Volvo unit teams with Israel's Foretellix on autonomous safety

Volvo Autonomous Solutions has formed a partnership with Tel Aviv-based Foretellix to jointly create a Coverage Driven Verification solution for autonomous vehicles and machines on public roads and in confined areas such as mines and quarries. The solution will facilitate testing of millions of different scenarios, which will validate autonomous vehicles and machines ability to deal with anything they might encounter within their specified Operational Design Domain (ODD).

The partnership will focus on providing high levels of safety and productivity of Volvo Autonomous Solution vehicles and machines. The companies said that the ability of the solution to orchestrate extensive simulation and conduct the big data analysis required will lead to a substantial reduction in costs and time to market, ensuring faster operational readiness and the ability to scale up the system across multiple sites and ODDs safely.

Foretellix has developed a novel verification platform that uses intelligent automation and big data analytics tools that coordinate and monitor millions of driving scenarios, to expose bugs and edge cases, including the most extreme cases.

Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Foretellix will use the Open Measurable Scenario Description Language (M-SDL) created by Foretellix.

"Volvo Autonomous Solutions believes in a collaborative verification concept, one that uses open standards," said Magnus Liljeqvist, Global Technology Manager Volvo Autonomous Solutions. "The partnership with Foretellix gives us access to the state-of-the-art verification tools and accelerating our time to market."

"We are very proud to partner with Volvo Group. This partnership is a significant milestone for the industry as it is the first time that large scale Coverage Driven Verification will be used for verification of ADS in confined areas. Our partnership will combine the expertise of the two companies and set a new standard in the verification of automated driving systems, boosting both safety and productivity," said Ziv Binyamini, CEO and co-founder of Foretellix..