FMCI collaboration will allow real-world testing of self-driving vehicle technology
Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world leader in data storage solutions announced today its collaboration with Future Mobility Campus Ireland to create a smart city hub. FMCI, with the help of its lead partner Jaguar Land Rover, will allow real-world trials and provide research opportunities for global companies to collaborate to develop technology targeting autonomous vehicles and connected infrastructure. Seagate brings over 40 years of data storage and management technology expertise to the project.
The hub facility will spread across 12km of public roads, providing the expertise to harness valuable sensor data, simulate a variety of road environments, traffic scenarios, and trial new technologies. The collaborative testbed will be equipped with sensors throughout the site, along with high-accuracy location systems, a data management and control center and self-driving prototype vehicles. It will feature smart junctions, connected roads, autonomous parking and electric vehicle charging as well as links to a 450km stretch of connected highway and a managed air traffic corridor for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Shannon airport along the Shannon Estuary in Ireland.
"This partnership with FMCI provides us with a real-world facility to trial our emerging autonomous, connected, electrified and shared technology in a strategic location. Collaborating with top-tier software companies will allow us to develop our future systems more efficiently,” said John Cormican, General Manager for Shannon Ireland Jaguar Land Rover.
Naturally, the future of self-driving vehicles depends on advances in artificial intelligence (AI), but advanced AI isn’t the only thing autonomous vehicles (AV) need. The sensors used by AV generate massive amounts of data -- between 5TB and 20TB per vehicle per day. This data must be available to the AI technology onboard each vehicle, but also in edge data centers where future analysis must be performed as fast as possible. That is why efficient and intelligent data infrastructure is so important.
“Managing and orchestrating the massive data flows created by autonomous vehicles requires solutions that are as mobile, intelligent, and agile as the data itself,” said Ken Claffey, Vice President & General Manager of Enterprise Data Solutions at Seagate. “We are excited to collaborate with Future Mobility Campus Ireland and its lead partner Jaguar Land Rover to help pave the way to innovation in autonomous and connected technology.”
About Seagate
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About Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI)
FMCI, a not for profit organisation, was founded with the sole purpose of creating and delivering future mobility testbed facilities for stimulating research, development and innovation in the area of Autonomous Connected Electric Shared Vehicles (ACES), including Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) in Ireland. The testbed will be located in the Limerick-Shannon metropolitan area at Shannon Free Zone, Shannon, Co.Clare.
FMCI aims to deliver an ACES test facility located in real-world settings, providing technology companies and researchers the ability to test and enhance their innovations. The test facility consists of a road network that is retrofitted with interconnected state of the art sensing and telecommunication technologies. That are fully accessible and controlled via a dedicated control centre. The target users/customers of this facility include national and international automotive and technology providers that are interested in testing their innovations in real-world settings before the product release phase.
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