Founder & CEO, Swaayatt Robot, Deep Eigen
51 Most Imapctful Smart Cities Leaders Award (Global Listing) 2019
Lived & Researched in: India, US, Israel & Canada
Meditating on Sri
#Ram
#siyaram
, Ma Kali, Durga, Mahadev or their forms r most powerful
#meditation
forms. They r 2nd to none. Evrythng else's a sub-standard.
Regular meditators cn chant/listen
#OM
b4 meditation 2 accelerate progress.
Evry form of meditation leads 2 smthng +ve
Autonomous driving through very dense dynamic traffic, with extremely tight-complex-stochastic traffic-dynamics on sub-urban roads, connecting to an open ground, with absolutely zero traffic-rules.
This is the most heavily cluttered environment where we have tested our
Autonomous driving through tight, dynamic, stochastic, and adversarial traffic-dynamics on sub-urban roads in India, as well as through partially unstructured environments.
This demos showcases the robustness of our motion planning and decision making algorithmic frameworks in
I am humbled to know that my years of mathematical research in motion planning, reinforcement learning, and decision making under uncertainty, and our cutting-edge pioneering research at
@swaayatt
in enabling
#autonomousvehicles
to negotiate extremely complex, stochastic, and
Evidence of tech innovation rising across India.
An engineer who’s not building yet another delivery app.
@sanjeevs_iitr
is using complex math to target level 5 autonomy.
I’m cheering loudly. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
And certainly won’t debate his choice of car!
Presenting autonomous driving in complex, stochastic and adversarial traffic-dynamics, on the roads in
#India
.
Over the course of last year, we enabled
#autonomousdriving
in conditions and in situations no one in the autonomous driving industry considered was possible, and in
Autonomous driving through extremely-tight-dynamic environments with complex, stochastic, and adversarial traffic-dynamics, or simply through an absolute chaos, on sub-urban unstructured roads in India.
This kind of traffic and environment has never been attempted in the history
Bhopal-based Indian AI and Robotics startup Swaayatt Robots (स्वायत्त रोबोट्स) recently raised $4 million at a valuation of $151 million from US investors. The company will further raise $11M at a valuation of round $175M-$200M.
Read more -
With the recent closure of $4M funding, we will be scaling up autonomous driving to new heights. This will being with significantly capabilities enhancements in our
(i) Toll-Plaza navigation framework,
(ii) Bidirectional traffic negotiation on single lane roads framework,
We have closed $4M in funding, which is part of much larger round we are raising with investors in the US. This round was closed at $151M valuation, and remainder of the funds will be around that as well (around $175M).
Over the past few years we have
High-speed off-roads autonomous driving, with bidirectional dynamic traffic, paving the road for military and several other off-roads autonomy operations.
The demo and tech-capabilities addresses several of the requirements of not just Indian armed forces, but also addresses the
Thanks so much
@pitdesi
for sharing our research and our autonomous driving demos with the world. We have been researching on all frontiers of autonomous driving, and have been demonstrating our technology since 2016 on the roads in India.
There are four different paradigms
I always wondered how autonomous vehicles could work in the absolute chaos of driving in India- people don’t always follow the rules, humans and animals are often on roads, etc.
This co only raised $3M & is in a tier 2 city (Bhopal) not known for tech.
Very impressive.
Autonomous driving off-roads is an extremely challenging problem. Here's our autonomous vehicle at
@swaayatt
navigating off-road terrains, while there was an active construction going on.
Navigating such terrains autonomously is unthinkable and is beyond the capability of any
This lecture covered the topic of Robust Feature Matching, focusing on the use of Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) algorithm for Fundamental Matrix.
RANSAC is an iterative algorithm that estimates model parameters, where this estimation process involves a set of observed data
Two weeks back, on Feb 26, I got the chance to meet the Minster of State, Sri Rajeev Chandrasekhar ji, who heads Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as well as Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, India, in his office in New Delhi.
It was a
Mr. Sanjeev Sharma
@sanjeevs_iitr
, Founder & CEO,
@swaayatt
, called on me at my office
@GoI_MeitY
today.
