HomeFundingFiveAI secures € 2.4 million in funding to apply strong artificial intelligence...

FiveAI secures € 2.4 million in funding to apply strong artificial intelligence to autonomous vehicles

FiveAI is a UK startup which is using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to accelerate the arrival of fully autonomous vehicles. The Bristol- and Cambridge-based company applies several of the latest AI technologies to solve the most complex problems in the autonomous vehicle space.

FiveAI today announced its initial € 2.4 million of equity funding. The funding has been led by Amadeus Capital Partners together with Spring Partners and Notion Capital. The fresh capital will enable FiveAI to grow its team, step-up its development and begin simulator and road testing of its software.

Early approaches to autonomous vehicles have required accurate 3D prior maps that were built by using point cloud technology. Each vehicle can correlate to the prior map for accurate localisation and track establishment to follow. Now FiveAI is planning to build a system with much stronger AI and ML to ensure that autonomous vehicles can safely and accurately navigate in all environments, including complex urban ones. That approach will avoid the need to survey, maintain and share detailed 3D maps of the 37.2 million km of paved and unpaved road networks across the world. FiveAI’s technology aims to deliver a safe, reliable and verifiable solution by combining supervised, semi-supervised and unsupervised learning techniques to build a real-time accurate view of the world. This enhanced perception capability is key to enabling FiveAI and apply further advanced AI technologies to better predict the actions and interactions between entities, use that prediction to establish the actions of the vehicle itself. FiveAI plans to provide its software to major players in the mobility industry worldwide, including automotive OEMs, automotive industry suppliers, rental companies and transportation operators in both public and private sectors.

Stan Boland, CEO of FiveAI: “Full autonomy will revolutionise the automotive and transportation sectors, enabling all of us to enjoy a low-cost, low-congestion and high-convenience mobility. Computer vision can, for the first time, be superior to human abilities and we will build this capability. Safe and effective autonomous vehicles need more than just super-human perception. Humans use a variety of subtle cues and gestures to anticipate traffic events so our technology will do the same, ensuring equipped vehicles will be both safe and decisive in complex urban traffic environments.”

FiveAI’s goal is to deliver complete or “Level 5” autonomy. According to Global Ground Vehicle Standards, currently the most advanced commercially available vehicles are considered to be Level 1 or Level 2. This is because the human driver is required to monitor the driving environment at all times and fulfil all aspects of driving apart from some steering and acceleration/deceleration in certain circumstances (e.g. lane assist and adaptive cruise control). FiveAI’s goal is to deliver a solution to power full Level 5 autonomy, which describes vehicles operating safely in complex urban environments without any driver involvement whatsoever.

Hermann Hauser, co-founder and partner at Amadeus Capital: “Amadeus is very excited to investment in this opportunity. FiveAI has a world-class technology and the team which we have backed three times before and which has successfully built and exited companies worth over €1 billion. Europe is home to many of the world’s top automotive OEMs and transportation operators, and the UK in particular is a hotbed for emerging AI and machine-learning talent. We’re excited to support this team in building a European powerhouse for autonomous vehicle technology, through the use of machine learning and state-of-the-art university research to revolutionise the guidance systems for autonomous vehicles.”

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Ieva Treija
Ieva Treija
Ieva Treija has joined EU-Startups.com in August 2015. She has two passions: marketing and startups. Background in journalism helps her to put both passions together and come up with exciting stories for the readers. Ieva lives in in Riga (Latvia).
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