Latest news with #LiDARs
Forbes
01-07-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Uber's VW Robotaxi Makes Space For Cyclists And Pedestrians While Waymo And Tesla Lag
MOIA robotaxi on the streets of Hamburg. I've had a preview ride in Volkswagen's driverless ID Buzz electric minivan, which, later this year, Uber will use for a robotaxi ridepooling project in Los Angeles. Christian Senger, CEO of MOIA, VW's autonomous driving subsidiary, joined me for the journey which saw the robotaxi successfully making space for cyclists and pedestrians. MOIA's production autonomous vehicle (AV) was unveiled in Hamburg, Germany, on 18 June, and VW claims it will soon be the first AV to receive regulatory certification in the EU. The ID Buzz AD, upgraded with 27 sensors, has ample room for four passengers (the non-AV version carries seven). Senger was sitting up front next to safety driver Axel Hein in a seat that will become luggage space when Uber soon takes delivery of its fleet. 'Here we see a car blocking the lane,' says Senger as we pull to a stop behind a double-parked motorist. 'Our vehicle now decides if this is part of a traffic queue and to stay put or if it's a badly parked car that should be passed. There, it has already decided to overtake, and off we go again.' VW safety driver Axel Hein at the wheel of a MOIA robotaxi in Hamburg. Hein's hands hovered over the steering wheel, but there had been no cause for him to take control: the black and bronze minivan pulled out by itself, its sensor suite deciding in short order that it was good to go. Thirteen cameras, nine LiDARs, and five radars pump five gigabytes of data per second to MOIA's onboard autonomous driving (AD) software. At a crosswalk, the MOIA-logoed vehicle slowed and stopped for pedestrians and didn't slam to a halt when a cyclist darted through on the inside. Instead, the minivan nudged over to make room. A human driver might have been surprised by the cyclist's seemingly sudden manoeuver, but the minivan's Mobileye sensor and software package anticipated the move, no robotic bird-flipping required. 'She is violating [German] traffic law,' Springer says of the darting cyclist. 'It's not allowed to ride with a bicycle over a zebra crossing—but we allow for the mistakes of others.' A console displayed the status of nearby static and moving vehicles, with stick figures representing pedestrians and cyclists oscillating between red and green depending on their proximity to us. What if a child ran out from the sidewalk between parked cars a meter or two distant, the test that a cameras-only Tesla operating Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode appeared to flunk recently? 'The child would be safe,' asserts Senger. 'Our sensors see things earlier than a human. A minivan's roof is high, and we also have sensors down very low so we can see underneath and above vehicles in front and to all sides. We have trained the system to understand what is and isn't relevant in the environment. If a cat sprang out from beneath a car, we would stop for that in good time, too.' Simulation of VW Moia robotaxis operating in Los Angeles. Uber's version of MOIA's driverless minivan will have NFC keyless entry through a dedicated smartphone app, start-stop buttons for passenger emergency use, and plain plastic flooring for any taxi-style liquid spills or worse. And forget about leaving wallets, phones, or bags on the cream leather seats—cabin cameras linked to speakers will alert alighting passengers that their belongings ought not to be left behind. The internal cameras also police behavior. AI spots any shenanigans—Senger jokes that fights would be prevented between passengers supporting rival soccer teams thanks to MOIA's pre-crime algorithms. Volkswagen's autonomous mobility division has been working on robotaxis for ten years. The name is based on 'Maya,' the Sanskrit word for magic, and was inspired by the Arthur C Clarke quote, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' There's no crossbar on the 'A' at the end of the MOIA logo, and upside down, the 'M' and the 'A'—if you ignore the 'I' and the 'O'—spells VW. After discontinuing its troubled Cariad auto software system and pulling funding from its previous partner, Argo AI, VW signed with Intel-owned Mobileye four years ago. This partnership led to the rollout of a skunkworks version of a driverless ID Buzz for a small trial in Austin, Texas, in 2023. 'Leadership in robotaxis is about achieving the highest levels of safety with a technology package that can scale in volume, geography, and cost,' said a statement from Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua. Christian Senger, CEO of MOIA, VW's autonomous driving subsidiary. MOIA's Level 4 self-driving system—capable of speeds up to 130 kph—is enabled by four Mobileye EyeQ6H chips working with the company's REM AV mapping technology, which allows vehicles to adapt to any roads. 'We can even go on gravel roads,' says Senger. 'We are not using GPS,' he adds. 