Discussions revolved around spreading PM
@narendramodi
ji’s vision of making India an innovation hub and a leading partner in cutting-edge R&D.
Autonomous driving at high-speeds off-roads, with our new autonomous driving test vehicle, Autonomous Thar!
On 22nd of January, Sri Ram ji's birthplace temple is being inaugurated in Ayodhya. To honour him, we launch Autonomous Thar on Indian roads, which perhaps one day will
Our R&D in AI and autonomous navigation, to enable L5
#autonomousdriving
is based on a principled mathematical approach that we have taken since the inception of
@swaayatt
The data-efficient
#reinforcementlearning
based foundational models, frameworks,
@ALifeing
Robotics, AI, or Autonomous Driving, is nothing but pure- and applied-mathematics, combined with learning frontiers of theoretical computer science.
A first step is to ensure that you understand Linear Algebra very-very well. Second, you need to ensure multi-variate calculus.
In pursuit of Level-5
#autonomousdriving
technology development, we treated the problem of autonomous navigation as a generic mathematical research problem.
We did not differentiate among the verticals like on-roads, off-roads, highway-navigation for
Going forward, with this new fund raise of $4M, which is a part of larger fund we are raising with global investors, we will actively be inventing new AI capabilities to solve the problem autonomous general navigation.
My core beliefs, and that of
Expanding on our objective of bringing Level-5 autonomy globally, that is tested in the most adversarial and complex traffic-dynamics, and environmental and weather conditions imaginable, we present
#autonomousdriving
in very dense fog at night, with negotiation of incoming
I was interviewed by the Free Press Journal, MP, where we discussed the foundations of our R&D, and my personal journey, and the journey of
@swaayatt
in solving Level-5 autonomous driving problem.
The interview was in Hindi, and we discussed both the on- and off-roads
@KennethPLewis
My research statement since my undergrad days has been to solve the problem of autonomy (which is the toughest AI problem of this decade, and was the toughtest problem back then as well) in absolute chaos.
While this may be horrendous, as a researcher, that is somehow, a boon
On 21st January we launched our new autonomous vehicle platform, based on Thar, for the purpose of off-roads autonomous driving R&D, and we showcased it driving off-roads at high-speeds.
Going forward we will be doing the kind of off-road demos that are considered impossible as
@Gordonswaby
I am glad to know that :) 🙏 Thank you so much for sharing our work with the world! This was our 83rd demo on the roads in India, and our August 2024 demo will change the way autonomous driving is perceived globally.
On this Independence Day, at
@swaayatt
we pledge to bring autonomy to all frontiers, i.e., Civil, Military, and Industrial, both on the ground and in the air.
Over the years, specifically in the past 9 months, we have demonstrated our
#autonomousdriving
technology conquering
Enabling autonomous vehicles to execute end-to-end military operations is an arduous undertaking. It can be seen in this demo that our autonomous vehicle doesn't wait for incoming vehicles to abide by the driving rules, and can handle both left and right negotiation, as per the
Off-roads autonomous driving at high-speeds with dynamic-stochastic traffic negotiation. Our R&D on this front focuses on enabling end-to-end military operations.
Adversarial negotiation capabilities enables AVs to avoid getting stuck as can be seen in this demo.
@AnidhyaAhuja
@malpani
Anidhya, can't help it man. Dr Malpani used to talk about frugal innovation a lot on LinkedIn.
PS: I had $62.5M acquisition offer in Jan 2021, nearly the peak of COVID, when I was doing another startup to just save Swaayatt somehow. Decided not to sell. No investor in India
@DarthPlagueisNL
It is more of a risk for us than to anyone else. It is career at stake. We wouldn't do anything for a cheap fame. Unless the tech is rigorously tested, we wouldn't do anything.
Yesterday media came to do live demo off-roads. We realized there was a construction going on with
Our recent demo at the Kankali Kali Mata temple, where our vehicle negotiated stochastic, dynamic, complex and adversarial traffic dynamics got covered by many media houses. Here's one from local news paper in Bhopal in Hindi!
