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Nexar Joins Berkeley DeepDrive Consortium to Shape the Future Of Driving


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NEW YORK- October 19, 2016: exar, the creator of the first vehicle-to-vehicle network app that turns smartphones into connected AI dashcams, announced today that it will be joining the Berkeley DeepDrive (BDD) Industry Consortium, a prominent research alliance bringing together private industry sponsors, faculty, and researchers from multiple departments and centers. The BDD Consortium strives to develop new and emerging technologies with real-world applications for the automotive industry. With Nexar's added driving data and technological expertise, the Consortium will take on key initiatives to merge deep learning with automotive perception and bring computer vision technology to the forefront of the automotive industry.

"We are glad to have Nexar join the consortium, enabling us to fuel our research with the large amount of real-world driving data that Nexar is collecting," said Professor Trevor Darrell, Faculty Director of the BDD Center at UC Berkeley. "The only way of developing credible algorithms that will have robust performance in real-world edge cases is to rely on large amounts of data from different lighting, road and weather conditions."

"Although remarkable progress has been made in the field of computer vision, the vast majority of both these theories and technologies have yet to transition to the real automotive world, where you have a huge variety of road infrastructure, side buildings, road signs, vehicles, and most importantly, human driving behaviors," stated Nexar co-founder and CTO, Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz. "At Nexar, we've assembled a first class technical team dedicated to propelling the automotive industry into the future using deep learning. Alongside fellow industry leaders participating in the BDD Consortium, the Nexar team will apply its rapidly expanding data network and industry know-how to infuse state-of-the-art deep learning techniques for the optimal and safest driving experience."

Since its launch in February 2016, Nexar has tracked upwards of 20 million miles and recorded more than a half-million instances of driving incidents worldwide. This has provided the company with a large and diverse panel of data of real-world driving conditions, a databank that continues to expand every day and serves as a vital resource for the future success of the autonomous car industry. Backed by the BDD Consortium's advanced research, Nexar can now better analyze and understand this data in order to ultimately gain the best perception of driving and road conditions. With this information, Nexar further develops its vehicle-to-vehicle network, essential for the future of autonomous and human-driven cars.

About Nexar 

Nexar connects cars in the world's largest open vehicle-to-vehicle network. Leveraging connected smartphones and car cameras and sensors, Nexar provides real-time alerts to prevent vehicle, cyclist and pedestrian collisions. To join our network and help us rid the world of car crashes, you may download the Nexar app in Google Play or Apple App stores. For more information, please visit: http://www.getnexar.com.

Leveraging millions of crowdsourced road miles jointed with sensor-fusion, deep-learning, map-layering and artificial intelligence driving-cognition technologies Nexar provides a series of data products and services for the Automotive, Insurance and Mapping industries. To learn more on our data products and APIs contact bizdev@getnexar.com.

About Berkeley DeepDrive 

The BDD Industry Consortium investigates state-of-the-art technologies in computer vision and machine learning for automotive applications. Its multi-disciplinary center is housed at the University of California, Berkeley and is led by Professor Trevor Darrell, Faculty Director of PATH, with Professor Ken Goldberg and Thomas West serving as associate directors. The BDD consortium partners with private industry sponsors and brings faculty and researchers together from multiple departments and centers to develop new and emerging technologies with real-world applications in the automotive industry. Amongst its sponsors are leading firms such as Volkswagen, Ford, Toyota, Samsung, Bosch, Honda, Hyundai, Qualcomm and NVIDIA.