There is a popular joke in India that Bangalore is a city where techies travel two hours in harrowing traffic to develop apps that will deliver food and groceries in eight minutes. It may sound funny, but it's a fact – Bangalore is only second to London in the list of slowest cities in the world.
Bangalore then would be a fertile ground for an autonomous vehicle (AV) developer to grow because if you can succeed here, you can succeed anywhere in the world. This is probably one of the several factors, besides robust tech, that inspired Minus Zero, an AI company that builds the brains for AV and has recently been gathering a lot of attention.
Speaking to Digitimes Asia recently, Gagandeep Reehal, CEO & CTO of Minus Zero said that the company is India's first autonomous vehicle startup. While there are other similar companies in India, AV is a new concept for the country.
"We differentiate ourselves from other companies in two ways," Reehal explained. "First, we are a pure vision-based company, using only cameras and minimizing dependency on complicated sensors like lidars and radars. Second, we are not an automotive company but rather a core AI company. We focus on building the core software and AI technology for autonomous vehicles, partnering with vehicle manufacturers, sensor companies, and other stakeholders to create end-to-end autonomous vehicles for consumers."
Using nature-inspired AI
For many companies, AV has been a challenging problem to solve, with close to a hundred billion dollars spent in R&D without generating any revenue. Companies like Argo, Ford, and Uber had to write off significant amounts due to the complexities involved. The unpredictable nature of roads has been a major obstacle.
"While machines struggle to handle unpredictable situations, humans can adapt easily," Reehal said. "Our goal is to bridge the gap between human intelligence and machine intelligence through nature-inspired AI. We have developed a nature-inspired AI system that aims to create safer, scalable, and more generalized autonomous driving technology."
The company calls its technology "True Vision Autonomy," which uses cameras as the primary sensors for autonomous driving. They've have built the entire ecosystem, from AI to the operating system, and collaborate with strategic partners, OEMs, and sensor manufacturers to integrate the technology into next-generation vehicles.
"We have showcased our capabilities by unveiling the world's first steering wheel-less autonomous vehicle and have received positive feedback on the efficiency of our technology," Reehal said.
Partnership enquiries from around the world, including Taiwan
The company is actively seeking partnerships with OEMs and other stakeholders in the mobility ecosystem to further develop and deploy their technology. They have received more interest than anticipated across various use cases, including government entities, OEMs, chip manufacturers, and sensor manufacturers. These include businesses from Taiwan as well.
"We're seeing interest from companies in various sectors," Reehal said. "One is the sensor chip and compute industries – these are a good fit for what we require and can have a significant long-term impact. There are also many use-case based government and smart city programs interested in deployments. These could involve smart buses in a smart city, rapid transit systems, or delivery services."
From the OEM side, interest comes from both ends, across different use cases. Some companies are looking for an ADAS solution, others want to be manufacturing partners. This includes manufacturers of vehicles like buses.
"We're also focusing on expanding to foreign markets which already have clear regulations," Reehal said. "We're deliberating on the right timing and opportunity for entry. So, there's an execution roadmap, and it may be that we build the technology in India, first export it, and then reintroduce it back into India."
When can we expect fully autonomous vehicle on the road?
The timeline for AV depends on various factors, such as the specific use case and geographical location. Different countries have different pain points and priorities in this regard. In many countries, the focus is on areas such as trucking, smart cities, shared mobility like buses, and robot taxis. These have gained a lot of traction and could develop quite quickly.
"In contrast, in India, there are regulatory and consumer adoption barriers that need to evolve," Reehal said. "We're more likely to see deployment in closed environments like educational campuses, tech parks, tourism zones, and rapid transit systems. These aren't directly on public roads, but they address the consumer adoption part in areas where there's a strong mobility need, like in large tech parks. We can expect to see deployments in these areas in as soon as one to one and a half years."
Autonomous vehicles have been a target for many businesses, but so far, we haven't seen much success. As more companies like Minus Zero join hands with relevant partners, we may finally see the advent of true driverless vehicles soon.
