UK Start-up Promises Innovative Self-Driving Tech Ahead of Ford

Aug 19, 2016 10:48 AM EDT | Sovan Mandal

A London based start-up Five.ai has announced it is working on autonomous driving technology of its own which they hope to perfect by 2019 itself. If that be true than it will be two years ahead of the schedule Ford has come up with towards launching its own fleet of driverless cars.

Five.ai also stated they would have an edge over rivals with respect to the technology that most companies are pursuing towards realising their driver-less car dreams. The UK start-up will be relying on advanced machine learning to make the car better aware of its surroundings. In comparison, companies like Ford and Google rely on the less arduous method of using highly precise 3D maps.

"They will have an ability not to rely on existing 3D models. There are a lot of incumbents not targeting this strategy because it's not low-hanging fruit. It's easier to rely on maps," said Alex Flamant, an associate at Notion Capital that has invested in the start-up said while speaking to Quartz.

The highlight of Five.ai's approach is the convolutional neural network that it would be relying on to create a sense of depth, state and space for the car to better understand its surroundings instead of relying on 3D maps for the same. Of course the car will be equipped with the requisite sensors and cameras for this, with the individual feed from these then fed to a software to help make the car make the right moves.

Five.ai also stated their technology is also more machine intensive and hence will require significantly more processing power on-board.

The start-up which raised $2.7 million in July said they are looking to introduce self-driving vans within city limits which will operate along the line of UberPool. It will pick up passengers and drop them off at the set destination with companies not having to spend on a specialised driver to get the job done.

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