'GPS can be disturbed, as has been shown in recent geopolitics; we are more robust without it. Nor are we dependent on Google Maps or similar—it's our own map format.' In addition to MOIA, Uber also has North American AV partnerships with Waymo and Hyundai-linked robotaxi company Motional, and in the UAE, with WeRide. In a statement from earlier this year, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the Los Angeles trial with MOIA was a 'significant milestone in the advancement of autonomous mobility and highlights both Volkswagen's and Uber's shared dedication to building the future of transportation.' Unlike Uber's new Route Share service, which travels on fixed, bus-style routes with set pick-up and drop-off times, the ride-hailing operation with driverless ID Buzzes in Los Angeles will be a go-anywhere shared taxi service. The MOIA/Uber app would allow a woman traveling alone late at night to book a solo journey rather than ridepool. 'If you are a 17-year-old woman on the way home from clubbing at 1 o'clock in the morning, there will be an option [in the app] to book an exclusive ride,' soothes Senger. 'But at 7.30 in the morning, there's less risk, so a woman could choose to ridepool, knowing that there are cabin cameras monitoring for safety. If needs be, a remote operator can talk to passengers to check everything is OK. It's also easy to stop the ride in an emergency; if somebody is about to be sick, say.' Senger won't divulge how many miles MOIA's driverless vehicles go without human intervention. 'We measure with time, not distance,' he says before pointing at a cyclist ahead. 'He is cycling in the middle of the lane. We won't get any closer. Anyway, we're pulling in here because we've arrived at our first destination. We wouldn't have followed the cyclist closely. We will not do any crazy maneuvers; unlike many human drivers, we follow all traffic laws. If 50 kilometers an hour is allowed, but the cyclist is only doing 15, then the vehicle will pass only if there's enough distance not to bring any danger.' Back moving, we paused at a stop light ahead of a crosswalk and a right turn, frustrating the human motorist behind. 'We have green, but there's not enough room for us before the queue of cars ahead; a human driver might encroach on the crosswalk, but we won't.' The queue soon moved; we pulled ahead; the frustrated motorist behind hadn't been unduly delayed. 'We use the data of all this good behavior to convince authorities that we're smart and always stick to traffic regulations,' says Senger. 'We're good citizens.' MOIA's sensor suite recognizes the sirens and flashing lights of first responder vehicles but, for now, disengages to let the safety driver squeeze over to let them pass. 'We could add what to do in that sort of situation with a software update,' promises Senger, adding that the scenario has been robotically role-played on a private test track in Munich. 'There,' says Senger as we arrive back at the expo halls, 'we have driven through Hamburg fully autonomously.' Hein had little to do on our uneventful 36-minute journey. We had driven smoothly, successfully, and safely to and from the UITP Summit, a transit expo staged in Hamburg's exhibition halls and where MOIA had a booth. Many members of the transit industry believe they will have fully certified autonomous vehicles on the road, without safety drivers, before automakers. Way to go If recent incidents are anything to go by, there's still much room for improvement in robotaxi tech. A San Francisco-based cyclist is suing Waymo after she was seriously injured when one of the company's robotaxis stopped in a bike lane and a passenger opened a back door, hitting the cyclist and causing her to deflect into another Waymo car that was also illegally blocking the bike path. According to the lawsuit, the Safe Exit system employed by Waymo, which aims to alert passengers of surrounding dangers and hazards, failed. The injured cyclist claims that Waymo knows its cars are 'dooring' cyclists. Earlier this month the cyclist sued Waymo and Google's parent company Alphabet in San Francisco County Superior Court alleging battery, emotional distress, and negligence, while seeking unspecified damages. Wayme claims that its robotaxis recognize cyclists as 'unique users of the road,' drive conservatively around them, and recognise common hand signals. 'As technology moves forward, we believe it is crucial for all autonomous car companies to not move forward too quickly,' said a statement from Michael Stephenson, the cyclist's attorney. 'In the interest of public safety, they must make sure they are adequately testing and refining their technology before subjecting the public to these cars,' Stephenson added. In February 2024, a cyclist was injured in San Francisco after a Waymo robotaxi failed to detect his presence and struck him. 'The cyclist was occluded by the truck and quickly followed behind it, crossing into the Waymo vehicle's path," said a company statement. 