Mobileye: The Road to Fully Autonomous Vehicles

Enabling fully autonomous driving in the future is one of the most important projects in the mobility industry. Since its founding in 1999, the Israeli company Mobileye has become one of the world's leading suppliers of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle technology.  

For over 20 years, Mobileye has been developing and perfecting ADAS based on computer vision and machine learning algorithms that process visual data from cameras and other sensors to detect and respond to traffic scenarios.  

This data enables the system to detect hazards, warn drivers, and automatically intervene in emergencies. The system can detect pedestrians, cyclists, other vehicles, and even animals, and prevent a collision by warning or braking without driver intervention.

Mobileye's innovative driver assistance system, SuperVision, enables hands-free driving on a variety of road types, including urban traffic—typically the most challenging road type for any form of autonomous driving.  

The system also uses cloud-connected Road Experience Management™ (REM™) maps to provide up-to-date and highly localized information about road features such as lanes and signals, as well as how other drivers are interacting with their surroundings.  

The key is that REM™ data from millions of vehicles already on the road equipped with Mobileye's ADAS technology is used to create HD maps for ADAS and autonomous driving using real-world driving data—in real-time. This crowd-sourced approach enables Mobileye to create and update maps quickly all over the world.

Mobileye's autonomous driving solution, called Mobileye Drive™, is based on two separate but complementary systems - a camera-based system and a radar/lidar system. This dual approach, called True Redundancy™, is designed to cover a wide range of driving scenarios while ensuring the safety and efficiency of autonomous vehicles.  

More than 60,000 vehicles are now equipped with Mobileye’s SuperVision™ system. Recently, the company also partnered with car manufacturers Porsche and Polestar.   

With over-the-air (OTA) updates, Mobileye enables ADAS safety technology to be improved over time.  

For example, a recent OTA provided to Zeekr, an electric vehicle brand owned by Geely that uses SuperVision, allowed the company to provide an advanced update to the vehicle's adaptive cruise control and highway assistance systems. Now, instead of looking only at the vehicle immediately ahead, the updated system takes into account the entire scene around the vehicle, much like a human driver.  

For example, it can detect a traffic jam ahead, even if the car immediately ahead has not yet begun to brake. The system can also react to various objects and situations, such as a vehicle on the side of the road with its door open, or a pedestrian on the side of the road. The update also enables the car to drive on any road with clear lane markings at speeds of up to 130 km/h.

Using over-the-air updates Mobileye aims to increase the pace of innovation for autonomous vehicles. Just as with smartphones, Mobileye believes that the latest features will be available to consumers through regular software updates. In the future, Mobileye plans to use the OTAs to enable fully autonomous driving.   

To this end, Mobileye has defined four levels of autonomy, analogous to the five levels of autonomous driving: Eyes-on/Eyes-off, Hands-on/Hands-off, Driver vs. No-Driver, and Minimum Risk Maneuver (MRM):  

1.  Eyes-on/hands-on: This category includes all basic driver assistance functions, such as Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) and Lane Departure Warning (LDW). The driver is still responsible for the overall task of driving, while the system monitors the human driver.  
2.  Eyes-on/hands-off: This is a driver assistance function that allows the driver to remove his/her hands from the steering wheel while the system takes control of driving and the driver monitors the system within a defined operational design domain (ODD).  
3.  Eyes-off/hands-off: The system controls the driving function within a specified ODD without the need for the human driver to monitor driving. If the ODD is exceeded and the driver does not reassume control, the system is capable of performing a full MRM and safely stopping at the roadside.  
4.  No driver: When no human driver is present, e.g., in a robotaxi, the role of the human driver is replaced by a teleoperator who can intervene to resolve non-safety-related situations.  

Autonomous mobility solutions are slowly becoming more and more visible on the streets around the world. At IAA Summit, part of IAA MOBILITY, Mobileye will show at their booth (Hall B2, Booth B21) how ADAS can bridge the way to a fully autonomous future and how OEMs are already using this technology already today.