DriveU.auto: platform for remote control of EasyMile autonomous shuttles and Coco sidewalk robots
The autonomous shuttle company EasyMile and sidewalk delivery startup Coco are integrating the teleoperation and connectivity platform DriveU.auto into their operations. DriveU.auto is an Israeli startup that emerged from stealth last year.
The autonomous vehicle industry is still far from being able to commercialize fully driverless technology, despite the promises some companies have made, or the names they have chosen for their advanced driver assistance systems.
Indeed, most countries still require a human to be present during autonomous operations for safety reasons. To reach the market faster and build public acceptance of driverless vehicles, AV companies are turning to remote operations, in which a remote driver can take control of the vehicle in an emergency, anomaly or safety-related incident.
“Consider an accident scene where several police officers are gesturing at traffic. The vehicle's AI will likely need help interpreting these gestures and voice commands. A remote operator must see in real time the picture of the world around the vehicle they are assisting, whether it is a robot or an autonomous vehicle. We want to transmit data from the vehicle's sensors to the remote operator's location. This must be done in a way that ensures a reliable, high-quality connection with low latency, so that the remote operator's decisions are based on the real situation around the vehicle. This is done over cellular networks”
Much of the success of teleoperation depends on high-performance connectivity for transmitting video, audio and other sensor data. The DriveU.auto platform is designed to ensure stable network connectivity and prevent any delays, "blind spots" or dropped connections that could hinder a teleoperator's intervention to help an autonomous vehicle.
“No single cellular network, even 5G, can guarantee the performance levels required for reliable remote operation. Remember, the task is to transmit multiple channels, since the vehicle has several high-definition video cameras. The bottom line is that one network is not enough”
DriveU.auto technology is already running on EasyMile EZ10 autonomous shuttles that serve a medical campus in France, and according to Podhorst, the company is in the process of integrating it across EasyMile's entire fleet.
“As we continue to deploy more and more autonomous vehicle use cases, we expect remote control to become a key component of our solution”
The startup's connectivity solution is also already in place in Coco's fleet of about 100 Coco 0 units, an experimental vehicle for proof of concept. The plan is to integrate the platform into a new batch of 1,000 Coco 1 robots, whose hardware is being built by Segway and which will be deployed in Los Angeles and two other US cities during the first quarter of 2022.
Besides EasyMile and Coco, the startup said it is already working with robotaxis, autonomous trucks, other delivery robots and special AV use cases. All of these partnerships are still under non-disclosure agreements, but Podhorst said he hopes to make them public in the coming weeks. The company recently announced an 18-month partnership with Denso, the Japanese auto parts manufacturer.
DriveU.auto typically provides customers with a software development kit integrated into vehicle computers. Customers manage their vehicles, including teleoperation, relying on the existing set of vehicle sensors and other hardware components.
Podhorst said this software-only approach is a key component of the company's success in the market, because it enables faster integration. The software connectivity platform works by combining three technologies: dynamic video encoding, low-latency algorithms and cellular communication.
The combined data package is then sent over multiple cellular networks, depending on network performance during transmission. The data is then reconstructed into video frames once it reaches the remote operator's side. The platform essentially consists of software modules that are integrated into the vehicle's system and interact both with a cloud software component and with a module integrated into the remote operator's computer.
“Integrating an excellent connectivity solution into delivery robots imposes extremely high requirements on power and computing parameters. After evaluating industry leaders in this area, we concluded that the DriveU solution best matches our growth plans and tight delivery schedules”