'When they became fully visible, our vehicle applied heavy braking but was not able to avoid the collision.' Elon Musk's Tesla launched a rival robotaxi service this month in Austin, Texas, but the handful of vehicles are restricted to only certain areas of the city with geofencing, and the first journeys were with invited passengers only, including Tesla fans. The trial has not been without its problems, with many examples of poor autonomous decision made by the Tesla robotaxis highlighted by the well-funded Dawn Project. This organization is bankrolled by one of Musk's fiercest—and richest—critics who is doing his dollar-propelled darnedest to prick the belief bubble protecting Musk. Software billionaire Sam O'Dowd spends huge sums on TV ads and a PR campaign to highlight what he claims are the 'flaws' in Tesla's driverless FSD car tech. O'Dowd believes Musk's claims for FSD are fraudulent, with one of his personally-fronted TV ads asking whether Musk was guilty of running a 'trillion dollar Ponzi scheme.' If this anti-FSD campaign—which pre-dates the anti-Musk Tesla Takedown movement—works even a little it could lead to Musk's financial downfall, believes O'Dowd. Musk has previously admitted he's vulnerable on this front. '[My] overwhelming focus is on solving full self-driving,' Musk said during a June 2022 interview with three Tesla fanboys. 'It's really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero.' O'Dowd, who made his fortune selling secure software for fighter jets and nuclear bombers, isn't a Tesla hater. He owns five Roadsters and four other Tesla cars, three of which are used as test vehicles by his anti-FSD campaign hosted on the Dawn Project website. 'The Roadster's fantastic,' he tells me from his Santa Barbara, California office. 'It's what I drive every day [and have done] for 15 years.' Nor is O'Dowd down on driverless cars in general. 'It's not that [autonomous driving] is impossible. Waymo made it work. Amazon has them; BYD in China has them—true self-driving cars [exist]. Tesla's [FSD] is nowhere close to [those technologies]. Elon Musk said recently [Tesla is] the leader in autonomy by far, [yet] the thing that its product is supposed to do—which is drive without anybody sitting in the driver's seat—[FSD] can't do.'
DW
20-06-2025
- Automotive
- DW
Autonomous driving: VW wants to overtake Tesla – DW
VW will launch the autonomous ID. Buzz AD in 2026. With that, it's hoping to overtake Tesla in the robotaxi race. Other competitors are also getting involved in this billion-dollar market. In Germany, there are many people who cannot manage without a car, particularly in the countryside, where public transport networks can be patchy, nonexistent even. Transitioning to electric, or e-, vehicles will not solve the transportation problem on its own. Privately owned electric cars may not run on oil, but they still consume resources, take up space, require roads and parking areas. But much could be resolved if people were able to switch to using robot taxis. For years now, countries like the USA and China have been running pilot projects with self-driving cars and driverless vans. These vehicles are also being tested in Germany, but so far no approvals have been issued for so-called level 4 systems — completely autonomous cars with no driver at the wheel. The German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) says that legally it is possible, in Germany and in the EU as a whole, but until now the general introduction of these vehicles still seems a long way off. Robotaxis from 2026, by VW But now VW has surged ahead with a driverless e-van: the ID. Buzz AD ("autonomous driving"), a level 4 vehicle that drives set routes. Europe's biggest car manufacturer presented the production version of the self-driving electric van in Hamburg on June 17. It is scheduled to go on the road in 2026. Initially, it will only be deployed in Hamburg and Los Angeles, but the intention is for it then to be rolled out more widely. "This certainly has not been set up as a small series production," says Christian Senger, a member of the board of management of VW Commercial Vehicles, who is responsible for its autonomous driving sector. The vans will be manufactured in very large numbers. The Hannover VW factory is set to produce more than 10,000 commercial vehicles. "We believe we can be the leading supplier in Europe," Senger says. VW already has a buyer, the Uber taxi service company. The two firms signed an agreement in April for cooperation in the US. According to Senger, Uber plans to purchase up to 10,000 VW e-vans over the next ten years. The ID Buzz AD has 13 cameras, five radars, and nine LiDARs (pictured), which use lasers to calculate distance Image: Lukas Barth/Reuters Overtaking Tesla VW has jumped ahead of Tesla with its ID. Buzz AD presentation. Earlier this month, Elon Musk "tentatively" announced June 22 — this Sunday — as the date for the launch of his own robotaxi, based on the Model Y SUV, but this is still unconfirmed. "We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift," Musk said at the time on his social media platform, X. Tesla's initial plans are for just 10 to 20 Model Y SUVs to operate as public robotaxis in one area of Austin, Texas, the city where Tesla is headquartered. But, as usual, Musk is thinking big. In an interview with US broadcaster CBS, he announced that there would be some 1,000 Tesla robotaxis on the road within months, and hundreds of thousands by the end of 2026. Musk also announced in May that several US cities