Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, and Cognitive Technologies, a developer of software for machine vision and autonomous driving, are joining forces to develop driverless technologies by establishing the Cognitive Pilot joint venture. Cognitive Pilot products and solutions are set to be used to develop digital economy projects in transportation, agriculture, computer vision and artificial intelligence.
The parties have already signed the necessary legal documents and are scheduled to close the deal in December 2019. Sberbank will control 30% of the new company, with 70% of shares to be held by the founders and chief executives of Cognitive Technologies.
Cognitive Pilot will be headed by Cognitive Technologies’ founder, Olga Uskova. It will develop ADAS based on artificial intelligence and autonomous control solutions for ground transportation and industrial machinery.
“Cutting down the number of road fatalities is one of the challenges of the new century,” said Uskova. “Saving people’s lives is what drives our team, and our technology level enables us to solve this task even today. It makes us feel like superheroes. The partnership with Sberbank will extend and speed up the use of our systems.”
The advantages of Cognitive Technologies’ solutions are said to be their high reliability and precision in all weather and climate conditions due to a computer vision system based on deep learning neural networks and millimeter band, along with the fact that some of the company’s solutions already have a high market demand.
“The world is about to face mainstream use of autonomous solutions and we are interested in Sberbank Group and our entire country being in the forefront of this trend,” said Lev Khasis, first deputy chairman of the executive board, Sberbank. “Cognitive Technologies already has products for the transport, agriculture and automotive industries that are very popular with both Russian and foreign clients. This year, Sberbank has become the ultimate AI developer in Russia and we are sure that the expertise in self-driving technology will enjoy demand and contribute to the faster development of AI competence in Russia.”