LINKÖPING, Sweden and CAMPBELL, Calif. (July 19, 2018) — NIRA today announced it has joined the AWare ecosystem of Renovo (renovo.auto), a mobility software technology company. Automated Mobility fleet deployments that use Renovo’s AWare OS can seamlessly deploy NIRA Dynamics’ Road Surface Information (RSI) software on their vehicles.
NIRA Dynamics’ RSI is a software solution that measures and predicts road grip using the vehicle as a sensor. RSI provides a complete characterization of the real-time road friction and road roughness state. RSI software installed on vehicles — now including any AWare-powered automated vehicle — enables precise measurements and estimates through use of high resolution sampling of the vehicle’s embedded sensors and controllers. In parallel, computer vision algorithms running on the vehicle and ingesting camera feeds are used to verify close proximity predictions of road grip and ensure offline performance. These data are routed to a NIRA Dynamics backend where they are aggregated and made available as map layers ready for use by a range of third party consumers including operators of automated vehicles. This information on road grip is crucial to enable automated driving outside perfect weather and road conditions; and in emergency situations.
In addition to automated driving, RSI enables efficient monitoring and maintenance of road infrastructure. Swedish road authorities and road contractors are already optimizing road maintenance using RSI and by doing so generating revenues to fleet operators that are running NIRA RSI software on their vehicles.
“We share Renovo’s vision of an open, interoperable, on-demand ecosystem where best-in-class technologies like NIRA Dynamics RSI are combined to bring about automated mobility safely, quickly and economically,” said Gustav Kristiansson, Manager New Technologies at NIRA Dynamics. “We are excited for NIRA Dynamics RSI to to operate in the AWare ecosystem helping making automated vehicles safer by providing detailed grip data and generating revenue for fleet operators.”
Renovo has extensive experience with road grip and automated vehicles through its partnership with Stanford University. Unveiled in 2015, MARTY (Multiple Actuator Research Test bed for Yaw control) is a self-drifting deLorean that acts as a rolling laboratory for Stanford researchers to explore automated control algorithms in low traction situations. The goal is to create algorithms for automated vehicles in emergency situations.
NIRA Dynamics is a leading creator of road surface information technology, and is an important addition to the AWare ecosystem,” said Chris Heiser CEO and Co-Founder of Renovo. “Not only does NIRA Dynamics RSI help automated driving systems perform better in adverse and emergency situations by having more precise grip information but it also provides a new revenue stream to automated mobility fleet operators running AWare.”
NIRA Dynamics joins the AWare ecosystem along with a growing list of leading companies in the automated mobility sector including Samsung, Verizon, Velodyne LiDAR, Parsons, INRIX, Argus Cyber Security, CARMERA, Affectiva, Phantom Auto, EdgeConneX Understand.ai, Metamoto and Bestmile.