One of the biggest automakers in the world is pursuing breakthrough artificial intelligence research. And they’ve partnered with a publicly traded company in Canada to do it.

‍What’s happening:‍

• VERSES (CBOE: VERS) and Volvo have unveiled their latest collaborative research paper which is focused on leveraging artificial intelligence to help autonomous vehicles predict and avoid unseen pedestrians
  

Why it matters:‍

• Vehicles that currently have autonomous driving capabilities and are using artificial intelligence technology have not yet been able to accurately predict unseen pedestrians, cyclists or cars that are difficult to see or obstructed from view by large objects
  
• Fully autonomous driving technology has been a rising trend recently, following the highly anticipated launch of new robotaxis from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) which are being built without any steering wheels or pedals
  

Going deeper:‍

• The new research collaboration used open source data from Waymo and VERSES’s proprietary Genius platform which is still currently in beta testing to conduct experiments around accurately predicting the trajectory of movement of hard to see objects, people and animals
  
• The research relied heavily on algorithms that have been designed by VERSES software to be able to make determinations around safety and potential risks for autonomous driving
  

The intrigue:‍

• VERSES previously made waves when they landed a funding commitment of $10M USD from United Arab Emirates backed investment company G42, who has established partnerships with both Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) around artificial intelligence technology

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