VERSES and Volvo Cars aim to make autonomous vehicles safer for pedestrians [Video]

Autonomous vehicles need to be able to anticipate and react to people entering streets. VERSES AI Inc. today announced the initial results of its Genius Beta Partner collaboration on that topic. The cognitive computing company published a paper co-authored by research teams at Volvo Cars and VERSES.

The paper explained the use of algorithms from VERSES to predict the appearance of pedestrians, cyclists, and cars that are obscured behind stationary vehicles and objects. The companies claimed that the paper represents an advancement beyond the current capabilities of autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence. 

“As the automotive industry progresses towards fully autonomous self-driving cars, predicting where unseen obstacles like people or bicyclists may be or which trajectory they may be on has been a significant unsolved safety challenge,” said Gabriel René, CEO of VERSES.

“We believe the inability of current autonomous driving systems to overcome this hurdle is holding back the AV industry worldwide,” he added. “Volvo …