Another Day, A New Crew of AI Startups

I do indeed feel like Lucy and Ethel on the chocolate wrapping factory assembly line. The news is speeding up with driverless in terms of old and new players. Bright minds see dollar, yen, euro and other signs on the horizon and they are forming startups to capitalize on and realize the driverless reality.

Unlike Lucy and Ethel, I don't have a factory uniform where I can stuff all those candies that are coming too fast to wrap. It is one of the top five I Love Lucy episodes (not that I am at all an expert here).

Actual news - knowledgable maps

Reports are all around about the startup funding and partnerships of Civil Maps. The company has raised over $6 million. Its mapping service combines AI with 3D location-based mapping. Civil Maps is hiring and located in Berkeley, California. Capital is coming from Ford, a Yahoo founder, and venture capital firms. 

Civil Maps has one approach to minimizing the potentially incredible amounts of data that LIDAR produces as a driverless vehicle rides down the road with lots of stuff to see, interpret, or ignore. 

Across the pond

Oxbotica, a startup out of Oxford University, looks like it has adopted the Comma.AI model of creating a driverless tech package that can be used on existing, conventional vehicles. Better than Comma.AI, however, Oxbotica can work beyond highways - vehicle-only environments - and on regular streets where there are people and other moving stuff. Basically, Oxbotica has the capability to "learn" from its human driver. As long as the human driver is good and experienced, that's a positive.

The company says "Oxbotica is the nominated provider of the autonomous control system for two of the UK’s three Driverless Car Challenges taking place over the next few years in Milton Keynes, Coventry, Greenwich and Bristol." This information is available on the Oxbotica website.  

There's four in the bed and the little one said - roll over, roll over

So there's Comma.AI, Cruise Automation, Civil Maps, nuTononomy, ... 

Seems like a nice bubble for these AI start ups. Get rich quick with a good AI or other high-tech addition to driverless technology. The car companies, especially, are investing in these competitors. By investing, these companies are essentially seeding their own fields and racing around the bend to get to the driverless starting gate.