Argo AI has released updates to its product ecosystem that it said were designed to reduce the hurdles for businesses to use autonomous vehicles for ride sharing and deliveries.
“Advancements in autonomy will improve the safety and accessibility of our roads, while also solving real business challenges,” said Brett Browning, chief technology officer and executive vice president of product development at Argo AI, in a statement this week.
“By creating this full suite of products and services, Argo offers businesses across a broad range of industries everything they need to take advantage of self-driving technology at scale,” he added.
The Pittsburgh-based company said it “created its product ecosystem by using its years of experience developing, testing, and operating self-driving technology on multiple vehicle types.”
With data from eight cities around the world, including Austin, Texas; Detroit; Hamburg Germany; Miami; Munich, Germany; Pal Alto, Calif.; Pittsburgh; and Washington D.C., Argo AI said it has a lot of data to work with.
It has partnered with Lyft to offer ride-hailing services and with Walmart and Ford for autonomous deliveries of goods.
“We know from our integrations with several businesses that customers want more than autonomous vehicles to feel confident in incorporating autonomy into existing services,” continued Browning. “They require corresponding tools and solutions that can be tailored to solve their day-to-day operational needs.”
Argo AI explains its suite
Here is the company’s breakdown of its products in its own words:
Argo Connect
For customers looking to kickstart autonomous operations, Argo Connect is the gateway to Argo’s product ecosystem. It leverages a suite of intuitive application programming interfaces (APIs) that let businesses seamlessly integrate Argo-powered autonomous vehicles into their existing operations. Using Argo Connect, businesses can reliably schedule and dispatch autonomous vehicles to move people and packages, while creating a natural experience for their rideshare or delivery customers.
Argo Autonomy Platform
The Argo Autonomy Platform consists of the software, hardware, high-definition maps, and back-end support that enable Argo autonomous vehicles to safely drive in cities, suburbs, and on highways. There are four products:
- Argo Drive, the self-driving software and hardware that sense the vehicle’s surroundings in 360 degrees, detect other road users and predict their actions, and direct the steering, braking and acceleration to safely plan the vehicle’s trajectory.
- Argo Lidar, the company's proprietary long-range sensor, is capable of over 400 m range with camera-like resolution and single photon detection to recognize dark objects, like black-painted vehicles, early and with high precision. Argo Lidar is already being manufactured and has been integrated across the entire Argo fleet in two continents.
- Argo Map, a high-definition map network built with street-level knowledge of roadways, traffic infrastructure, speed limits, and more. Argo has developed a turnkey process for map expansion in existing and new markets, which enables rapid scale to new cities. In the past year, Argo has doubled its total mapped mileage and added two new cities to its portfolio.
- Argo Hub, a suite of cloud tools and infrastructure to support autonomous vehicles in the field. Argo Hub includes remote guidance and remote troubleshooting support, as well as map zone management to communicate real-time road changes to Argo autonomous vehicles.
The Argo Autonomy Platform is trained with data from extensive testing in eight cities across the U.S. and Germany. It’s capable of navigating safely around pedestrians, bicyclists, construction, heavy traffic, and more on dense urban streets, suburban roads, and highways.
The system is compatible with multiple vehicle types across automakers, from electric or hybrid vehicles, to sedans, SUVs or vans, claimed Argo AI. This flexibility supports a variety of go-to-market applications, from urban rideshare to middle- and last-mile deliveries.
Argo Autonomy Solutions
Running commercial autonomous services requires new operational and fleet management tools. With expertise from operating autonomous fleets across multiple cities, Argo created a portfolio of enhanced solutions for businesses to supplement in-house capabilities. They include:
- Argo Operations, a set of in-market services to help businesses seamlessly deploy and operate autonomous vehicles. Businesses can opt in to field operations teams and tools for on-the-ground vehicle management, rider and delivery customer service, and rapid response to ensure a smooth and positive end-customer experience when autonomous vehicles are on the road.
- Argo Fleet, a set of products designed to maximize fleet uptime and meet the unique service and operational needs of autonomous vehicles. This includes support for terminal activities like sensor calibration, data ingest, self-driving system startup and shutdown. It gives business owners real-time visibility into the status of each autonomous vehicle, tools to manage vehicle and personnel schedules, and access to on-site support for specialized autonomous vehicle maintenance.
Argo Autonomy Solutions are customizable and adaptable based on a business’s needs, and ensure that any company can benefit from scaling autonomous services, regardless of their fleet management or operational capabilities.
Argo Autonomy Data and Analytics
Every Argo-powered autonomous vehicle navigating busy city streets is generating enormous amounts of data. This rich, diverse data set is used to constantly improve Argo’s products and services, while providing valuable insights to business customers.
- Argo’s development footprint and daily fleet operations in multiple cities around the world exposes the Argo Autonomy Platform to complex scenarios and driving behaviors. With every new interaction, Argo can update and improve its self-driving system performance to better meet customer needs.
- When Argo-powered autonomous vehicles are in the field, they are always online, measuring performance and key metrics for specific customer use cases. Those metrics can be used to provide actionable insights to businesses to improve their logistics and in-market operations. With connected, digital fleets covering rideshare and delivery routes, companies can uncover areas for efficiency gains and optimize logistics processes.
Argo Autonomy Data and Analytics also provides real-time traffic and road insights, which could be useful to city governments, logistics companies, and other stakeholders.
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