Berta Benz driving her husband’s car to Pforzheim 125 years ago marked an important milestone for automotive history. In celebration of the event, Daimler decided to drive the same route once more - this time with an autonomous vehicle.

As a response to the special technical demands surrounding this project, Atlatec was founded - a company with strong roots in the KIT university and computer vision science that specializes in high-definition 3D maps for autonomous driving applications.

A few years later, Atlatec is still doing well and growing at a high pace. The demand for custom-made HD maps is strong and the company’s approach to serving it has paid off: The team surrounding founder and CEO Dr. Henning Lategahn has developed a very lean sensor box that can easily be attached to virtually any car everywhere in the world, allowing for the mapping of whatever routes their international customers would like a “digital twin” of. A self-developed software pipeline and a combination of artificial and human intelligence takes care of quality control and labelling of objects within the maps, such as road edges, traffic signs and more.

The AVL Creators Expedition presented itself as an interesting next step and an opportunity to offer Atlatec’s “Mapping as a Service” expertise at scale: The aim of the project is to build an open database that allows automotive professionals to search Atlatec’s maps for routes that confirm to specific criteria such as elevation changes, curve radius, number of lanes etc. - basically an “online shop” for digitized real-life roads that can be used in simulations and for other use cases.

First results look promising and Henning is happy with the collaboration: ’The project with AVL has been a great opportunity for the Atlatec team to connect with the automotive world. The synergies are very promising and the project has shown that we can combine the best of both worlds. We are looking forward to our continued partnership and the result of combining AVL’s expertise and reach with our work.’

On Friday 29th the third edition of TACC ended with the Final Pitching Event, for the first time fully digital!

TACC - Training for Automotive Companies Creation - is an academic program developed by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE ) and focused on entrepreneurship and innovation in the automotive industry. It is part of the Academy for Advanced Technologies in High-Performance Vehicles and Engines of UNIMORE.

Since its first edition, AVL supports this unique and challenging program thought for students who want to develop an entrepreneurial spirit and innovate the mobility of the future. As AVL, we work together with startups through our startup initiative – Creators Expedition - in order to generate innovation by creating partnerships with young companies. Therefore, we support and foster students to starting companies and leaving their own contribution to the revolution investing the automotive sector.

Despite the Corona difficulties, the six teams part of this third edition continued working hard to develop and promote their innovative solutions. From electrification to digitalization, the business ideas range from diverse and interesting fields of application:

- Active Noise Control develops an aftermarket solution for noise reduction of passengers in any vehicle through the headrest
- Lockmatic provides an innovative e-scooter parking solution ensuring a secure, quick and easy way to recharge, simplifying people’s city and work life
- Primo Elemento designs a plug and play solution to extend the range of battery electric vehicles focusing on the hydrogen fuel cell technology
- Proudent develops a mobile app which aims to stimulate people to use smartphones consciously while driving and to reduce the number of road accidents
- Sees develops a smart device able to increase the rear view and provides smart functions to the rider
- WeCare offers a sustanible, ride-by-ride sanitization solution for shared vehicles

All the ideas have been evaluated from a Committee of experts and the most promising will move to the accelerating and prototyping phase. After two semesters, the output will be a business case for creating a startup.

We look forward to seeing TACC business ideas growing and conquering the startup’s world!

'Symbiotic Artificial Intelligence' describes the symbiotic harmony between humans and artificial intelligence. A topic addressed by the startup from Graz 'Leftshift One' and its AI as a service platform G.A.I.A. has developed. This platform is now being used in a joint project with AVL in the area of speech recognition for automotive application.

The term G.A.I.A. stands for Generic Artificial Intelligence Application and describes an AI solution, which is easily scalable through the generic approach of the Leftshift One platform along the entire value chain, according to the needs of the customer. This optimizes the desired process depending on the application.

To maximize the flexibility of the AI-as-a-Service platform, the system is based on different building blocks that can be used in combination, depending on the application, but may also be used independently of each other. So for example images are recognized, texts and language understood, data analyzed or emotions detected in the future.

The goal in the project with AVL is to develop the platform G.A.I.A. to adapt and implement with a specially developed language model for automotive applications. Thus, various use cases can be implemented within AVL, in areas like recruiting or marketing, but also in the development process of a vehicle.

At the end of project, the AI does not decide independently on evaluations and next steps, but helps us to interpret texts automatically and thus provides support for decision-making and further developments.

