Teleoperation simulation as a service – the Andromeda consortium

Cognata is a proud member of the Andromeda project, a multi-disciplinary consortium,
focused on developing the technological infrastructure needed for teleoperation services
of large-scale autonomous vehicle fleets in urban areas and highways.

The consortium developments will enable, when necessary and in real-time, interference
and remote control over autonomous vehicle fleets, by AI systems and human operators.
Among the leading companies, you may find Cognata, DriveU, mPrest, R-Go Robotics,
and Elbit, Along with leading academic groups from the Technion, Ben Gurion University,
Ariel University, Tel-Aviv University, the Hebrew University, and Bar Ilan University.

The key objective of the consortium is to drastically reduce the ratio between a remote
human operator and the number of controlled vehicles/robots from where the industry
is at today, by a thousand-fold and more, as well as eliminating the need for different
teleoperation services between different AV companies. This will be made possible by
taking a holistic approach towards addressing the main challenges of teleoperation:
low latency, high-quality video, and data transmission, human-machine interface,
cybersecurity, interoperability, and scalability.

Among its roles, Cognata will develop and provide to the consortium a framework
for simulation of vehicles for the development and validation of Teleoperation systems,
in various scenarios including edge and stressed conditions. The framework will
contain a simulation platform for producing data for training and validation, and for
the demonstration of various systems developed by the partners in the consortium.
The simulations would include “Digital Twins” of representative real-life scenarios
having situations that need a Teleoperators handling, as well as real-time control
interface for the remote driver at teleoperation centers.

Over the next three years and with a planned budget of $17M, the consortium,
which was established by the Israel Innovation Authority and the SMART Mobility
initiative, will lay the foundations for industry and regulators for the widespread
deployment of teleoperation of autonomous vehicle fleets, including robotaxis,
delivery robots, trucking, and more.