would be approved for autonomous driving for private Tesla owners before the end of the year. This promise is not new: Back in 2017, he promised that this function would be activated within two years. Waymo: Google robotaxis miles ahead Right now, Google affiliate Waymo is streets ahead when it comes to autonomous driving. Waymo's driverless robotaxis are already on the road in several US cities, making more than 250,000 paid journeys with passengers every week. The vehicles are mostly converted electric cars made by Jaguar. Waymo also announced in May that it planned to more than double the number of vehicles by the end of 2026. Tech giant Amazon is also in the running for the emerging market in autonomous driving. Amazon's robotaxi company Zoox plans to put cars on the road in Las Vegas and San Francisco without steering wheels or pedals, with space for up to four passengers. Competition from China China is also looking to solve its transport problems through autonomous driving. The Google rival Baidu runs a fleet of around 1,000 Apollo Go robotaxis, which completed more than 1.4 million journeys in the first quarter of this year. The Chinese company has a fleet of more than 300 robotaxis, and it wants to increase this to as many as 3,000 by the end of next year. WeRide, meanwhile, has around 400 vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are already on the road in China, like this Apollo Go self-driving taxi Image: Johannes Neudecker/dpa/picture alliance Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2030 there will be about half a million robotaxis in service in more than 10 Chinese cities. In China, the question is no longer whether autonomous driving is possible, but how companies will make commercial use of the sector's rapid development. Projections for the future are very promising. The investment bank puts the total sales potential of the Chinese robotaxi sector at around $54 million (€47 million) this year but expects that figure to increase exponentially by 2035, to around $47 billion. VW focused on fleets, transport associations VW's new e-van is not aimed at private customers. Instead it hopes to supply business customers, fleet operators and transport associations, providing a package to include total software solutions, a booking app, fleet management and maintenance. In Hamburg, for example, the company has established cooperation with the local transport association, HVV. A declaration of intent has also been agreed with the Berlin transport authority, the BVG. VW hopes to gain approval to operate driverless cars in Europe and the US by the end of 2026. This would mean they would no longer need a safety driver, currently a mandatory requirement. VW says it would be the first such approval for level 4 autonomous driving in Europe. If level 4 self-driving vehicles are approved, a safety driver would no longer be required to sit behind the wheel Image: Lukas Barth/Reuters There is a catch though. VW's Senger does not expect the top dog of Germany's beleaguered auto industry to make any money, at least at first. In the long term, though, he explains that autonomous driving is the lucrative field of the future, one that promises to be much more profitable than the traditional automotive industry. "This is our big chance to establish a future opportunity for the VW Group," he says. The exact price has not yet been announced but the ID. Buzz AD is unlikely to come cheap. According to Senger, buyers will have to pay a low six-figure sum (in euros) per vehicle. Public funding is needed That means it's going to be expensive for transport companies. The Association of German Transport Companies or VDV, is calling for a nationally coordinated strategy of long-term financing, and a market launch supported by public funding, to establish the country's supremacy in this market. An autonomous shuttle bus in Germany, part of a pilot project that local public transport operators want to see more of Image: Swen Pförtner/dpa/picture alliance The current government's coalition agreement declares: "Germany is to become the leading market for autonomous driving, developing and co-financing model regions with the federal states." Ingo Wortmann from the VDV comments that start-up funding of around €3 billion is needed to take this idea from pilot project to standrad operating procedure. This article was originally published in German.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Volkswagen adopts an autonomous solution: Innoviz Q&A
