Drive.ai uses deep learning to teach self-driving cars – and to give them a voice

Startup Drive.ai is revealing its product and strategy for the first time, and the autonomous driving tech company is looking not only to create the best hardware and software to enable self-driving cars, but also to make sure those cars communicate with people outside of the car in the most effective way possible. Core to Drive.ai's approach is using deep learning across the board in its autonomous driving system, which means they're teaching their self-driving cars somewhat like how you'd teach a human. That involves providing a host of examples of situations, objects and scenarios and then letting the system extrapolate how the rules it learns there might apply to novel or unexpected experiences. It still means logging a huge number of driving hours to provide the system with basic information, but Carol Reiley, co-founder and president of Drive.ai, "We are using deep learning for more of an end-to-end approach. We're using it not just for object detection, but for making decisions, and for really asking the question'Is this safe or not given this sensor input' on the road,'" Reiley explained.