Artificial Intelligence enhancing vehicle vision in low visibility conditions

AI-SEE is related to enable automated driving in adverse weather. The weather conditions which prevent 24/7 automated operation are different in middle of Europe compared to Scandinavia. Ministry of Economy and Employment has set targets for Finnish technological society to take a raising stake from worldwide digital markets. Vehicles (cars, trucks and work machines) are good examples where digital services and ICT technologies are mixing to the actuation in next 5-10 years. This project aims to bring new and traditional high-tech companies not only to automotive mass markets which supply chain has traditionally majorly shared by big Tier 1 players but also off-road vehicles produced by Patria. However, due to the automation there is now space for new ICT/electronics based innovations and join to the supply chains of OEMS and Tier 1/2s.

AI-SEE is driven by German, Austrian and Swedish automotive industry which has a long experience to develop new technologies. The project outcomes are High Definition Dynamic Map which will be launched soon after the project in 2024 to be followed in 2025 by a gated SWIR camera, PolCAM and SWIR LiDAR respectively. A complete vehicle-ready 365 all-weather sensor system is envisioned to roll-out in 2027. The consortium funded by Business Finland includes four companies and three of them are SMEs, looking for business extension and also risk sharing funding for improving their existing products to be used in automated vehicle industry domain. The Finnish partners are networking with European industry (Ibeo, Mercedes, Veoneer, Bosch, AVL, etc.) for evaluating automated driving functions, improving environment perception in adverse weather, having AI based signal processing algorithms and even integrating to the vehicles new European top innovations. Patria is one of the OEMs providing off-road view for AI-SEE whereas Mercedes is the on-road end user.