Humanising Autonomy Raises £4.2m Seed Round

We are pleased to share that Humanising Autonomy has just closed a £4.2m Seed round led by Anthemis Group.

Japanese VC fund Global Brain Corporation, Germam-based Amplifier and Silicon Valley-based Synapse Partners also participated in the investment.

Humanising Autonomy develops an AI platform that is able to predict pedestrian behaviour across different environments and cities based only on RGB data from a camera.

The first and obvious application of this platform are self-driving vehicles, or even human-driven vehicles with driver-assist features. But the Humanising Autonomy vision does not stop there.

CEO Maya Pindeus said, “Our vision has always been to set the global standard for how autonomous systems interact with people.”

In fact, the company is also looking ad adjacent markets such as automated warehouses where robots and humans co-exist. Improving the spatial awareness of these machines would massively improve efficiency and Humanising Autonomy has developed the technology to achieve that.

What makes Humanising Autonomy unique in its industry is the variety of data sources used to train its AI.

“Since day one we collected data from any type of source — CCTV cameras, dash cams of all resolutions, but also autonomous vehicle sensors,” said Maya Pindeus. “We’ve also built data partnerships and collaborated with different institutions, so we’ve been able to build a robust data set across different cities with different camera types, different resolutions and so on. That’s really benefited the system, so it works in nighttime, rainy Michigan situations, etc.”

Moreover, the platform benefits from an incredible versatility as it was developed with a modular structure. Human behaviour is in fact predicted using a combination of modules, each analysing a specific element of the footage. By re-combining these modules it is possible to adapt the same platforms to completely different scenarios and environments: daytime or nighttime, different kinds of urban situations as well as different locations around the world – where pedestrians’ behaviour is sensibly different so the algorithm has to be tuned accordingly.

This also allows the system to be repurposed and adapted to machines with different levels of processing power, as well as to adjacent industries not strictly related to urban mobility, as long as the right modules are combined.

The London-based startup has already deployed their software in the US, Japan, Germany as well as in the UK. Humanising Autonomy is working with mobility providers including automakers Daimler, Mercedes Benz and even Airbus.

The funds raised will be used to expand the reach of it’s AI-powered technology across various vehicle platforms and levels of automation, to make cities better for pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.

“The tech is ready, now it’s about getting it into as many stacks as possible, and strengthening those Tier 1 relationships,” said CEO Maya Pindeus.

We proudly congratulate the whole team at Humanising Autonomy for reaching this milestone and we are sure this is only the start of a very successful journey.