Minus Zero Unveils India’s First Level 5 ADAS Tech

With advancements in autonomous driving tech, Minus Zero unveils its NIA and TVA models which are scalable and can adopt any vehicle form factor

Technology-driven automotive industry is currently on the verge of cracking autonomous driving. We already have multiple levels of ADAS tech that can achieve some amount of autonomy in driving. That said, they aren’t fully autonomous as some human intervention is needed at pre-programmed time intervals.

Bengaluru-based Minus Zero unveiled the zPod concept vehicle that features NIA (Nature Inspired Artificial intelligence) and True Vision Autonomy, their proprietary tech that enabled them to achieve autonomous driving. India’s first level 5 autonomous driving demonstration commenced at Embassy TechVillage and presided by founders Gagandeep Reehal and Gursimran Kalra along with Kris Gopalakrishnan, Exec Vice Chairman, Infosys.

Minus Zero – Driving homegrown autonomous mobility

In the demonstration, Minus Zero zPod drove itself. All preceding guests experienced zPod’s ability to navigate in real world driving scenarios. Minus Zero executed this brief demonstration safely, reliably and offers smooth user experience as well. With a bunch of monocular cameras on board, zPod even demonstrated many real-world maneuvers like vehicle following, overtaking, and even blind turns, without any human inputs.

The company’s proprietary TVA is vehicle agnostic and completely relies on multiple monocular cameras as its sensor suite. According to Minus Zero, their proprietary NIA and TVA tech are scalable in nature and can adapt to any use case and vehicle form factor. This allows OEMs to equip these proprietary tech on their next-gen vehicles and enable full autonomous driving in the future.

Minus Zero Unveils India’s First Fully Autonomous Vehicle

The autonomous vehicle has the ability to scale up to Level 5 autonomy capabilities.

Addresses barriers between existing AI systems, human brain capabilities. ??#MinusZero #autonomousvehicle #ZPod pic.twitter.com/qRBCrmUOZ5

— RushLane (@rushlane) June 5, 2023

How will it adapt to Indian conditions?

We Indians know our road conditions perfectly. Whenever presented with any kind of autonomous driving, we only ask one question, will it survive Indian road conditions? Minus Zero seems to have had the same question in their mind as they were diving into this realm. Current AI algorithms fail on untrained encounters in real-life scenarios.

Minus Zero’s proprietary NIA and TVA promise capabilities close to a human brain. Real-time low-power processing, adaptability to uncertain or chaotic real-road conditions, and the elimination of the need to re-learn driving for different use cases, geographies, or vehicles make Minus Zero’s NIA and TVA models smarter than current AI models.

Highlighting the company’s disruption in the mobility sector, CEO and co-founder Gagandeep Reehal adds, “Due to the lack of safe autonomous vehicle solutions, many lives are lost each year, and economies lose several billion dollars. With true vision autonomy coming to the fore, one can make autonomous vehicles a reality, solving major pain points of the mobility Paradigm.”

Co-founder Gursimran Kalra says, “Our concepts are a new revolution in the automotive industry. They allow automakers to explore new design possibilities for vehicles, currently limited by the constraints of a driver-led design. We aim to redefine mobility from a driver-centric hassle to a user-focused experiential design.”

The company wants India to be at the forefront of autonomous mobility soon. Along with near-term use cases like in-campus mobility and ADAS tech, Minus Zero is also expanding trials to foreign markets. Some of these include public road trials as well.