Intel has announced that it is in the final stages of acquiring Mobileye, a company specialising in computer vision and autonomous vehicles. The company has also decided that this would be a good time to inform the world that it already has plans to begin testing autonomous vehicles systems this year.
A handful of cars will first be loosed in the US, Europe, and Israel; with the total number later raised to around 100 vehicles by the end of the year. Intel is hoping to use these platforms to develop its own driverless car solutions and technologies. Although the company is unlikely to be developing its own end user products.
Amnon Shashua, soon-to-be senior vice president of Intel Corporation and future CEO/CTO of Mobileye said, “geographic diversity is very important as different regions have very diverse driving styles as well as different road conditions and signage. Our goal is to develop autonomous vehicle technology that can be deployed anywhere, which means we need to test and train the vehicles in varying locations.”
Intel is competing with several companies to produce technologies for advanced vehicles. While the focus is currently on cars that drive themselves, there is still a lot of work going into developing connected technologies for driver assistance.
Intel’s fleet of test cars will draw from a variety of manufacturers and brands; looking to highlight the fact that the “technology’s agnostic nature.” Of course, that’s simply to remind car makers that Intel’s solutions are available for sale; competing with other companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia, who have both been doing similar work.
[Source: Intel]
