able to feed it to the suspensions of the vehicle and the passengers can drive without the bumpiness on the road,” he said
The startup’s idea is to collect more data and part of the business model will be to monetise the data to other players such as other OEMs, municipalities, fleets, mapping companies, insurance companies, etc.
“Today, autonomous cars are relying mainly on visual technologies and our technology will be incorporated into autonomous vehicles as well because this technology will complement the visual players. If you want 100 per cent reliability and safety, you cannot rely only on visual players,” he said.