Part 2: How Artificial Intelligence is Driving the Transportation Sector Forward

What a ride it’s been for the transportation industry since the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI), though it cannot surprise anybody that the industry took AI so readily into its stride. After all, haven’t we all been expecting flying cars and other futuristic vehicle innovations for some time? Everyone simply expects the transportation sector to continue to evolve, to change with the times, to digitalise.

The development of AI technology comes hand-in-hand with changes in the transport industry. No one is impressed when they see a self-driving or electric car anymore. We expect to be able to look and see in-time traffic updates, cars that can charge on a battery, courier drivers delivering parcels within minutes, and apps that can control our vehicles. This has all become the new normal.

AI has played a part in so many of these technological advancements that it can be difficult to keep up. Below are just a few of the companies we believe are using AI to make some of the most creative and innovative changes in the transportation sector.

See Part 1 HERE.

Cipia

Cipia makes driving safer by bringing AI and computer vision inside the car’s cabin. Cipia’s driver monitoring system watches a vehicle’s driver, tracking gaze, eye movement, head position, blink rate and other measures to determine if the driver is alert or distracted, awake or drowsy. The vehicle can sound an alert or suggest a rest if it detects a sleepy driver. Autonomous vehicles also benefit from Cipia’s driver monitoring, deciding when to take control of the car from the driver and when it’s safe to hand control back.

Cipia has also developed an AI occupancy monitoring system, which can watch the whole car cabin. Cipia’s cabin monitoring system can spot if passengers are wearing their seat belts properly, or are smoking cigarettes — very useful for driverless vehicles like autonomous taxis.

Cipia’s technology is being built into 40 car models from 8 different automakers, with more on the way. As some government regulators are beginning to require driver monitoring systems as a safety feature in new cars, Cipia’s AI driver monitoring system is seeing wide adoption by carmakers.

Alitheon

Alitheon has taken a proactive approach to combat the issue of counterfeit auto parts, which are a significant concern, costing the U.S. automotive industry $3 billion annually. With their technology, Alitheon aims to transform how auto parts are authenticated and traced throughout the supply chain to ensure a safer experience for everyone.

The company has developed FeaturePrint®, an award-winning technology to solve the multitrillion-dollar problem of counterfeit goods, untraceable items and poor identification of physical products. With nothing more than a photo – even from a mobile phone – FeaturePrint “sees” the minute details of any physical part and creates its unique digital fingerprint, which in turn is used to irrefutably identify the individual item, such as an automotive part or a gold bar.

Alitheon’s recent partnership with the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) underscores the importance of tackling counterfeit and grey-market parts.

inDrive

Most of the attention around AI and mobility is focused on autonomous vehicles, but there are more impactful and affordable applications that are poised to quickly transform the mobility sector for the better. In vehicles, AI can identify signs of fatigue in drivers or detect issues with the vehicle itself. At a community level, by integrating AI into traffic management and mapping tools, journeys are more efficient, ensuring roads are less crowded and safer.

inDrive is a global mobility and urban services platform headquartered in Mountain View, California, USA. The inDrive app has been downloaded over 175 million times, and was the second most downloaded mobility app in 2022. In addition to ride-hailing, inDrive provides an expanding list of urban services, including intercity transportation, freight delivery, task assistance, courier delivery and employment search.

inDrive operates in over 40 countries. It supports local communities via its peer-to-peer pricing model and community empowerment programs, which help advance education, sports, arts and sciences, gender equality and other vital initiatives.

Netradyne 

Netradyne is an industry-leading fleet safety SaaS provider of AI and edge computing solutions focused on safety and driver coaching for commercial fleets. Founded in 2015, Netradyne has over 500 employees and offices in San Diego, CA, and Bangalore, IN. The company is trusted by more than 2,000 commercial fleets of all sizes and vehicle types worldwide.

Netradyne’s flagship product Driver•i delivers the industry’s most advanced AI-powered HD video safety cameras, fleet performance analytics, and driver awareness tools. Driver•i recognizes risky and good driving behaviours by analyzing every minute of drive time, in-cab, and out with 98% accuracy. AI-powered in-cab coaching alerts give a nudge when a risky driving event is about to occur. When you make the correction in real-time, you’re rewarded with DriverStars which positively impact your GreenZone Score – the industry’s first driver score built on positive driving, versus solely focusing on negative events. Drivers receive automatic recognition for good driving and gain visibility into risky driving behaviour.

Servco 

In the fast-paced world of transportation, where customer expectations and market conditions shift, a comprehensive grasp of customer data isn’t just useful—it’s essential. Recognizing this, Servco, a leading automotive retailer and service organization, turned to Amperity to tackle its fragmented, siloed data across multiple systems and create a unified, data-driven customer experience powered by AI.

Amperity, the leading customer data platform (CDP), offered the perfect solution. Its patented AI & machine learning algorithms enabled Servco to bridge the gap across its entire global portfolio to create unified customer profiles. The platform’s AI-driven insights ensured that Servco could strategize targeted marketing campaigns, assess real-time customer interactions, and cultivate an enriched customer experience.

The result has been transformational. Servco was not only able to enhance its customer experience but also to drive incremental revenue and fast-track its omnichannel growth. Their business intelligence teams, now armed with actionable customer data from Amperity’s platform, have been able to develop new marketing segments and make agile, informed decisions. With Amperity, Servco has refined its approach to customer relations, enhancing the customer experience within the highly competitive landscape of the transportation industry.