"We think our platform is very versatile and with the startup initiative of the AVL - Creators Expedition - we have the opportunity to implement an exciting project and show that our platform can provide a decisive competitive advantage in any situation." Leftshift One CEO Patrick Ratheiser also emphasizes: "Right from t he start, we got great and important insights into the environment of the planned use-case. Through constant exchange of ideas, we were able to develop an excellent product with the innovative minds at AVL. According to our philosophy, AI and expert knowledge have played together perfectly symbiotically. "

Location: Munich - Germany
Founding Date: 2017

In this project, AVL’s CREATORS EXPEDITION worked closely together with INNOSPOT - a Munich-based startup which specializes in AI-based startup scouting. The goal of this cooperation was to help the startup to become one of the big players in the industry of business data research by testing and improving its algorithms and to make the sometimes very resource-intensive process of startup scouting more efficient for AVL by increasing its quality with a structured approach. This was realized by establishing a self-service scouting platform based on the technology of the startup enabling AVL employees to find potential partners for their individual projects in an efficient way. CREATORS EXPEDITION executed 4 different scouting-projects together with business units of AVL to gather data that served as a basis for the central scouting platform.
With a database of over 430.000 startups from all over the world and about 850 automatically identified new startups every week from over 110 countries, INNOSPOT offers a startup scouting service that clearly stands out of the industry. On an innovative platform, it is not only possible to search for relevant firms but also predefine goals or certain industrial areas and create specific use case-profiles to identify the most promising cooperation partners and maximize the outcome of the search. This enables highest efficiency, flexibility and quality.
The project started at the end of spring 2018 and went on until the end of summer. After that, next possible steps have been discussed in a final meeting with the general management of AVL. During the whole project, the startup employees worked remotely from their hometown most of the time. The flexible structure of the CREATORS EXPEDITION saves time and money on both sides and helps to focus more on the project rather than traveling from A to B.
The advisors of CREATORS EXPEDITION frequently attend startup events and exhibitions all over the world to connect to the startup community and search for possible fits between AVL and young, innovative companies. In this case, the team met INNOSPOT’s CEO at an event in Lisbon, Portugal where the basis for a successful cooperation was created. The startup then applied via the short-form on the CREATORS EXPEDITION homepage, AVL got to know the people behind the startup and finally considered, which benefits both firms could get out of the arrangement. The project got its acceptance, the expedition began and finished as a huge success for both sides in September 2018. Upcoming joint-projects are already in the planning.

Sensors are technical components that convert physical or chemical quantities into electrical signals. With the advancing networking of people and things, sensors are gaining more importance. Therefore, also the number of sensors in cars experienced a significant increase. Sometimes those physical sensors are hard to install or prove to be very expensive. Here, virtual sensors can come into the game for different applications. Virtual sensors use the information available from other measurements to deduce physical quantities of interest. The advantage is that they are often cheaper, do not wear and tear, do not take up space, and often have less limitation in terms of environmental conditions. Compredict is a German startup, based in Darmstadt and specialized in AI based virtual sensors.

AVL Creators Expedition got to know Compredict at the IAA in Frankfurt and was keen on getting to know more about them. The founders Rafael Fietzek and Stéphane Foulard told us at our first meeting that their sensors use already existing signals in vehicles to measure loads like forces, torques, stresses, temperatures, or other physical quantities. These loads wear and damage components like powertrain parts, chassis parts, brake systems, tires, the steering assembly or the HV-batteries of electric vehicles. Based on the loads measured by the virtual sensors, Compredict solutions can calculate precise usage profiles for the main components of each individual vehicle of a fleet and for the exact prediction of a component’s failure.

When talking about Compredict in our Creators Expedition team we all were excited by their technology but also by their team. Of course, we always look for innovative Startups that don´t take current approaches for granted, but we also have a close look at the team! From our first contact the founders pointed out that their team consists of 23 passionate experts who have their core competencies in the fields of AI, vehicle dynamics and durability engineering.

“We are multinational, our team members have their roots in more than 10 different countries. This enables us to develop our solutions by finding a synergy emerging from a multitude of perspectives and mindsets” Co-founder, Rafael

In line with this philosophy, Compredict and AVL decided to start a collaboration project, as a fundamental step to try out its virtual sensors in the field of acoustics. The joint project with AVL focused on training AI-based virtual sensors by replacing additional hardware vibration sensors mounted at the chassis of a car to be used for acoustic investigations. The project aimed to evaluate the precision of the AI-based virtual sensors and to assess their potential to replace physical accelerometers. Furthermore, the intention was to find out which kind of acoustic events could be detected with virtual sensors and to define the focus for future applications in series vehicles or fleet vehicles based on the learning of the POC.

“Compredict‘s virtual sensor approach combined with the AVL know-how about capturing acoustic phenomena in vehicles and about objective rating of noise and vibration events offers new opportunities for bringing acoustic monitoring applications into modern series or fleet vehicles. This approach extends the possibilities for vehicle-based condition monitoring by using the information transferred with noise and vibrations. Finally, this helps customers or vehicle operators to improve and maintain the quality of their vehicles and to safe costs, moreover.” Alexander Ulz, Project Manager AVL

The collaboration project with Compredict is a good example of our Expedition approach.

“In this project we had the chance to bring our companies together, to get to know each other and to identify opportunities to gain advantages by combining our technologies. We liked the highly skilled and open minded Compredict team and we are very much looking forward to continuing or collaboration to solve exciting technical challenges together.” Alexander Ulz, Project Manager AVL

AVL and Compredict were able to join forces, so that both sides could bring in their strengths and competences.

“We learned that our technological approach is capable to represent hardware vibration sensors through virtual sensors and that the virtual sensors perform well in the required frequency range. Based on these results we also learned that there is great potential for further collaboration with AVL.” Rafael Fietzek, Co-founder Compredict