The news from the Ford Smart Mobility press event that Ford made a substantial investment in Velodyne was widely reported. It turns out, that was only part of the story. It was also announced that Ford has acquired SAIPS, an Israeli company that specializes in machine learning to beef up Ford's expertise in self-driving machine learning and computer vision technology.
Ford has also has a new exclusive licensing agreement with Nirenberg Neuroscience, a machine vision company that has developed a machine vision platform for performing navigation, object recognition, facial recognition and other functions. Ford can use this technology to bring humanlike intelligence to their autonomous cars.
Finally, an investment in Civil Maps will benefit Ford in the area of 3D high resolution mapping.
Read Ford's press release here.
