BMW i Ventures is to invest in Cartica’s AI automotive visual intelligence platform, which relies only on the computational resources of an average car. It is based on an already mature technology, following more than a decade of R&D. The funding from BMW i Ventures will be used to launch the platform and scale Cartica’s global operations.
“Cartica AI introduces a series of important technological advancements for an OEM, ranging from low compute requirements and low energy consumption, to a transparent decision-making process of the computer vision-based perception stack. Updates to the system can be included within minutes without the need to re-run vast amounts of training data like neural network-based approaches,” said Kasper Sage, partner of BMW i Ventures.
“This is of immense value before a new system release. We believe Cartica will thus play a key role in the development of autonomous driving and ADAS by OEMs and Tier 1s, allowing them to design safe and predictable solutions that fulfill the strict requirements of the market.”
Cartica AI is said to introduce a paradigm-shift to the conventional artificial intelligence approach of supervised deep learning, which is heavily based on massive amounts of human-labeled data. This labeling process is time consuming, expensive and unreliable for edge case scenarios.
In contrast to deep learning, Cartica AI enables unsupervised learning from real-world data, resulting in unprecedented accuracy in edge cases and challenging scenarios.
Igal Raichelgauz, CEO and co-founder of Cartica AI, said, “Our goal is to introduce a novel yet proven AI approach to the automotive industry, which will pave the way for safer and more autonomous transportation. Our strategy is to build strong partnerships with leading automotive players in order to bring our solution to the high-volume automotive market by the end of next year. Joining forces with these leading players is another substantial validation of our unique technology and business strategy.”