CES, Las Vegas, NV., USA.– Wejo Group Ltd, a global provider of connected vehicle data, has announced a new development with Microsoft. Wejo Neural Edge integrates with Microsoft Azure to control the flow of data from vehicles through edge processing in the car itself.
Today over 200 million vehicles are “connected” meaning they emit data from over 100 sensors every 1-3 seconds to the cloud. This number will grow to over 400 million by 2025. The value of this constant data stream is the ability for vehicles to communicate with each other, with their manufacturers, and with other stakeholders, for example sharing traffic and weather alerts, the condition of vehicle components, and even automating vehicle features such as safe braking on wet roads.
However, by performing all data processing and filtering in the cloud, the sheer volume of data emitted risks reducing the benefits it can bring to drivers and cities and increases the cost of collecting and processing that data.
Wejo’s new solution Wejo Neural Edge controls the flow of data from vehicles through edge processing in the car itself. Wejo’s migration to Azure as the sole platform for its scaled data offering is already well underway and now, Wejo is developing its patent-pending edge technology. By throttling the data at the edge of the vehicle, Wejo Neural Edge reduces the data flow to only 20% of its maximum, while at no point reducing the quality and potential of that data for real-world application such as vehicle-to-vehicle communications.
Wejo Neural Edge has benefits from the support of General Motors and Microsoft. GM, one of Wejo’s many strategic OEM partners, understands the critical need to put connected vehicle data to good use, for drivers in particular. Microsoft, meanwhile, provides foundational edge processing capability to host payloads needed by mobility data close to vehicles, highways and cities, thanks to the scale of Azure and the company’s deep expertise in cloud and edge technology.
“Wejo Neural Edge is the next technology that we are proudly building with support from our strategic partners, GM, Microsoft and Palantir,” says Richard Barlow, founder and CEO of Wejo. “First, we built Wejo ADEPT, which blends data from any make of vehicle at incredible scale. This edge solution accelerates the mobility revolution, automating critical benefits such as autonomy, safer roads and even faster parking”.
Sanjay Ravi, general manager, automotive, mobility, and transportation industry at Microsoft adds, “Edge processing of data is critical to unlock the great potential of near-real-time data processing and insights from vehicles at a lower cost. Microsoft is collaborating with Wejo across the intelligent cloud and edge to enable more efficient, safe, and sustainable mobility.”
Wejo has established partnerships with companies across several industries that have invested in the company. In addition to Microsoft, Wejo has partnered with Palantir to create an integrated data ecosystem for the automotive industry; Sompo Holdings to bring the power of connected vehicle data to the APAC region; and General Motors. Separately, Wejo also has business relationships with more than 20 automotive OEMs, Tier 1s, and fleet providers.
“Our ongoing partnership with Wejo is focused on the most complex and critical challenges facing the future of mobility” says Shyam Sankar, chief operating officer of Palantir Technologies. “What Wejo is building atop Palantir Foundry, including their cutting-edge neural edge technology, is a testament to the depth of their vision, speed of execution, and power of combining our technologies.”
“At Wejo, we believe that digital twins will reshape everything from road safety, to insurance, advertising, after-sales and more,” says David Burns, chief technology officer, Wejo. “With Wejo Neural Edge we can look at what a CV is doing a kilometre away, and then alter and change the driver experience of an AV based on the information that is coming from down the road.”
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