Japan’s Toyoda Gosei Co has invested1 in start-up Pyrenee Inc, which is developing safe driving assistance devices to achieve safer mobility in society.
Pyrenee Drive, developed by Pyrenee Inc., is a retrofit device that assists the cognitive aspect of safe driving; it captures things around the vehicle that drivers fail to notice, which is the cause of traffic accidents in about 70% of cases. The device is mounted on the automobile dashboard or elsewhere in the vehicle, and detects pedestrians and other automobiles and predicts their movement with AI. When it determines that there is a risk of collision, it notifies the driver by voice, thereby contributing to a decrease in accidents.
Toyoda Gosei aims to grow its business through the provision of the social values of safety centred on airbags. It invested in Pyrenee to reduce traffic accidents through a comprehensive approach of combining passive safety and preventive safety – not only reducing injuries/deaths in case of traffic accidents, but also preventing traffic accidents caused by driver neglect and other human errors.
Further, the collaboration of the two companies has a future vision toward integration of Pyrenee’s driving assist technology into Toyoda Gosei’s safety systems and interior products.