December 7, 2017 – Beijing, China – SenseTime, a world-leading artificial intelligence (AI) company, announced today that they have signed a long-term development agreement with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to build smart AI cars with autonomous driving. The partnership will leverage Honda’s vehicle control system with SenseTime’s AI algorithms to jointly create an autonomous driving platform. The two companies also announced that they will work together to develop robot technology.

SenseTime & Honda Signing Long-term Development Agreement

Rooted in computer vision technologies, these autonomous driving products can be deployed even in the absence of high-resolution maps, allowing them to cover an even wider array of driving conditions. When a vehicle is driving without a detailed map covering its trajectory, for example, it will still be able to use the self-driving function. This autonomous driving platform offers great advantages to a variety of passenger vehicle scenarioses and will also lower transducer manufacturing costs.

SenseTime Japan CEO Lao Shihong said, “Safety is the number one priority when it comes to driving, and it also constitutes the core of our autonomous driving platform. By combining SenseTime’s strengths in computer vision technologies with Honda’s superior vehicle control technologies, we will together enable a safe and pleasant autonomous driving experience. Moreover, the fact that SenseTime provides core technology to a global enterprise like Honda marks a milestone.”

A fast up-and-coming field, autonomous driving is levying new, extremely high standards on AI algorithms and development platforms as it requires extraordinary technologies to deliver such a platform. SenseTime, with a set of core technologies and patents for autonomous driving, has also developed chips and embedded systems for smart AI cars. The partnership between SenseTime and Honda is expected to accelerate the research and development of smart AI cars with autonomous driving products.

Link to Honda’s press release (in Japanese): http://www.honda.co.jp/news/2017/c171207c.html