BMW will begin using software courtesy of Israel’s Tactile Mobility starting next year. This new collaboration will see BMW models gain the ability to analyse road surface attributes under their tires.
Tactile Mobility’s software uses a vehicle’s non-visual sensors and is able to measure wheel speed, wheel angle, rpm, gear positioning and more, in a bid to “feel” the road conditions and better calibrate the dynamics of the car’s, reports Reuters.
“We are thrilled to partner with the BMW Group to equip their smart and future automated vehicles with the sense of ‘touch’ and show the commercial viability of tactile sensing technology,” said Tactile Mobility co-founder and CTO, Boaz Mizrachi.
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The Israeli tech firm, founded in 2012 by Mizrachi, Yossi Shiri and Alex Ackerman, is already working with OEMs, road authorities and municipalities, having offices in Europe, the U.S. and Asia – they’ve also been working for years in order to get this software to where it needs to be for commercial usage. Meanwhile, their collaboration with the BMW Group actually began through the BMW Startup Garage venture unit.
Back in October of last year, Tactile Mobility said that it had secured $9 million in funding from a group of investors that also included Porsche. The German sports car manufacturer will also look to benefit from this tech going forward.
The ultimate goal here is to help autonomous vehicles get a realistic sense of the road surface the same way a human driver would.