Today we also did a live
NDTV has covered our recent Kankali Kali Mata demo in complex dynamic environments. Going forward we will be showcasing this framework working in much more complex environments and traffic-scenes.
Can autonomous vehicles learn to cross toll-plaza, that may be as unstructured as the ones in India, while also negotiating complex traffic-dynamics at the toll-gates?
In our pursuit of achieving Level-5 autonomy, we started asking these very tough questions.
In this demo we
Thank you so much Sir
@Rajeev_GoI
for sharing our work and cutting-edge research in enabling autonomous driving in the most complex of traffic-dynamics and environmental conditions. We will keep pushing the boundaries of the research frontiers in AI and autonomous driving to
Autonomous driving through chaotic unruly traffic in
#India
via reinforcement learning based driving policy. The vehicle was tasked with end-effector constraints parking through such traffic -- the complexity is humongous as no one follows traffic-rules on such open environments.
Demonstrating ECAN in our autonomous vehicle at
@swaayatt
, which is one of the foremost algorithms allowing to formulate the mathematical optimization problem for autonomous navigation and obstacles avoidance as convex program.
ECAN also allows navigation in previous unknown
Bringing sustainable
#autonomousdriving
to India and to the world. This marks the beginning of our
#autonomousvehicles
trials to bring autonomous transportation to the part of the world no expected, i.e., in
#India
.
Currently our city trials are restricted to performing
To enable
#autonomousdriving
in environments as unpredictable as in
#India
, to make
#autonomousvehicles
globally safe, we've bn testing our tech, & R&D behind it, in chaos.
Here our vehicle is negotiating tight-dynamic-stochastic obstacles with soft lane constraints.
@elonmusk
@Mankaran32
@protosphinx
@karanmgandhi
Hi
@Mankaran32
A key difference between us and Waymo, Cruise, Tesla, Comma (if comma is still doing behavioural cloning, it is already a deadend, any mathematician would be able to tell that, or anyone who has gone through even the basics of theoretical computer science and
A few weeks back,
@swaayatt
, an Indian autonomous driving company, claimed Level 5 autonomy. The company announced this big achievement through a video, showcasing autonomous driving of the car at night at a toll plaza amid complex traffic dynamics.
The video was still not
@MalfoyVoldy
Thank you so much! This is only a beginning, a lot more to come soon. Our demo and technology in August will change the way autonomous driving will work in future.
Driving where no Autonomous Vehicle has driven before!
At
@swaayatt
we have been pushing the boundary of what is considered possible in autonomous driving, and proving the safety and robustness in the most adversarial traffic and complex environments imaginable for autonomous
@madeinap
For sure Amar. Currently this classical decision making and motion planning algorithmic framework that I had designed for such negotiation tasks is going to be scaled up with inverse-RL, which will drastically improve the performance.
It is an ongoing pursuit, and there are
@pitdesi
@swaayatt
This is autonomous :) This was our 82nd demo on the roads in India. We do both on- and off-roads autonomous driving -- the only startup who has both the capabilities. Plus our 83rd demo, the latest one, was done in even more complex situation -- here --
Autonomous driving through very dense dynamic traffic, with extremely tight-complex-stochastic traffic-dynamics on sub-urban roads, connecting to an open ground, with absolutely zero traffic-rules.
This is the most heavily cluttered environment where we have tested our
@Scobleizer
Thank you so much Robert!! This was our 83rd demo on the roads in India, this was the densest scenario, in terms of the number of obstacles and pedestrians present on the road, even though most of them static. We are going to showcase a paradigm for autonomous vehicles in August,
Changing the rules of engagement for Autonomous Driving!
Bidirectional traffic negotiation on a single lane road, in India, with unpredictable incoming traffic dynamics.
