How Nauto Is Using AI & Ml to Build a Data Platform That Makes Driving Safer and Fleets Smarter

Founded in 2015, Nauto is focused on building a data platform to make vehicles on our roads safer while also improving the technology for autonomous vehicles in the future. The company’s multi-sensor windshield-mounted device assesses the full context of the driving environment—including the driver, the vehicle, and the road ahead — in real-time using bi-directional cameras and other sensors. The device’s external camera processes what’s in front of the vehicle to assess what risk elements are present. The internal camera is able to assess and understand the driver behavior using embedded computer vision, particularly whether the driver is distracted. Today, 70 percent of collisions and casualties from vehicles are due to drivers being distracted, with 1 in 4 drivers being distracted by mobile devices. Nauto’s intelligent edge device identifies driver distraction in real-time.

The second part of Nauto’s technology is their cloud-based software system for fleet management, which allows the fleet to understand the level of risk for potentially distracted drivers. Sanket Akerkar, Senior VP for Fleet and Insurance, explains that with the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Nauto can “provide that information to the fleet, as well as the driver themselves, on their scoring and the safety level of their driving.”

Nauto’s platform allows fleet managers to monitor their drivers’ safety levels with what Akerkar describes as Attentive Driving (level of distraction) and Smooth Driving (acceleration, braking, and cornering). These events are scored for level of risk and uploaded into the cloud along with a 30-second clip (20 seconds before and 10 seconds after the event) that fleet managers can then review and use to coach and improve driver safety. The scoring is then aggregated into Nauto’s proprietary Visually-Enhanced Risk Assessment (VERA) Score—a single metric that enables fleet managers to evaluate the safety level of their fleet and individual drivers. Review of the events that contribute to low VERA Scores allows the fleet manager to make informed decisions about their drivers. As Akerkar puts it, “We want to make sure that they can understand the real context of what was going on, and then be able to provide the right coaching advice at that moment for that driver.”