Israel-based Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel company, which is a leading vision-based self-driving car and advanced driver assistance system company president & CEO, and senior vice-president, Intel, Prof Amnon Shashua, called on the industry to be transparent with its autonomous driving technology and then showed a 23-minute unedited, uninterrupted drive of an autonomous vehicle (AV) using camera-only sensors.

During his annual CES address, Prof Shashua showcased an under-the-hood tour of Mobileye’s computer vision technology, and how the company’s mapping strategy is helping it to achieve global scale, and introduced new deals for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and driverless mobility-as-a-service (MaaS).

Prof Shashua called for more transparency in technology to enable the future of autonomous driving, in front of the audience in Las Vegas. He presented new details behind the company’s latest technology advancements to demonstrate the innovative approach it is taking to make autonomy a reality. For the first time, Prof Shashua discussed 'VIDAR', Mobileye’s unique solution for achieving outputs akin to LiDAR using only camera sensors. He detailed how Mobileye achieves pixel-level scene segmentation that can be used to detect tiny fragments of road users such as wheelchairs, open vehicle doors and more, as well as the ways in which the technology turns two-dimensional sensors into 3D understanding.

Highlighting the progress and purpose of Mobileye’s drive to full autonomy, Shashua’s address showcased exactly how the company will lead the industry in realizing autonomous driving.

In the video presentation Mobileye's camera-driven AV navigates Jerusalem. The company is developing two truly redundant sensing systems, one with surround-view cameras alone and the other with radars and LiDARs. In the unedited video demonstrating the camera-only technology in Jerusalem, the company showcased how Mobileye’s car successfully navigate a complex driving environment heavy with pedestrians, unguarded intersections, delivery vehicles and more.

54 million EyeQ chips delivered, revenue around $1 billion
At CES 2020, Mobileye spoke on its growth metrics that demonstrates the strength of Intel’s fastest-growing business, which saw more than 54 million EyeQ chips shipped to date. The year 2019 was another record year for the company, with sales close to $1 billion (Rs 7,141 crore) driven by significant growth in the ADAS market. Mobileye’s future business is expanding greatly with forays into data monetisation and the nascent robotaxi market.

In addition, using its crowd-sourced Road Experience Management (REM™) technology, Mobileye created a demonstration high-definition map of more than 400km of Las Vegas roads from over 16,000 drives. The map creation of Nevada-area roads took less than 24 hours, which provides centimetre-level accuracy for thousands of on-road and near-road objects, including 60,000 signs, 20,000 poles and more than 1,500km of lane centrelines. The near-real-time capability of REM coupled with the extremely low-bandwidth data upload (approximately 10 kilobits/km) from millions of Mobileye-equipped passenger cars makes this technology highly scalable and practical for both advanced ADAS (L2+) solutions and full AVs including driverless mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) fleets.

New partnerships
The company announced a new agreement with SAIC Motor, which will see the carmaker use Mobileye’s REM mapping technology to map China for L2+ ADAS deployment while paving the way for autonomous vehicles in the country. The deployment of the mapping solution in China presents opportunities for additional OEM partners to enter the Chinese market with map-related features. With this China becomes the first country that will see inclusion of Mobileye's four strategic product categories. With the addition of the SAIC agreement, Mobileye’s China footprint now includes L2+ ADAS, mapping (a first for China), MaaS and consumer AVs.

The Israeli company is also expanding its driverless tech to South Korea.  The leaders of Daegu Metropolitan City, South Korea, announced an agreement to establish a long-term cooperation to test and deploy robotaxi-based mobility solutions powered by Mobileye’s autonomous vehicle technology. Mobileye will integrate its self-driving system into vehicles to enable a driverless MaaS operation. The agreement with Daegu City, one of South Korea’s largest metropolitan areas, extends Mobileye’s global MaaS footprint. Combined with its previously announced robotaxi-based mobility services agreements, the new deal shows how Mobileye is quickly scaling its autonomous MaaS ambitions globally.