Autonomous

On April 18, HORSE introduced its Matrix Flow production line at its Aveiro plant in Portugal, replacing the traditional conveyor belt system with Mobile Programmable Cobots (MPCs). These autonomous platforms, developed in partnership with Prolynk, France, specialized in automotive powertrain production, specifically for constructing the Power Electronic Box (PEB) in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV).

MPCs deliver precise components to factory staff and robots, with up to 30 smaller units acting as mobile workstations and component kitting, ensuring efficient production and reducing downtime. Managed by a central fleet controller, these MPCs communicate wirelessly, adapting quickly to changes in production needs, offering flexibility and minimizing downtime.

Production of the PEB will commence soon, targeting 150,000 units annually initially, increasing to 200,000 by the end of 2024. Adopting the Matrix Flow system has allowed HORSE to reduce the factory floor space by 25% and overall building size by 30%. The streamlined approach has also cut energy consumption by 50%.

Based on HORSE press release

On April 15, MobilityXlab announced that its startups: brighter AI and Kognic have supported the Zenseact Open Dataset (ZOD), a large multi-modal AD dataset.

The dataset is currently the only one released under the permissive CC BY-SA 4.0 license, allowing for both commercial and non-commercial use for research, benchmarking, and development. ZOD contains data collected over 2 years in 14 different European counties, using a fleet of vehicles equipped with a full sensor suite. 

Brighter AI provided Deep Neural Anonymization Technology (DNAT) and blurring to protect all personally identifiable information in the images, including faces and license plates. Kognic provided high-quality and detailed annotation for the creation of a development toolkit. 

Based on MobilityXlab press release 

On April 17, the China Auto Forum Organizing Committee announced that the 2024 China Auto Forum with the theme of “Leading New Changes for a Win-win Future” will be held from July 11 to 13 in Jiading, Shanghai.

This year’s forum will have 17 sessions in total, including 1 closed-door summit, 1 conference forum, 15 thematic forums, a number of press conferences, and a thematic exhibition, as well as several related events. It will focus on multiple themes such as industrial strategies, sustainable development, industrial data ecosystem, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, upward brand strategies, market consumption, advanced autonomous driving, globalization, charging and battery swapping, chips, and hydrogen energy.

From a China Auto Forum press release