After years of development and successful deployments, SafeAI has proven the impact autonomous solutions can have for industries like construction and mining. But its developers realize that not every company has the resources, bandwidth and expertise to deploy autonomy as quickly as they’d like. As a result, the autonomy developer recently announced the release of the SafeAI autonomous framework (SAF).
The SAF is the world’s first comprehensive, safety certifiable operating system purpose-built for heavy industry applications of autonomy. It’s designed with the capabilities required for the development and deployment of autonomous applications, including high portability and reliability to ensure ease of use and functionality. Written in accordance with both MISRA (C:2021 and C++:2008) and AUTOSAR coding standards, the SAF can easily support various compilers and OS, and can be utilized in embedded and real-time environments. With the SAF, SafeAI lowers barriers—both technological and resource-related—to autonomy, enabling companies to save up to four years of development time and the millions of dollars it would take to build their own operating systems.
The easiest way to think of SafeAI’s release is as a parallel to what Android offers to mobile phones manufacturers. “Android is the framework, and all the apps run on top of that framework,” Bibhrajit Halder, founder & CEO of SafeAI tells IndustryWeek.
SafeAI has been developing SAF for the past three and a half years. “It is a big step to offer the framework to other ecosystems,” he says. “Access to SAF will takes years off of development timelines to move autonomy forward in a meaningful way. It is the core vision of our company to accelerate the use of autonomy in the heavy industry. For example, if somebody is working on an agriculture use case many of the core principles still apply.”
According to Halder, in using SAF the use case doesn't have to be fully autonomous. “It could be anywhere from smart to fully autonomous, and it could be for any use cases right across an array of industry sectors.
The release of this industry-first platform follows a year of significant growth for SafeAI as the company continues its mission of accelerating off-road deployment of autonomous technology. Earlier this year, SafeAI announced its expansion into Australia and Canada, two of the world’s largest mining markets. This year, the company also announced $21 million in Series A funding to accelerate its research and development efforts and spur global growth.
There were several of the big companies already testing and it will only benefit everyone in this space, explains Halder. “It's a win win for industry. They get something that is a value add for them, and we get a feedback to help improve the product over time. We are anticipating a good bit of collaboration as more companies embrace our framework.”
