Autonomous vehicles

and APAC headquarters for the company’s Microbial Solutions division. A 2021 announcement from the company of an €8m expansion to its testing capabilities in Ballina, adding an additional 1,500m2 of lab space and creating 90 new skilled roles over a three-year period, resulted in a need for a strategic training plan.

Explaining how Charles River found the process, Power said: “In 2021, our site in Ballina was growing. We went to the IDA with a detailed scope of what we wanted to do and with their support were able to dramatically broaden our scope of activities and take on additional activities, which resulted in significant growth for the site across staff numbers. The IDA were amazing through the process. They gave guidance and support through a skills need assessment which helped create a robust training plan. The supports helped us show the decision makers in the US that we had the support of the IDA which helped sway the decision to expand in favour of Ireland.”

The opportunity to promote Ireland to the parent companies of IDA partners is an intentional consequence of the IDA Ireland supports and echoes the ethos of the organisation as a whole, according to O’Toole, who says: “IDA Ireland’s role is to position Ireland as a place to do business in the international marketplace. We influence investment by telling the story of what Ireland has to offer but really it’s our existing companies that convince the potential investor;they tell it as it is – what it’s like to actually do business in Ireland.

“We partner with companies on their journey here and help them navigate the infrastructure, kickstart investments through the use of our grant aid and supporting programmes and provide additional support in presenting a case for investment to their parent company. The scope and scale of the support required from IDA Ireland is very dependent on the size, scale and need of the company, and so IDA Ireland appoints a Project Executive to support the Irish leadership team in addressing any challenges the company may be having in growing their business in Ireland.”

It’s this personalised approach to each business partner that ensures grants and supports are awarded in keeping with IDA objectives – such as encouraging business expansion, job creation and the sustainability of jobs in rural Ireland. However, O’Toole is keen to point out that

Sinead Pillion “IDA Ireland’s role is to position Ireland as a place to do business in the international marketplace. We influence investment by telling the story of what Ireland has to offer but really it’s our existing companies that convince the potential investor.”

success occurs when true collaboration is achieved between IDA Ireland and its partners’ onsite teams.

“Strong leadership across the teams operating on the Irish sites is key”, explains O’Toole. “As these leaders grow the strategy and the vision for their Irish sites, they can use IDA grant support and the broad infrastructure to demonstrate added value to their parent companies as they propose investment opportunities from Ireland. This will often result in job creation for Ireland.

“Our job is to encourage companies to grow and transform their Irish sites to create new jobs; for some companies that simply may not be possible and so we offer different supports when needed to ensure the smaller investors sustain their business and transform where they can to remain competitive. Several of our smaller investors are in regional locations where it would be much more challenging today to secure new business so it is in everyone’s best interest to work with these companies to retain the employment.

This personalised approach is also one that made all the difference to Charles River, who worked with Project Executive Marko Previšić – a support that Charles River Site Director Niall Power describes as “amazing”.

“The IDA were great all the way through. They shared examples from other companies who had done the same and were always at the end of the phone as we were developing the strategy plan. They’ve been there since the inception and all the way through. We worked with Marko Previšić from the IDA and he was amazing. He was always at the end of the phone and supported us all the way.”

For Previšić, the sense of achievement that comes from working with partner companies and helping them achieve their potential is one that he never sees disappearing. “Our ultimate goal is to create jobs and bring investment to Ireland. Every successful programme that is completed is a way to bring money and investment to Ireland. It makes me happy.”

Over the past several years, IDA Ireland has awarded millions of euros in grants across R&D and training. However, the road to grants is not an easy one. Every application needs to make a robust case for its needs and each case needs to not only match the agenda of IDA Ireland but also be in line with EU regulations – a process that Ericsson’s Pillion echoes is difficult but essential, saying: “The grant application process can be somewhat complex, but the IDA are always extremely supportive and with their expert knowledge and professional guidance during every step of the process, we have been successful in securing grants for nearly 50 years.”

Explaining the process to accessing grants, O’Toole puts it simply, explaining that IDA Ireland is essentially spending the taxpayer’s money and so has to ensure a return on investment.

“When we award financial supports we need to be able to defend our decisions and show that there was an incentive that will benefit Ireland – it is the State’s money and we are working for the people of Ireland,” she says. “There has to be a reason that the IDA is supporting in a financial capacity and that reason might be that the company is at high risk in a rural location and so we help them become more sustainable or it might be that the company has the potential to scale. When we award financial supports, we need to be able to make sure that the investment by the State is defendable and provides value. Grant aid should be incentivising a company investment and demonstrating commitment to the investment.”

“Our job is to encourage companies to grow and transform their Irish sites to create new jobs; for some companies that simply may not be possible and so we offer different supports when needed to ensure the smaller investors sustain their business and transform where they can to remain competitive.”

If you are interested in finding out more about how IDA supports can help you to grow and transform your operation, please contact us at www.idaireland.com, idaireland@ida.ie

A VISION FOR A safer FUTURE

THE WEST OF IRELAND IS PROVING TO BE THE IDEAL LOCATION TO TEST PIONEERING TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL MAKE HUMAN DRIVERS AND AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES SAFER AND MORE RELIABLE IN THE YEARS AHEAD – AND LATEST DEVELOPMENTS SHOW THAT PARTNERSHIPS ARE KEY TO STAYING AHEAD OF THE GAME IN THIS SPACE GLOBALLY.

At the National University of Ireland (NUI) campus in Galway a team of academic researchers and engineers from French company Valeo are working together on a project focused on the development of new and innovative sensor technologies for autonomous vehicles.

