Ottopia's remote assistance platform for autonomous cars combines humans with AI

The burgeoning autonomous vehicle (AV) revolution seems to crank up a notch every other week, with Waymo recently unveiling its first commercial driverless car service, Volvo announcing its first commercial autonomous truck, and countless companies working on the underlying technology that will bring self-driving transport to the mainstream. But full autonomy that involves millions of cars traversing busy thoroughfares completely devoid of human oversight will likely be some time away. With that in mind, one Israeli startup is setting out to serve as a bridge to 100 percent autonomy. Founded this year, Tel Aviv-based Ottopia is pitching itself as a teleoperation platform for autonomous vehicles. The startup was cofounded by CEO Amit Rosenzweig, formerly head of product management at Microsoft's Advanced Threat Analytics, and CTO Leon Altarac, who previously set up the robotics and AV branch of the Israeli army.