NIRA Dynamics AB files patent application on road surface temperature estimation to further improve services for autonomous vehicle functions

NIRA Dynamics AB (NIRA), a company within the Volkswagen Group and a leading actor in road condition data, has filed a patent application on road surface temperature estimations using connected passenger vehicles. The technology will allow improved planning and routing for autonomous vehicle functions by providing short term forecasting of road conditions which strengthens NIRAs position as a preferred supplier of near real-time and short-term forecasted road condition information.

NIRA has previously cooperated with the Swedish company Klimator AB on road condition forecasting. After an extensive technical evaluation period, NIRA has concluded to discontinue the cooperation with Klimator and instead focus on its own in-house developed solution, utilizing the tremendous number of vehicles available to NIRA via the cooperation with Audi and HERE Technologies. Vehicle manufacturers and legislators put high requirements on data for autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems, why scalability and accuracy are extremely important to NIRA. With this new solution NIRA see great opportunities to meet such requirements.

Today, there are several hundreds of thousands of series produced vehicles with NIRAs software, continuously collecting data, and this number will grow aggressively over the coming months and years to reach 1.7 million by the end of 2021 and 3 million by the end of 2022. NIRA has a unique position as a supplier of road condition data to the automotive industry and expects to grow to be a preferred supplier of road data to a majority of the vehicle manufacturers globally.

NIRAs existing partnership with HERE Technologies, the leading location data and technology platform, positions the company to supply highly accurate road condition data to automotive manufacturers around the world. A majority of automotive manufacturers already use the HERE platform and location data for navigation and driver assistance functions. The HERE/NIRA partnership is a huge market opportunity to supply vehicle manufacturers with highly accurate real-time as well as forecasted data via the HERE platform.

“Our new technical solution and our existing partnerships gives us the best technical solution and partner setup to win the race for road condition data”, says Andreas Andersson, Business Unit Manager Road Perception at NIRA Dynamics.