Minus Zero unveiled India’s first autonomous vehicle based on a camera-sensor suite on zDay 2023. The showcase event at the Embassy TechVillage, one of Bengaluru’s foremost commercial office parks, was attended by esteemed guests and automotive industry experts who saw the autonomous vehicle live in action as it drove without a steering wheel. With the ability to scale up to Level 5 autonomy capabilities, the vehicle can drive itself in all environmental and geographical constraints.
The company showcased cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence breakthroughs through the founders’ keynote, introduced concepts of Nature Inspired AI (NIA) and True Vision Autonomy (TVA), highlighting their proprietary technological innovations that made the designing and development of the autonomous vehicle possible. The AI capabilities were demonstrated in specially curated experience zones along with True Vision Autonomy (TVA) driving the concept vehicle zPod autonomously across the sprawling venue.
The honour ofthe first ride in azPod was shared by KrisGopalakrishnan and the founder’s.
Observing a big gap of technology driven growth in the current mobility industry, Minus Zero was co-founded in 2021 by GagandeepReehal and GursimranKalra, to enable safe and scalable autonomous driving via their proprietary approach to AI.
Sharing their vision for the mobility industry, they also released a whitepaper at the event, introducing their approach, dubbed ‘Nature-Inspired AI’ (NIA). Nature-inspired AI is a novel approach to building generalized autonomous agents inspired by physics-aware vision and the predictive decision-making capabilities of a human brain, making it efficient in handling real-world road scenarios, unlike traditional AI. The whitepaper, available for public viewing, shares the guiding principles for the safe and scalable adoption of truly AI-driven mobility.
Today, the autonomous vehicle industry is eclipsed by three challenges – expensive hardware, the requirement of extensive data, and navigation through complex traffic conditions and unruly infrastructure. The traditional robotics paradigm currently being used to build AI is prone to failure when facing scenarios it hasn’t been trained on. With the sky-high costs related to sophisticated on-vehicle hardware and data acquisition for AI training, these AI algorithms are inherently far from being deployment ready for real-world conditions.
The launch of a safe and scalable AV product is awaited despite billion-dollar investments in R&D by trillion-dollar companies over the last ten years. Minus Zero’s proprietary nature-inspired algorithm tackles the three barriers between existing AI systems and human brain capabilities – real-time low-power processing, adaptability to uncertain or chaotic real-road conditions, and the elimination of the need to re-learn driving for different use cases, geographies, or vehicles.
Using NIA, Minus Zero introduced the concept of ‘True Vision Autonomy’ (TVA), which they believe is the safest and most scalable approach to autonomous driving, and can scale up to L5 autonomy. TVA is vehicle agnostic and relies only on cameras as its sensor suite. Its capabilities were demonstrated by the company on z-Day in the concept vehicle called “zPod.” The guests witnessed the vehicle’s ability to navigate real-world scenarios safely, ensuring reliability and a smooth user experience. zPod, powered by True Vision Autonomy, demonstrated real-world maneuvers like overtaking, blind turns, and vehicle following without human supervision using only monocular cameras.
Highlighting the company’s disruption in the mobility sector, CEO and co-founder GagandeepReehal adds, “Due to the lack of safe autonomous vehicle solutions, many lives are lost each year, and economies lose several billion dollars. With true vision autonomy coming to the fore, one can make autonomous vehicles a reality, solving major pain points of the mobility paradigm.”
True Vision Autonomy is a new inflection point in the mobility industry. It can adapt to any use case and vehicle form factor, opening the doors for next-generation vehicles to harness the capability of full autonomy in the future.
Through its innovations and AI breakthroughs, Minus Zero offers a blank canvas to all automotive OEMs. Speaking about the company’s innovative approach, co-founder Gursimran Kalra says, “Our concepts are a new revolution in the automotive industry. They allow automakers to explore new design possibilities for vehicles, currently limited by the constraints of a driver-led design. We aim to redefine mobility from a driver-centric hassle to a user-focused experiential design.” The future of mobility is connected and autonomous, with no constraints of installing a steering wheel or following the redundant vehicle design meant for driving in one direction. The vehicle can take any form factor, like a Pod, whereinpassengers can sit facing each other -encouraging conversation – and enjoy theirjourney without stressing about driving.
Minus Zero envisions targeting a larger global mobility market with True Vision Autonomy. The company has identified near-term use cases through multiple trials and proof-of-concept for in-campus mobility and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). It has planned the expansion of trials to foreign markets with stable regulatory norms over the next two years, including public road trials. With such pathbreaking advancements and revolutionary concepts, India is poised to become the face of mobility worldwide.
