Blockchain/AI/IoT | July 11, 2018

Perceptive Automata raises $3 million for self-driving car safety tech

Jessica Pothering
ImpactAlpha Editor

Jessica Pothering

ImpactAlpha, July 10One in four vehicles on the road will be self-driving by 2040. New car models are already equipped with basic autonomous features. In spite of highly publicized accidents, like Uber’s pilot and a recent Tesla crash, autonomous vehicles are projected to save almost a million lives in the next 10 years.

Perceptive Automata, a Boston and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup, claims it has solved “the hardest problem for autonomous vehicles”: understanding human behavior. The company makes a software-based system that integrates pedestrian visibility and motion detection and—ironically—machine learning to predict pedestrian movement. In short, its trying to build on existing human behavior prediction used in autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles with more metrics and data, like where pedestrians eyes are moving or how long they hesitate.

  • Seed funding… Investors, who include First Round Capital, are supporting Preceptive Automata with $3 million in seed funding, Axios reports. First Round Capital is also an investor in Promise, a criminal justice reform startup that raised $3 million in March with backing from Jay-Z and Kapor Capital.