AI startup AutoBrains partners with Continental to disrupt ADAS and AV marketplace

Israeli artificial intelligence startup, AutoBrains, announced on Tuesday that its unsupervised AI technology is at the center of leading Tier 1 supplier Continental's growth strategy in the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle (AV) market.

Unsupervised AI operates in a fundamentally different way from traditional deep learning systems currently used in ADAS and is based on multi-disciplinary research and development that allows the system to independently learn, process, and interpret relevant data from the car's surroundings in real time.

Key to the disruptive technology's advantages over traditional deep learning is its massively reduced reliance on expensive and often error-prone manually labelled training data sets. The unsupervised AI system successfully interprets and navigates unusual driving scenarios and edge cases where traditional supervised learning systems are least reliable. This increases driving safety and helps accelerate the adoption of ADAS and vehicles capable of higher levels of autonomy. Reduced reliance on stored data also means AutoBrains' system requires roughly ten times less computing power than currently available systems and can be produced at lower cost.

"We are thrilled to partner with Continental to bring our revolutionary technology to the market," said Igal Raichelgauz, CEO of AutoBrains. "Unsupervised AI is backed by more than 200 patents, over a decade of research and development, and a nearly two-year incubation period with Continental, and we are excited to take the next step with Conti as our key partner."

AutoBrains emerged out of AI tech company, Cortica, after identifying the potential of the unsupervised learning technology to vastly improve AI for automotive. Following a period with Continental's Business Unit ADAS and co-pace "The Startup Program of Continental", in 2019, AutoBrains was formally spun off to focus exclusively on building unsupervised AI for autos.

"We are excited to be partnering with AutoBrains to bring to market its advanced and proven AI technology that we believe will disrupt the ADAS and AV marketplace," said Frank Petznick, Head of the Driver Assistance Systems Business Unit at Continental. "Historically, AV and ADAS technologies have been limited by their dependence on supervised learning that uses massive labelled training data sets and requires enormous compute power. AutoBrains' AI breaks through those barriers with a different approach that processes relevant signals from the car's environment in much the same way that human drivers do. This technology boosts performance while saving compute power and energy. With AutoBrains we intend to push rapidly ahead toward a safer and increasingly autonomous driving experience."