A manufacturer of vision systems for cars, Valeo recently announced that it had produced its one hundred millionth nearfield camera at its Tuam site in Co Galway, where it employs 850 people and has an extensive research and development centre.

The researchers on the project which started in 2018 are from Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland research centre for software, and led by Professor Martin Glavin and Professor Edward Jones at NUI Galway. The project involves testing new and emerging sensor technologies, mixes of different sensor technologies and signal processing algorithms, including machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

“One of the key issues with autonomous vehicles is that in order for them to become accepted by society, they must be proven safe and reliable in all conditions,” says Glavin. “At the moment, even the most

Valeo Test Vehicle

advanced semi-autonomous vehicles will need support from a human driver if the weather or road conditions deteriorate, or if the situation becomes too complex for the vehicle to proceed safely.”

The team has set up a test car on the NUI Galway campus equipped with numerous sensor mixes to determine how well the sensors work in different scenarios and in different weather conditions. “Being located in the west of Ireland means we benefit from the somewhat variable weather conditions that exist here,” notes Jones.

“Sensors have been set up on the NUI Galway campus and we hope to bring them online in the coming weeks to facilitate supporting sensors on the vehicle with sensors in the infrastructure. We’re also looking at 5G technology to see how well 5G and 6G technology might support autonomous vehicle operation.”

“One of the key issues with autonomous vehicles is that in order for them to become accepted by society, they must be proven safe and reliable in all conditions.”

PROFESSOR MARTIN GLAVIN, NUI GALWAY

Down the road in Limerick, Irish start-up Provizio has built a groundbreaking, fivedimensional accident prevention technology platform with a view to radically transforming vehicle safety. The platform combines proprietary vision sensors and machine learning to see further, wider and through obstacles – detecting danger in all-weather conditions and applying predictive analytics in real time to prevent accidents.

Currently employing 22 highly-skilled people, Provizio was founded in 2019 by a team of automotive and aerospace industry veterans. In November 2020, the company closed its seed investment round of US$6.2m entirely over Zoom, with venture capital, industry and technology veterans such as Bobby Hambrick, Founder of AutonomouStuff, and the founders of Movidius (the Intel-acquired leader in mobile vision processor chip design) along with the European Innovation Council and ACT Venture Capital.

“Having built radars and vision systems for everything from spacecraft to autonomous vehicles for over 20 years, one of the things we identified was that the sensor stack and back-end software were incapable of solving edge cases – which are the reasons we crash,” explains Provizio Founder and CEO Barry Lunn.

“So, we set about building something that would be ten times better than a human and ten times better than that again. Our platform can not only see the car ahead, but detect its exact velocity and range and everything on the 360-degree horizon.”

Provizio is one of the first Irish start-ups to test its proof of concept at Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI) in the Shannon Free Zone in Co Clare, which was the brainchild of former Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) employees Russell Vickers and Wassim Derguech. Currently under construction, the FMCI will comprise a 12km road network that is retro-fitted with interconnected, state-of-the-art sensing and telecommunications technologies as well as control centre building.

As one of the numerous supporters of FMCI – which include IDA Ireland – JLR has loaned it two vehicles, a Jaguar I-Pace and Land Road Defender, which industry partners and start-ups can use to test their technologies.

“We have been able to show that each of the five layers of our solution adds huge improvements in terms of visualisation and accident prevention – without the need for additional hardware. As far as we’re aware, we’re the first company in the world to do the entire back-end and digital processing all on a graphics processing unit [GPU]. This allows us to ‘plug and play’ so that Tier 1 automotive companies and original equipment manufacturers [OEMs] can easily evaluate our technology,” explains Lunn.

“Some of the Tier 1 companies and OEMs we are talking to are very happy to

Provizio Founder and CEO Barry Lunn

“We set about building something that would be ten times better than a human and ten times better than that again. Our platform can not only see the car ahead, but detect its exact velocity and range and everything on the 360-degree horizon.”

PROVIZIO FOUNDER

AND CEO BARRY LUNN

Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia concept car

see our proof of concept at FMCI, which is an independent testing ground they can access data from. I think it is really going to take off as start-ups can spend more engineering time on their own products, and innovations will come to the market faster as a result. Most vehicle testing grounds around the world such as in Arizona or Los Angeles in the US don’t have the weather that Shannon has, with some fog and rain guaranteed – that is huge for us,” notes Lunn.

JLR’s software engineering centre in Shannon, which opened in 2018 is the hub of its autonomous and next-generation vehicle projects. In February, the luxury carmaker announced that it had entered into a multi-year strategic partnership with gaming graphics and chip technology company Nvidia. It follows a similar partnership announced by Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia in 2020.

Starting in 2025, all new Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles will be built on the Nvidia Drive software-defined platform – delivering a wide spectrum of active safety, automated driving and parking systems as well as driver assistance systems. Inside the vehicle, the system will deliver AI features, including advanced visualisation of the vehicle’s environment.

“I see software-defined perception in autonomous vehicles as the future. With our GPU-based system, that is our sweet spot and we will fit perfectly into that future, which is being created by developments with the likes of Nvidia and Qualcomm Technologies,” notes Lunn.

In March, Dublin-based connected software solutions provider Cubic Telecom announced it was set to strengthen its strategic relationship with Qualcomm, which is a leading systems solutions provider for the automotive industry. Cubic’s connected software solutions will enable global connectivity and related analytics and insights for Qualcomm’s carto-cloud services. Powering more than 8 million vehicles across 100 countries, Cubic’s software is used by global leaders in the automotive and technology sectors, including Audi, Bentley, Volkswagen Group, Microsoft and Kymeta.