Ericsson teams with MIT on autonomous cars

Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) struck an agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) System Design & Management (SDM) program to jointly create solutions for Ericsson's Autonomous Driving – Predictive Mobility project.

Ericsson says that its autonomous driving project takes an innovative software approach to combining data and analytics, enabling it to better understand context, driver profiles and network awareness in support of app delivery to the autonomous car, including intelligent media streaming.

"We are eager to team with MIT to push the boundaries of autonomous car innovation," said Mike Kaul, vice president, Technology, Business Unit Support Solution at Ericsson, in a press release. "MIT's SDM program combines multiple academic disciplines, including engineering, management and systems thinking, for top-tier mid-career professionals with several years of work experience who want to innovate and lead. Their participation will offer fresh insight, and creative perspective to Ericsson's important Autonomous Driving project."

At CES 2016 in Las Vegas, Ericsson and Volvo Cars announced their joint research program to develop intelligent, high bandwidth, streaming capabilities for drivers and passengers traveling in an autonomous Volvo. The company followed that up at Mobile World Congress 2016 with more details around Ericsson's plans to power the connectivity experience for self-driving cars.

One of many challenges is how to securely capture a driver's identity to better understand preferences and behavior. The MIT SDM project team will work with Ericsson to define and design this "identity" module.

The collaboration is a result of student interest expressed via a vote at MIT SDM's annual SDM Project Forum and Core Technology Showcase, held in January at the MIT Media Lab.  Ericsson and MIT SDM also will work together to explore additional ways to work closely together in the future.

Last year, the University of Michigan opened its 32-acre simulated city, Mcity, in Ann Arbor, Mich., that it, along with partners like Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Qualcomm Technologies (NASDAQ:QCOM), is using to test connected car and automated vehicle technologies.

For more:
- see the release

Related articles:
Verizon, Qualcomm among partners in Michigan test site for connected cars, autonomous vehicles
Google X head talks of failing fast, Loon and autonomous cars
Volvo will unleash autonomous driving in Swedish city in 2017