#autonomousdriving
#india
@elonmusk
@swaayatt
@svembu
Sir, we at
@swaayatt
have been doing fundamental R&D in mathematics, theoretical computer science and robotics, to create cutting edge autonomous driving tech that is far ahead of startups in the West. Never got any backing from anyone in India, not even Govt. That is quite
Ability to negotiate tight stochastic-dynamic obstacles on any kind of roads and in environmental conditions is one of the key ability autonomous vehicles should demonstrated.
Here our autonomous vehicle encountering one such scenario during a generic on- and off-roads
@RightValSathish
Following rules are logics written over on top of AI layers, not following rules is a pure stochastic process, that is where the capability of AI is tested. Traffic doesn't follow rules there, our vehicle navigated this in a, what I call, just manner -- which rule you see our
Our new vehicle platforms r getting ready 4 both on- & off-roads autonomy demos, on Indian roads. Left is new platform, right our is old platform (now dedicated 2 off-roads & defense applications). Fortuner based platform will b unveiled soon for 100 KM/H
#autonomousdriving
demo
In 2019 I taught an
#ML
course
@swaayatt
. It's available as 7-weeks legacy course at
@DeepEigen
.
I've decided to make it free & available to every1. From Dussehra, i.e. Oct' 15 onward, it will b freely available @ DeepEigen. Jai Sri Ram _/\_
Best wishes 2 every1 for learning!
I have been invited as a Keynote Speaker by Dept. Of Computer Science at IIT Kharagpur.
Hosted by the Autonomous Vehicles Research Group at IIT Kgp.
I will be speaking at IIT Kgp's initiative , and their workshop on AI for Social Good :) Oct 6-7.
I had a chance to discuss our Level-5
#autonomoudriving
research with Priyakshi Gupta, co-founder of EV Reporter, and differentiate our work with the major players in the domain.
This interview covered our prior and current work in enabling autonomous
@DrShuklaHere
Thank you so much Saurabh! 🙏 We will definitely do Sabji Mandi by July, although not sure about mela :) We are only a $3M funded startup (raised in 2021). But we will definitely solve sab-mandi -- only problem is we don't do demos where there are infants and small kids -- like
This Diwali, we will be showcasing readiness of our
#autonomousdriving
technology
@swaayatt
to work in world's most difficult of traffic and environmental scenarios, by demonstrating it on the roads in the city of Bhopal in
#india
, starting with night operations.
With this
@Crudeoilist
Thank you so much Vishal!! 🙏 Yes, navigating through the corridor was a challenge, and this is the narrowest road (if we can call it a road) we have tested this motion planning and decision making framework.
Over the past few years, since undergrad days, my research focused on
New demo of our deep net on a single lane road, with cameras mounted on front bumper / roof of our vehicle, for short / far range perception.
This is a section of the road where we'lll b conducting 101KM/H
#autonomousdriving
demo in few months, perhaps by EOY 2021.
@elonmusk
Glad to announce that we're part of BBC Click's (
@BBCClick
) live show in Delhi --- this is Click's first live show in Asia. Our self-driving vehicle demo and technology will be covered in this show in Delhi. Special thanks to David Reid :)
@1DebaratiSen
India should help Israel in whatever way possible, including providing military assistance if needed.
Israel is one of the most wonderful countries I have lived in, when I was interning at the
@arieluniversity
, and Israelis are one of the most friendliest of people.
India and
Finally, Times of India
@TOIIndiaNews
has taken a note of the incident, i.e., of the attack on Swaayatt Robots, its autonomous driving research vehicle.
I now hope that
@DGP_MP
and
@CP_Bhopal
to whom wrote letters for an investigation, will take action
Autonomous Driving demo at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration campus.
I was invited to give a talk on "AI & Autonomous Driving" on the 20th of March, and demo our AV at the academy. Demo was done during this visit.
Happy Ram Navmi! Jai Sri Ram! Jai Ma Kali!
I was invited as a speaker at TIA Summit (), July 20. Title of my talk was "Enabling Driverless Mobility: A Vision Towards Sustainable India"
Thnx Jan Kunne for inviting me &
@1DebaratiSen
Ma'am for all opportunities
@bnestbpl
@bhopal_bscdcl
@YogeshKhakre
Wishing everyone a very happy Dussehra _/\_ Jai Sri Ram _/\_
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the ML course that I taught in 2019
@swaayatt
, which's been available as a legacy course
@DeepEigen
, can now be registered for free
@DeepEigen
.