Autonomous driving tech is seeing more new solutions applied in robotaxis and busses. Uber has partnered with Volkswagen to deploy autonomous ID. Buzz AD vehicles as robotaxis in the US. Supplier of LiDAR solutions, Innoviz, recently announced a collaboration with Volkswagen Autonomous Mobility to accelerate the integration of InnovizTwo LiDAR units into the ID. Buzz AD, VW's L4 autonomous shuttle. Volkswagen Autonomous Mobility, with its brand MOIA, will integrate nine Innoviz LiDARs into each ID. Buzz AD to enable advanced urban autonomous driving. We spoke to Elad Hofstetter, chief business officer, Innoviz, to learn more about the partnership, and to discuss the testing the LiDAR technology undergoes. Just Auto (JA): How did the company begin working with Volkswagen? Elad Hofstetter (EH): We were nominated to work on several of the Volkswagen programs. The programs include different platforms, different vehicle types, and different applications. There are highway applications which are L3 autonomous driving and there are also applications of L4 like the ID Buzz shuttle, which drives in urban environments. As part of this platforms solution with Volkswagen, Innoviz is providing two LiDAR types, the InnovizTwo long range, and the InnovizTwo short range, meaning there are nine LiDARS on each vehicle. Mobileye are also part of this program; they're providing this solution for lots of different customers, suppliers and platforms, around the world. They're providing their L4 platform using our LiDARs for lots of different global partners. How is the LiDAR technology able to work in a busy, urban environment? In a very busy environment, when there's lots of different details, it's important to have high resolution of the LiDAR so you can distinguish between things. Otherwise, you'll have smearing and lots of different objects might be interpreted as one large one. You need to be able to detect vehicles, and also see the 'cracks'- the spacing between vehicles; if a pedestrian crosses through you need to separate between this, so you need a very high and dense resolution in order to do so. This is one of the reasons that Volkswagen have chosen our LiDAR. We provide both the large coverage of field of view (that you need to see in different parts), but can also distinguish between small obstacles, and not just large ones. What testing did the technology undergo before deployment? We needed to drag the LiDAR through the mud. It needs to have very rigorous environmental tests. We wanted to test it under cold conditions, warm conditions, changing conditions, rain, fog, snow, and hail. You need to test it in different environments, in different locations, because different locations have different road types and vibration profiles on the vehicle. You need to take the LiDAR to the extreme - more extreme than what the vehicles go through - in order to absolutely ensure that you can endure what the vehicles go through. We needed to drag the LiDAR through the mud. It needs to have very rigorous environmental tests. The vehicle will not self-drive without the LiDAR. A few months ago we did a winter campaign in which we took our LiDAR driving through Scandinavia in very harsh cold conditions, to test its functionality. We also have ovens for low and high temperature at our labs to test for all of these climate conditions. How do you see LiDAR technology helping the next generation of vehicles? We see it growing rapidly. In 2019 there was a lot of hype around autonomous driving, when everyone felt or thought that autonomous vehicles might be just around the corner. With time, the market and everyone realized that the reality is a little more complicated than that. Those who work in this field understood the full complexity. Waymo announced that 22% of the drives/rides in San Francisco are with their autonomous vehicles - this is fully autonomous. This was in San Francisco, but it could be also London, Paris, or any other city; this is probably going to come faster than we expect. It doesn't mean that tomorrow there will be only autonomous vehicles around us, but it's coming, and this is for the L4 and the L3 as well. To date, there are two brands with an L4 system. One of them is BMW with Innoviz, our first generation InnovizOne, and the other one is Mercedes. These are only two, but more are expected to come, but it takes time - patience is needed. Do you see autonomous vehicles being more passenger focused or business focused? In terms of the taxis, they're a business case. If they get to a certain dollar per kilometre, the company can justify putting sensors and systems on a car. They're replacing a driver, and it could drive let's say 24/7, going for some maintenance every so often. The cost per dollar is improving over time - we can see it with Waymo. Volkswagen and Uber are not small platforms, so these platforms are becoming more and more relevant. You need to meet the performance, you need to meet the environmental conditions, but you need to meet cost requirements. If it's too costly, it will never play for a consumer car. But with volumes, these costs go down dramatically. So, which will grow faster? I don't know, but both are promising. "Volkswagen adopts an autonomous solution: Innoviz Q&A" was originally created and published by Just Auto, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
MIT Startup TechNext Awarded Patent for Breakthrough Technology Forecasting System
