The use of AI across the business and technology landscape is expanding rapidly, but to date, AI deployment in vehicles has generally been limited to ADAS and autonomous vehicles. But the opportunity for in-vehicle AI is much broader and promises to benefit nearly every vehicle subsystem. Today, the majority of in-vehicle subsystems are based on conventional programming approaches. AI-based computing offers the potential for new algorithms, new types of optimization, new business models, and solving problems that are challenging to program using conventional coding techniques.
While cloud-based AI is growing rapidly, there are many situations in which response latency, prohibitively high data volume, privacy, or other considerations make it impractical to carry out the workload in the cloud. We described the opportunity for in-vehicle Edge AI in a recent whitepaper, Unlocking the Potential of In-Vehicle Edge AI: the benefits are wide-ranging and offer compelling potential across many application spaces.
Today, Sonatus announced a major step forward to accelerate the deployment of in-vehicle edge AI. Sonatus AI Director is an end-to-end toolchain that facilitates every part of the model lifecycle. First, it accelerates the development and training of models using high-quality vehicle data, links to high-performance cloud training, and facilitates model optimization for specific in-vehicle processing hardware. However, model development is only part of the challenge; the second part is getting the model to run effectively in the vehicle. AI Director manages deployment of models into the vehicle, connects models to in-vehicle data across subsystems, monitors them to manage performance and resources, and feeds back data for ongoing retraining. This comprehensive approach can help the industry, especially OEMs, deploy in-vehicle AI with greater efficiency and lower costs. In fact, Sonatus AI Director provides benefits throughout the vehicle supply chain, as each element of the technology stack can benefit from this end-to-end solution:
Benefits to vehicle manufacturers (OEMs). Vehicle OEMs interested in adopting in-vehicle AI face the challenge of custom integration for each model vendor, which is expensive and complex. Sonatus AI Director simplifies that process, providing a framework to connect models to the right data sources and to deploy models from different suppliers and AI model vendors with a single integration. This decreases integration complexity and unlocks innovation from outside algorithm vendors more easily.
Benefits to Tier-1 suppliers. Sonatus AI Director helps Tier-1 suppliers optimize the systems they deliver to OEMs and more easily leverage AI across hardware and software technologies. Taking the greatest advantage of these capabilities requires that models are tuned and optimized to leverage the specific compute capabilities their system offers, ranging from general-purpose processors and processor-based accelerators to dedicated AI accelerators.
Benefits to Silicon Providers. Automotive silicon providers are delivering powerful and diverse compute capabilities, but those capabilities may not be fully utilized today. Sonatus AI Director provides a consistent methodology to connect tuning and optimization software provided by silicon providers or IP vendors, ensuring edge AI algorithms achieve maximum performance and efficiency
Benefits to Suppliers and AI Model Makers. Companies with expertise in specific algorithms can bring incredible value, but they face the challenge of deploying their models into the vehicle and accessing the needed input data from across different subsystems. In addition, by deploying models through isolated containers, Sonatus AI Director protects the intellectual property of model vendors, enabling more flexible business models in which hardware and software can be decoupled more easily for faster innovation.
Additional benefits when combined with other Sonatus Technologies. While Sonatus AI Director is valuable on its own, it also offers additional benefits when combined with other products that Sonatus provides. When coupled with Sonatus Collector AI, data capture for retraining can be optimized, providing important data feedback while managing upload and cloud storage costs. Similarly, AI Director can provide valuable analytics insight that can cause other actions via Sonatus Automator AI or support a better service experience when coupled with Sonatus AI Technician.
While AI is becoming increasingly commonplace across business and technology, its potential in vehicles is still in its infancy. With Sonatus AI Director, OEMs and the entire supply chain now have a new, powerful toolchain to reduce the barrier to deploying AI innovation into the vehicle edge.
Download the Sonatus AI Director solution brief, Deliver In-Vehicle Edge AI at Scale, to learn more about its key capabilities and benefits.