OrCam, a company that makes products to aid accessibility for the visually impaired, has won a CES innovation award for its glasses-mounted MyEye Pro device. It aids the blind and visually impaired by reading out printed and digital text, recognizing people, identifying products, and more. OrCam took the prize in both the CES innovation accessibility and health and wellness categories. "We are living in uncertain times, yet... our users' challenges related to access have not stopped during the pandemic. If anything, they have intensified," said OrCam co-founder and co-chairman Prof. Amnon Shashua in OrCam's blog post.

Self-driving features have been creeping into automobiles for years, and Tesla (TSLA) even calls its autonomous system "full self-driving." That's hype, not reality: There's still no car on the market that can drive itself under all conditions with no human input. But researchers are getting close, and automotive supplier Mobileye just announced it's deploying a fleet of self-driving prototypes in New York City, to test its technology against hostile drivers, unrepentant jaywalkers, double parkers, omnipresent construction and horse-drawn carriages. The company, a division of Intel (INTC), describes NYC as "one of the world's most challenging driving environments" and says the data from the trial will push full self-driving capability closer to prime time. In an interview, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua said fully autonomous cars could be in showrooms by the end of President Biden's first term.

Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, has expanded its autonomous vehicle testing program to New York City as part of its strategy to develop and deploy the technology. New York City joins a number of other cities, including Detroit, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo, where Mobileye has either launched testing or plans to this year. Mobileye launched its first test fleet in Jerusalem in 2018 and added one in Munich in 2020. "If we want to build something that will scale, we need to be able to drive in challenging places and almost everywhere," Mobileye president and CEO Amnon Shashua said during a presentation Tuesday that was streamed live. As part of the announcement, Mobileye also released a 40-minute unedited video of one of its test vehicles equipped with a self-driving system navigating New York's city streets.

The digital bank founded by Prof. Amnon Shashua, among the founders of the self-driving auto-tech company Mobileye, officially began operations on Sunday, promising to shake up the Israeli banking sector and inject badly needed competition. First Digital Bank, Israel's first new banking institution in 43 years, aims to use artificial intelligence and other technology to create a personal ambiance without the actual human contact that comes with neighborhood branches. "Netflix killed off Blockbuster, Spotify disrupted the music industry and Tesla has left Ford and Mitsubishi in the dust. Banking is one of the few industries that hasn't undergone a revolution. Big, long-standing names control the market with too little competition and offer exactly the same products," said First Digital Bank's CEO, Gal Bar-Dea.

Israel's first new bank in more than 40 years has started trial operations, opening accounts and providing services for a small, closed number of clients, The First Digital Bank said in a statement. The fully digital bank, approved by the Bank of Israel in 2019, hopes to open up services to the wider public toward the end of the year, the statement said. Currently the bank has started offering services to employees and their families – several hundred people -- to make sure everything runs smoothly, a spokeswoman for the bank said. Get The Start-Up Israel's Daily Start-Up by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up "The artificial intelligence revolution is here and has now reached banks as well," said the founder of the bank, tech entrepreneur Amnon Shashua. "The banking industry is thirsty for innovation and competition."

The recent past has not been especially kind to Intel. The chip giant has been hamstrung by manufacturing delays, remonstrated by activist investors, and beset by competition from familiar rivals like AMD as well as from Apple, whose M1 processor is an unabashed powerhouse. There have been bright spots as well, though, including one announced today: Mobileye, the self-driving car company that Intel acquired for $15 billion in 2017, has put lidar on a chip. Mobileye is not alone in its pursuit of shrinking down lidar in both size and cost; companies like Aeva and Voyant Photonics have developed their own systems as well. Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua doesn't expect his lidar system-on-a-chip to be fully baked until 2025.

The CEO of Intel Corp-owned Mobileye on Tuesday laid out plans for a self-driving car system for 2025 that could use house-built lidar sensors rather than units from Luminar Technologies Inc. Luminar shares closed down 17.6 percent after Reuters reported the move. In November, Mobileye signed a supply agreement with Luminar to use its lidar units in the first generation of Mobileye's driverless vehicle fleet. Luminar told Reuters that there has been no change to that agreement and that Luminar has also supplied lidar units for Mobileye development vehicles for nearly two years. Luminar said its units, which are only one part of Mobileye's broader self-driving system costs, are priced at less than $1,000 and exceed Mobileye's cost and performance requirements. Amnon Shashua, CEO of Mobileye and an Intel senior vice president, told Reuters that Mobileye's first generation of full self-driving kits -- which will include Luminar's lidar units along with a range of other chips, sensors and software -- will cost between $10,000 and $20,000.

This article is part of a Technology and Innovation Insights series paid for by Samsung. With new connective technology, autonomous systems, and innovative business models, the transportation industry is on the cusp of a transformation that could expand the market by more than a trillion dollars over the next decade and drastically reduce road injuries, one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. Mobileye is the global leader in the development of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and the artificial intelligence (AI) that is critical in developing autonomous driving. This technology is deployed by more than 25 global automakers across 60 million vehicles worldwide and counting. The Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Mobileye, Professor Amnon Shashua, believes that new transportation technology is going to profoundly transform our society, an idea he explored with Young Sohn, President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics, in the latest episode of The Next Wave with Young Sohn.

If the measure of progress in technology is that devices should become ever smaller and more capable, then OrCam Technologies is on a roll. The Israeli firm's OrCam MyEye, which fits on the arm of a pair of glasses, is far more powerful and much smaller than its predecessor. With new AI-based Smart Reading software released in July, the device not only "reads" text and labels but also identifies people by name and describes other important aspects of the visual world. It also interacts with the user, principally people who are blind or visually impaired, by means of an AI-based smart voice assistant. At the upcoming Sight Tech Global virtual event, we're pleased to announce that OrCam's co-founder and co-CEO, Professor Amnon Shashua, will be a featured speaker.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JANUARY 07: Mobileye CEO and Intel Senior Vice President Amon Shashua speaks ... [ ] during an Intel press event for CES 2019 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 7, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs from January 8-11 and features about 4,500 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 180,000 attendees. At the EcoMotion self-driving conference held (in cyberspace) from Israel this week, Amnon Shashua, founder and CEO of MobilEye, now a unit of Intel INTC, declared their intention to offer robotaxi service, with no safety drivers, in early 2022. They will begin in their headquarters town of Jerusalem, then move to Tel Aviv, then France, Korea and China. He makes this statement while many other companies, particularly car OEMs, are scaling back their plans and timelines on full robocar service.