DAV Foundation taps blockchain tech to disrupt autonomous vehicle sector

Not-for-profit DAV Foundation has raised $24 million to build and develop a blockchain-based open network for autonomous vehicles. Exact funding details have not been disclosed.

The DAV platform allows vehicles to interconnect with other vehicles and operators on the network. Users will have an entire ecosystem of self-driving vehicles on-demand that is able to bring them anything or take them anywhere.

According to a press release: “Today, large organisations are experimenting with fleets of autonomous vehicles: Domino’s Pizza delivery robots, Amazon’s Prime air drones, Waymo’s autonomous taxis. These and other pilot projects are leading the way towards fully autonomous transportation systems. All face the same issues of perception, localisation and decision making, as well as a need for charging and docking infrastructure. Together, these challenges restrict the pace of the transformative autonomous technologies being released and adopted by the market.”

Shaking things up

Noam Copel, Founder and CEO of the DAV Foundation, says: “The automotive and transportation industries are undergoing their biggest revolution since Henry Ford’s first assembly line in 1908. The booming ‘sharing economy’ is shaking up industries from office space, to music to transportation. In addition to this, technology advances will soon make autonomous vehicles an integral part of our daily lives.”

“As these trends converge, the movement of goods and people will take a completely new shape, but the barriers of centralisation remain. To overcome these obstacles the autonomous vehicle sector needs a decentralised transportation infrastructure, one that incentivises all participants – businesses, citizens, manufacturers, insurers – to use it and integrate it into their everyday activities.”

Since May, the DAV Foundation, backed by advisors who have worked for the likes of Ford (Sai Yagnyamurthy), NASA (Dr Scott Horowitz) and IBM (Dr Giovanni Lanfranchi), has launched autonomous drone and boat charging services and will be soon be introducing its decentralised ride-hailing network, long-range drone charging facilities and enabling the first vehicle to hire another vehicle to complete the last mile of a delivery.

The DAV Network is now live and the team is working on several projects in Europe and the US. It has thus far been adopted by leading members of the transportation industry, including The Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI), Slipstream Advantage, SkySense and Global Robot and Drone Deployment (GRADD).