ProEV

As autonomous vehicles become more prevalent in society, a critical issue arises: determining liability in the event of accidents caused by autonomous vehicles and striving for accident prevention. To address this, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and subcontract manufacturers must unequivocally prove their autonomous and electric vehicle (EV) components’ innocence.

ProEV, a leader in high-voltage cable, wire harness, and component manufacturing for industrial and commercial electric vehicles, has introduced KonnectAi. This system employs AI and computer vision technology to enhance quality inspections during production. ProEV aims to set a new standard for quality assurance in the autonomous vehicle industry, which currently lacks standardized regulations for EV component quality.

KonnectAi’s goal is zero defects and 100% traceability. It allows manufacturers to identify and rectify faulty EV components before they enter production, reducing the risk of accidents. Additionally, it offers transparency in accident investigations, helping pinpoint the causes of any incidents.

DIMO

DIMO is an open-source mobility app that plugs into your car to unlock its data. With the app and Vehicle Smart Hub device, drivers can track car health, save money and time on services, and even earn rewards.

DIMO uses AI to power recommendations from our error code reader. When a user has a check engine light come on, it throws a code like “P 10709” and we can provide the odometer location, make, model, and year of the vehicle to large language models which produce reliable recommendations on what the users should do next.

We also integrate with a number of different repair services. We can provide these AI recommendations to include prices to fix the issue and connect our users with local service providers that can solve their problems directly.

Aggregated data from DIMO users can also be used to train AI models that look at weather patterns, traffic patterns, and battery performance across the entire fleet of over 12,000 electric vehicles that are connected to the platform and streaming data daily. We can analyze how different driving behaviours, weather conditions, and battery chemistries impact the performance of vehicles over time across any electric vehicle on the market.

Fullpath

Fullpath is automotive’s leading Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP). Fullpath is proud to be driving the automotive industry forward by leveraging AI.

Fullpath’s CDXP helps automotive dealers leverage their first-party data to create AI-powered omni-channel marketing campaigns that sell more cars at lower costs.

We also recently launched a Chat-GPT4 integration for dealerships. Fullpath’s ChatGPT is unique as it combines the power of ChatGPT with our proprietary data layer. This allows the chat to provide dealership-relevant answers to customer inquiries. By using first-party data to drive customer engagement, ChatGPT helps dealerships improve their shopper experience tenfold.

Additionally, Fullpath CEO Aharon Horwitz has many predictions on AI’s future impact on automotive, including:

• The industry will ultimately have an operating system that is fully AI-based – dealers will be using AI to run all of their systems. Aharon envisions a whole suite of AI-driven agents who will be supporting dealers in all aspects of business.
• AI will enable professionals to eliminate drudge work and focus more on executive function. An AI agent can research what’s going on in the industry and bring back strategic suggestions to implement.
• AI can help professionals better engage with customers by providing them with relevant, meaningful information.

Phyron

Phyron’s cutting-edge platform automates the process of showcasing 
your entire car catalogue in the most captivating way – no manual work required. It uses game-changing AI software to create automated videos for car dealers and OEMs. From a few still images studio studio-quality videos are created and fed directly onto classified sites such as AutoTrader

With Phyron AI Video you can present all your cars 100% automatically, from ad creation to publishing on all platforms. Simply connect to Phyron and let our online AI solution turn your existing images, text, logos, and data into studio-quality videos. Any number of cars, any number of videos, automatically in minutes. Let all your images show why they should buy the car from you. Clean backgrounds. Uniform style, light, and shadows. Consistent style and quality, faster to market, less work, and lower total costs.

Fusion Processing

Fusion Processing is the UK’s leading company developing autonomous commercial vehicles and the world’s leading provider of AV Level 4/5 technology for autonomous buses.

Fusion Processing is leading the consortium developing Europe’s first full-sized autonomous bus for CAVForth. CAVForth is the world’s most complex and ambitious full-sized autonomous bus pilot, partly funded by Innovate UK, it will deliver a fleet of five AV Level 4 buses providing scheduled passenger service along a 30-mile route between Edinburgh and Fife, across the Forth Road Bridge in 2021, carrying up to 10,000 passengers per week. Fusion is working in partnership with Stagecoach Group, Alexander Dennis, Transport Scotland, Edinburgh Napier University and the Bristol Robotics Lab.

Tetro

Tetro is an early-stage company with interesting IP, currently looking for backers.

The focus of the company is on reducing waste miles. Its intelligence layer guides Buyers and Sellers of transport to put together combinations of jobs that maximise truck-filling and cuts empty miles.

It is our focus on ‘bundling’ jobs and matching these to empty trucks that delivers performance.

In the UK 30-percent of HGV trucks run empty at any point in time, and yet there exists a developed ecosystem of contract logistics, freight forwarders, lead logistics providers and digital platforms. Something surely has not to be working for this situation to persist, which it has now for many years.

A recent publication by Frost & Sullivan, global thought leaders in many fields and specialists in supply chain, suggests that it will take more visibility and traceability to unlock increased productivity.

Tetro is stepping up to the plate! Using a blend of publicly available data and Carriers tracker data, predictive analytics guides Buyers and Sellers of transport to assemble efficient roundtrips. This results in lower freight costs, simultaneous with an increase in Carrier profits. Of course, society also benefits because fewer trucks on the road reduces congestion and cuts CO2 !