Helm.ai

Helm.ai develops advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) software, autonomous driving software, and robotics. The company’s Level 2–Level 4 autonomous driving stack consists of perception, intent modeling, path planning, and vehicle control. (Level 2 refers to vehicles that can control both the speed and the steering but require a vigilant safety driver; Level 4 refers to fully autonomous vehicles limited to specific locations and/or conditions.) The solution is agnostic, with many types of vehicle systems and sensors, and can understand sensor data as well as human inputs. The company uses an unsupervised learning approach to develop software that can train neural networks, eliminating the need for large-scale fleet data, simulation, or annotation. This significantly reduces the cost and timeline taken for the development of the systems.

The company also operates a high-fidelity virtual scenario generation model based on neural networks for perception simulation, and “VidGen-1,” a generative AI (GenAI) model designed to produce realistic video sequences for autonomous driving development and validation. 

The company offers 3 products: “L2/L3 Helm Highway Pilot,” “L2/L3 Helm Urban Pilot,” and “L4 Highway Trucking.” The L2/L3 Helm Highway Pilot comes with a 360-degree vision-radar fusion and fusion with a semantic map. It is also suitable for curvy mountain roads and robust weather conditions. The L2/L3 Helm Urban Pilot enables stops at traffic lights and stop signs, crossing intersections, and taking turns. Meanwhile, L4 Highway Trucking comes equipped with 360-degree vision-radar-lidar fusion, fusion with HD, and semantic map. It also has advanced intent modeling and object recognition.

Key customers and partnerships

Helm.ai sells its software to various OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers in the automotive industry. The company claims that it has attracted a number of customers including Honda.

In March 2022, the company partnered with edge AI semiconductor and software company Ambarella to release a new perception software for Ambarella CVflow AI system on chip (SoC) architecture that makes Helm.ai’s ADAS software available to the ecosystem of customers and partners built around the Ambarella platform.