NIRA Dynamics Expand Their Cloud Solution to Create New Possibilities for Tomorrow’s Autonomous Cars

    For an autonomous car to know what distance it must keep to the car in front of it, it needs information about the current road conditions. If the vehicle is also aware of the road surface quality, risks are reduced even further. NIRA Dynamics’ software Road Surface Information, and the cloud solution Cloud by NIRA, enable just that – and now, in cooperation with Infocar, the company is taking the next step in the rollout of the solution.

    Road Surface Information continuously monitors the quality of the road surface, detecting changing road conditions, pits and pot-holes, and different levels of road roughness. Because the software makes use of the car’s existing sensors to draw conclusions about the road conditions, no additional hardware is required, making it a cost-efficient solution.

    In order to meet the growing interest in advanced driver assistance features, the software has been further developed to be able to collect relevant road data via the car’s OBD interface. Last winter, approximately 10 000 kilometers of road data were gathered this way, and in the summer of 2016, NIRA, in cooperation with Infocar AB, will be taking the next step in their data collection. The collection rate then gets multiplied by up to 24 000 kilometers of road data – per day.

    Thanks to NIRA’s own cloud solution, Cloud by NIRA, this data can be used by drivers, driver assistance systems and road authorities. It can also be used as real-time weather-based navigation data. In the future, this data will also help contribute to safer self-driving cars.

    ABOUT NIRA: Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Sweden, NIRA Dynamics is at the forefront of sensor fusion, providing cost-efficient, value-adding software products and services to the global vehicle industry. Customers include some of the world’s leading car manufacturers, such as Audi, Fiat, Renault, Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen and Volvo Cars.