Happy learning!
Jai Sri Ram _/\_
Demo of our technology enabling precise localization for last-mile autonomous driving, in our autonomous Mahindra Bolero vehicle, in cluttered environment.
This software we will part of our product AutonomousOne.
@anandmahindra
@RNTata2000
@elonmusk
Swaayatt Robots
@swaayatt
has begun mapping roads/streets of India for high-precision localization of
#autonomousvehicles
. By end of d year we hope 2 hv operational capacity 2 achieve mapping 1000 . per week. This PoC was done using only a 16-Channel LiDAR!
@infinite_varsh
Thank you so much Varsh! This was our 78th demo; shortly after we did an off-roads as well, challenging the R&D parameters set up by the DARPA as a part of the RACER program, and the parameters on the basis of which US DoD is providing grants in the US
High-speed off-roads autonomous driving, with bidirectional dynamic traffic, paving the road for military and several other off-roads autonomy operations.
The demo and tech-capabilities addresses several of the requirements of not just Indian armed forces, but also addresses the
A short glimpse of what's about to come in Q1-2023. Single forward facing camera based ADAS + L2 Autonomous Driving features via reinforcement learning. System is being prototyped, towards d end we may use two cameras. Current demos uses one GigE camera :)
#autonomousdriving
@Astroneeit
@swaayatt
That is the objective I have undertaken at Swaayatt. Definitely we will require much more funding as well for this, but I think nature will figure that out for us 🙏
Invited as a speaker at the Computer Vision DevCon Summit 2020!
Will be presenting research to enable
#autonomousdriving
perception using only cameras, without LiDARs and RADARs, and testing in
#india
-- toughest test ground for
#AutonomousVehicles
We look forward to collaborating with you
@elonmusk
and
@Tesla
to create fully electric SAE L5 Autonomous Vehicles! Here's all our demo we have done so far on unstructured Indian roads --- and see this for tech explanation ---
@elonmusk
We are developing self-driving technology that works in India, & thus anywhere in the world as well. We are testing it on Indian highways --- Wondering if Tesla would b willing 2 collaborate to create revolutionary electric Self-Driving Vehicles?
Painting, cleaning, improving and making an existing road more structured to test our decision making, motion planning and prediction algorithms.
This track will facilitate 24x7 testing of our self-driving technology.
Coming soon on Indian Highways.
#Frugal
#DIY
#SelfDriving
Extremely thnkful to d Andhra Pradesh State Skill Dev Corporation for inviting me to collaborate with them to offer
@DeepEigen
/
@swaayatt
courses, create new courses, and a chance to jointly create a centre of excellence for creating better robotics and AI education ecosystem.
We've launched a comprehensive course on Reinforcement Learning
@DeepEigen
RL allows us to mathematically model sequential (optimal-) decision making problems. This course is suitable for both the academic researchers and industrialists/engineers.
Demo of our automatic lane generation algo, one of our key algorithms for perception w/o LiDAR/RADARs. We r ready to test our motion planning for stochastic traffic dynamics in India.
@lexfridman
@elonmusk
-- your opinion on cameras alone for perception?
I was interviewed @ the
@itssieee
(IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society) podcast, where I deeply discussed the cutting-edge research we've been doing in machine learning, mathematics & theoretical CS to enable safer
#autonomousdriving
.
[1/n]
Received 51 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders Award (global listing), at World CSR Day
@wcsrday
yesterday, in Mumbai, by the Global Smart Cities Congress & Awards.
Among all the people who received this award, I was probably the only one from a startup :)
Our research in autonomous driving perception using only cameras is taking shape. Preliminary video of our lane detection & generation algo working using NIR/RGB cameras. We are ready for autonomous night driving.
@elonmusk
@johnkrafcik
@anandmahindra