Intel’s Mobileye to build fully autonomous car fleet for 2017 tests

#Intel ’s new acquisition #Mobileye has unveiled plans to build a fleet of fully #autonomousvehicles as it looks to demonstrate the technology in real world environments.

The company plans to build up to 100 vehicles of different types and brands, and conduct tests in Europe, the US and Israel.

Set to take place later this year, the trials aim to provide a base for discussions with regulators, Intel said.

The fleet will use Intel’s Xeon processors, FPGAs, 3D XPoint memory and 5G modems alongside Mobileye’s front-facing camera technology, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, crowd-sourcing mapping and 360 degrees sensing and fusion.

The announcement follows the completion of Intel’s $15.3 billion deal to buy Mobileye earlier this week.

The chipmaker said the Automated Driving Group, its dedicated unit for developing driver assist systems and autonomous driving solutions, will be integrated into Mobileye.

“Building cars and testing them in real-world conditions provides immediate feedback and will accelerate delivery of technologies and solutions for highly and fully autonomous vehicles,” said Amnon Shashua, who will be the CEO/CTO of Mobileye following the acquisition.

“Geographic diversity is very important as different regions have very diverse driving styles as well as different road conditions and signage. Our goal is to develop autonomous vehicle technology that can be deployed anywhere, which means we need to test and train the vehicles in varying locations.”

He added: “Delivering 100 test cars very quickly will demonstrate how this hybrid system can be adapted to meet customer needs. Neither company could do this alone. Given resident skill-sets within the two companies, a standalone fleet of test vehicles is possible almost immediately.”

Shashua said the project would complement tests by Mobileye’s automaker customers.

Meanwhile, Intel will participate in the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium, which was also unveiled this week.

Also comprising Ericsson, Toyota, ENSO and NTT, the group will aim to develop an ecosystem to support services for connected cars.

This will include increasing network capacity to accommodate the large amounts of data generated by the automotive industry.

Autonomous and connected cars are expected to be a key application for 5G, with Intel also currently undertaking testing initiatives with Ericsson and Nokia in February that will focus on the applications of 5G in autonomous driving.

https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/press-wire/intel-s-mobileye-to-build-fully-autonomous-car-fleet-for-2017-tests

Intel’s 15 Billion Reasons Why an AI Chip Revolution Has Arrived

#MOBILEYE #AI ISN’T JUST changing internet services, cars, robotics, and healthcare. It’s changing the computer chip market too. This shift was underlined on Monday when Intel said it would pay $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye, an Israeli company that makes chips and cameras for cars and trucks, including the self-driving variety. The purchase will be Intel’s second largest ever, following its $16.7 billion billion acquisition of chip-maker #Altera in 2015. The Altera buy was also driven, in part, by the recent rise of machine learning, where machine learn can discrete tasks on their own. These are enormous acquisitions in many respects. After acquiring Mobileye, Intel will move its autonomous driving team to the Mobileye’s headquarters, not vice versa. In other words, Intel is letting Mobileye take over a growing wing of its company. The world’s largest chip maker knows the market is changing rapidly, and it’s determined to change with it. As long as PCs and servers dominated the computing landscape, Intel reigned supreme. But PCs now share the stage with phones, tablets, drones, TVs, smart thermostats, and, yes, cars. For the most part, the smartphone and tablet revolution sidestepped Intel in favor of chips from ARM, and though these gadgets still connect to data centers in the cloud, where Intel chips are still dominant, this hegemony is now being threatened by the rise of chips suited to running neural networks, complex mathematical systems that can learn discrete tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data, including recognizing images and translating from one language to another. Typically, neural networks analyze data with help from graphics processing units, or GPUs, chip originally built to help power video games in the late 1990s, and most of these are supplied by Intel rival nVidia. But other companies are exploring more specialized chips for machine learning. Last year, Google unveiled its own AI-focused chip called the Tensor Processing Unit, or TPUs, and Microsoft revealed that it uses Altera’s customizable chips to power its own AI applications. That’s why Intel acquired Altera.
https://www.wired.com/2017/03/intels-15-billion-reasons-ai-chip-revolution-arrived/

IT'S OFFICIAL: Intel is buying the autonomous-driving company Mobileye for $15.3 billion

#Intel is buying the Israeli autonomous-driving company #Mobileye for $63.54 a share in cash, or about $15.3 billion. Mobileye soared about 30% in premarket trading Monday after the Israeli newspaper Haaretz broke the news. The Jerusalem-based company develops vision-based driver-assistance tools to provide warnings before collisions. "Mobileye brings the industry's best automotive-grade computer vision and strong momentum with automakers and suppliers," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a statement. "Together, we can accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance in a cloud-to-car solution at a lower cost for automakers." Tesla began incorporating Mobileye's technology into Model S cars in 2015. In January, it announced it was developing a test fleet of autonomous cars together with BMW and Intel. Mobileye was cofounded in 1999 by Amnon Shashua, an academic, and Ziv Aviram, who is the CEO. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley took it public in 2014.

http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-mobileye-acquisition-report-2017-3

Mobileye Is The Auto Industry's Secret Weapon Against Google In The Race For Self-Driving Cars

It takes Amnon Shashua 20 minutes in city traffic to get to his Jerusalem office each morning–not a terrible commute, especially since his #Audi A7 handles most of the chore. “I let go of the wheel and let the car drive,” says Shashua, 56. “It’s really fun.” Fun, but not entirely worry-free. “I have to be alert,” he adds.

As cofounder, along with Ziv Aviram, 57, of #Mobileye, a leading provider of assisted-driving software, Shashua knows better than anyone that autonomous cars still need work. At highway speeds, under certain conditions, hands-free driving is already doable, as #Tesla Motors has shown with its Autopilot system, which, like others from Audi and #Cadillac, relies on Mobileye’s camera-based software. Where it gets dicey is in complex situations that arise on city streets, like merging into a roundabout. Artificial intelligence, which is moving faster than anyone in the auto industry expected, is helping with those situations. But it’s still likely to be another decade before cars are smart enough to drive themselves at all times without any human input.

Mobileye, two years after its $890 million IPO, has a clever plan to speed things along–one that’s quite different from that of Alphabet, the parent company of Google and Mobileye’s biggest rival in the race toward a self-driving future. Mobileye EyeQ software chips are used by more than 90% of the world’s automakers, helping cars stay in their lanes and brake in emergencies. Now, working with three of the biggest carmakers, the company is rolling out new high-definition mapping technology that will use those chips to gather crowdsourced, real-time data from vehicles and pinpoint a car’s location in relation to traffic signs, lane markers and other objects. Together with cameras and other sensors like radar, the continually updated maps will provide an additional source of information that should help Mobileye spread automated driving features to more cars more quickly.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2016/06/15/mobileye-is-the-auto-industrys-secret-weapon-against-google-in-the-race-for-self-driving-cars/#c6815235bcdc