The first-of-its-kind system enables data-driven R&D and innovation strategy ARLINGTON, Va., June 10, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TechNext Inc., a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) startup, has been awarded U.S. Patent No. 12,099,572 B2 for its novel system that predicts improvement rates across the vast spectrum of definable technologies, from quantum computing to self-driving cars. Lack Of Quantitative Tools Hinders Innovation With global R&D spending exceeding $2 trillion annually, organizations struggle to allocate resources effectively, often wasting billions on technological dead ends. "R&D has become one of the fastest-growing expenses for companies, yet most decisions still rely on intuition rather than data. We have been flying blind," said Anuraag Singh, TechNext co-founder and co-inventor of the patented technology. Singh, together with co-inventor and co-founder Prof. Christopher L. Magee (Professor Emeritus, MIT), identified the acute need for objective forecasting tools based on their experiences shaping technology strategy at global leaders such as Honda Japan and Ford. Transforming R&D from Intuition to Intelligence "Traditional forecasting methods can't keep pace with technological change," added Prof. Magee. "Our newly patented system for quantitative technology performance forecasting, provides the crucial missing piece: a rapid, data-driven, and systematic way to anticipate the future." The system relies on large empirical datasets, patented algorithms to precisely define tens of thousands of technologies and to forecast improvement rates in their performance. For example, consider Tesla founder Elon Musk's stance that the spinning LiDARs on Alphabet's Waymo are unlikely to be competitive with their exclusively camera-based perception system. The TechNext system can precisely forecast which of the two approaches is likely to perform better in the long-run and whether an alternative technology might outperform both. TechNext helps organizations: Anticipate and capitalize on disruptive technology opportunities Identify acquisition targets years before competitors and avoid expensive dead ends Create new revenue streams by identifying promising technologies early TechNext's customers include the U.S. Air Force, leading Multi-national Corporations, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, think tanks, venture capital firms, and investment funds. TechNext's research is utilized by national laboratories and universities worldwide, with coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Fast Company. For more information, visit View source version on Contacts Anuraag Singh, Chief Technology Officer, anuraags@ Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Wire
10-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
MIT Startup TechNext Awarded Patent for Breakthrough Technology Forecasting System
ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- TechNext Inc., a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) startup, has been awarded U.S. Patent No. 12,099,572 B2 for its novel system that predicts improvement rates across the vast spectrum of definable technologies, from quantum computing to self-driving cars. "R&D has become one of the fastest-growing expenses for companies, yet most decisions still rely on intuition rather than data. We have been flying blind" Share Lack Of Quantitative Tools Hinders Innovation With global R&D spending exceeding $2 trillion annually, organizations struggle to allocate resources effectively, often wasting billions on technological dead ends. "R&D has become one of the fastest-growing expenses for companies, yet most decisions still rely on intuition rather than data. We have been flying blind," said Anuraag Singh, TechNext co-founder and co-inventor of the patented technology. Singh, together with co-inventor and co-founder Prof. Christopher L. Magee (Professor Emeritus, MIT), identified the acute need for objective forecasting tools based on their experiences shaping technology strategy at global leaders such as Honda Japan and Ford. Transforming R&D from Intuition to Intelligence "Traditional forecasting methods can't keep pace with technological change," added Prof. Magee. "Our newly patented system for quantitative technology performance forecasting, provides the crucial missing piece: a rapid, data-driven, and systematic way to anticipate the future.' The system relies on large empirical datasets, patented algorithms to precisely define tens of thousands of technologies and to forecast improvement rates in their performance. For example, consider Tesla founder Elon Musk's stance that the spinning LiDARs on Alphabet's Waymo are unlikely to be competitive with their exclusively camera-based perception system. The TechNext system can precisely forecast which of the two approaches is likely to perform better in the long-run and whether an alternative technology might outperform both. TechNext helps organizations: Anticipate and capitalize on disruptive technology opportunities Identify acquisition targets years before competitors and avoid expensive dead ends Create new revenue streams by identifying promising technologies early TechNext's customers include the U.S. Air Force, leading Multi-national Corporations, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, think tanks, venture capital firms, and investment funds. TechNext's research is utilized by national laboratories and universities worldwide, with coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Fast Company. For more information, visit
