Autonomous vehicles are transportation systems which can drive themselves without any human intervention. This relies on inbuilt software, sensors, and communication systems.
This emerging sector is receiving major investment from big automobile firms and from startups. According to Infoholic Research, the global autonomous vehicles market revenue is expected to hit $126.8 billion by 2027.
In terms of specific developments, there is, according to business analysts, a growing need for improving vehicle perception capabilities, which will create opportunities for both existing sensors to proliferate as well as new sensing technologies to emerge.
The latest investment by FLIR Systems fits into this business paradigm. FLIR are a leader in thermal imaging and the company has made a strategic investment in CVEDIA, which is a Singapore-based machine learning and AI startup. The funding is designed to to bolster its autonomous vehicle vision program.
The news builds upon FLIR’s earlier announcement this summer about its machine learning dataset for thermal imaging sensors on autonomous vehicles, this investment will further enable the development of thermal-based machine learning capabilities and tools.
CVEDIA’s SynCity simulator software tool provides multi-modal digital environments for autonomous system Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and related sensor makers. This enables autonomous vehicle manufacturers to train their systems in a safer and more affordable manner compared with traditional data collection techniques.
The strategic investment by FLIR in CVEDIA will create opportunities for the companies to accelerate the development of thermal spectrum-based deep learning training tools for use by FLIR and selected partners in integrating artificial intelligence into FLIR sensors and systems.
