A new generation of early-stage startups, along with some recent venture capital investments, illustrates an emerging niche in the autonomous vehicle technology sector. Unlike companies that bring robotaxis to city streets, these startups are taking their technology off the road.
Two recent entrants: based in Seattle ai/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Terrestrial ai and based in New Brunswick Potential – are poised to gain first-mover advantage in this autonomy segment.
While these startups are applying their technology in different ways, Overland ai and Potential share common all-terrain ground. The founders of each startup believe they have cracked the code on one of the most challenging applications of automated driving by creating software that doesn't rely on some of the main pillars of testing and deployment, such as detailed maps and large amounts of training data. and the possibility of using remote assistance.
The US Department of Defense and venture capital investors are taking notice.
Overland ai, which is developing an autonomous driving system designed for military operations such as reconnaissance, surveillance and electronic warfare package delivery, received up toai-awarded-18-6-193800079.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”> 18.6 million dollars The funds will be used to build an autonomous software prototype for its Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) program over the next two years.
The startup, which was founded in 2022, raised a $10 million seed round this week led by Point72 Ventures. The funds will be used to expand Overland's team and continue developing OverDrive, the company's autonomy stack, according to CEO and founder Byron Boots.
Meanwhile, Potential, which makes advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that enable all-terrain vehicles, underground mining vehicles, and passenger cars to handle off-road environments, has raised a C$2 million extension (~$1.5 million dollars) for its seed round led by Brightspark Ventures, a Canadian early-stage venture capital. This brings Potential's total funding to C$8.5 million (~$6.2 million). The startup has spent the last six years developing its technology and is now running several pilot projects in motorsports, motorcycles and automotive.
Off-road opportunity
Potential and Overland ai aren't the only companies trying to apply autonomous vehicle technology to areas outside of public streets. The pursuit of high-cost robotaxi and autonomous truck business operations has thwarted dozens of startups in recent years. As these have closed, a new group of startups such as Polymath Robotics, Forterra, Pronto.ai, Bear Robotics and Outrider have emerged with more grounded ambitions: applying AV technology to warehouses, mining, industrial and off-road environments.
“We are absolutely investing capital in off-road autonomy,” Alexei Andreev, CEO of Autotech Ventures, told TechCrunch. “Actually, if anything, we'll stay away from on-road autonomy and completely double off-road autonomy.”
Most of the off-road companies Autotech Ventures is investing in today are in the agricultural and construction sectors: products such as autonomous mining vehicles, forklifts and tractors. Andreev says these sectors are about addressing labor shortages while increasing productivity and making farms and construction sites safer.
“And if you eliminate people, you immediately get a reduction in your insurance premiums. So the return on investment for those vertical applications is now and it is significant,” Andreev said.
Another result: off-road autonomy has found a friend in defense.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-overland-ai-from-darpa-to-seed-funding”>Terrestrial ai: from DARPA to seed funding
When it comes to automating off-road driving, the US military can be a big customer. After all, autonomous vehicles started as a DARPA project, says Jeff Peters, partner at Ibex Investors. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is an agency of the US Department of Defense focused on advancing technology for military use.
“The hype around AVs moved much of the industry toward larger potential commercial applications, but DoD projects have persisted,” Peters told TechCrunch via email, noting that autonomous mining startup SafeAI and autonomous truck startup Kodiak Robotics have also sought defense grants. “I think AV companies (those that still exist) will pursue DoD projects because they offer significant, non-dilutive funding in the interim before commercial operations.”
Overland ai is the latest byproduct of the DARPA program. Boots, a professor of machine learning at the University of Washington and founder of the Robot Learning Laboratory in the university's school of computer science and engineering, has a long history of collaboration with the US Army Research Laboratory and DARPA .
Overland emerged from research by Boots and the team involved in DARPA's RACER (Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resilience) program, which aims to develop autonomous vehicles that can handle difficult terrain.
The program is still ongoing. Overland, which features technology veterans from Google, Nvidia, Apple, Waymo, Aurora, Embark and Argo, as well as software engineers who have worked on mission-critical solutions at SpaceX, RTX and the US military, was recently selected to continue with the second phase.
“The high-level idea is that almost every ground vehicle the military uses today has a person in it,” Boots told TechCrunch in a video interview. “And you can imagine that if you could get the person out of the vehicle, that confers safety and tactical advantages.”
Taking the person out means the vehicles must autonomously navigate complex off-road terrain using only on-board sensors (mainly cameras, according to Boots) and perform calculations, without relying on maps, GPS or remote human operators. That means Overland's software has to understand the geometry of the ground (including things like vegetation and mud) every step of the way, and how that affects the vehicle's dynamics.
“The terrain gets a vote on how the vehicle moves,” Boots said.
Overland's technology “basically takes the data from the sensors and builds a representation of the terrain as it goes,” Boots explained. The vehicle then uses that digital representation “plus the target it is trying to reach, which could be several kilometers away, to try to find a route through the terrain to that target.”
“Part of the benefit of having an autonomous system is that when the system is assigned a task, if a communication link with that ground vehicle is lost, it will continue to move toward its target and attempt to complete the task until the communication link is reestablished. . Boots said.
Most road driving today depends on that remotely assisted telecommunications link, partly because the risk to other road users is greater. That's why you'll see Waymo and Cruise robotaxis boarded up on the streets of San Francisco, waiting for a remote operator to give them a boost after they've stopped driving to meet a minimum safety requirement.
“Military land systems often need to operate in dynamic, unstructured terrain. “We believe that autonomous driving technology built for well-defined streets and closed lots will struggle there, and that a very strong team is needed to deliver operationally relevant ground autonomy in these environments,” Chris Morales, partner in the defense technology team at Point72 Ventures. , he told TechCrunch.
The potential of potential with off-road ADAS.
“How do you train someone who may not be a 100% expert driver, but someone who wants to drive off-road and experience these more challenging conditions?” asked Sam Poirier, CEO of Potential, in a recent interview.
Potential's core platform, called Terrain Intelligence, uses computer vision to help vehicles see, interpret and prepare for complex terrain and changing surface conditions ahead. Terrain Intelligence can read data from a single camera, rather than relying on additional sensors such as additional cameras, lidar and radar.
At the most basic level, Potential's off-road ADAS alerts the driver of an impassable object ahead or the need to shift to a better driving setting based on new terrain.
“The second level is: can we actually help automate changes to what are typically driver-assisted settings?” Poirier said. “Most vehicles have two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, sand mode, mud mode, things like that. “Ultimately, at this stage, it is up to the driver to switch between these… and the driver has to understand when to use these different modes.”
The final level of potential would involve using data from existing sensors and fine-tuning those settings and pushing the limits of performance.
“There are things that assistive tools can do that an individual driver, no matter how good their experience, can't do on their own,” said Scott Kunselman, former Jeep chief engineer, auto industry veteran and advisor to Potential. . “Stability controls are a good example because to enable stability control, you need independent brake control. The driver only has one brake pedal and operates the entire brake system at once. Whereas stability control can individually actuate each wheel and that is how you can produce, for example, the ability to compensate for yaw in a vehicle.”
Yaw, by the way, is when a vehicle's weight shifts from its center of gravity to the right or left, which can cause it to twist or turn.
Potential said it is working with both Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs to license its software and integrate it directly into vehicles. Andreev suggests focusing on business relationships with tier-one suppliers rather than OEMs, which are less likely to take risks on a small startup.
