Autolane is building “air traffic control” for autonomous vehicles

The rapid succession of robotaxi deployments from companies like Waymo and Zoox has people in the industry once again dreaming of how self-driving vehicles will change our daily lives. This certainly includes driverless taxi rides, but also pioneering ideas like sending a self-driving car to fetch groceries or dry cleaning.

If these things are going to happen in the end, move on to the delivery moments – like the venue exactly The car must stop to pick up groceries – that will be an important piece of the puzzle. Palo Alto-based Autolane is trying to build that layer of infrastructure, and now has $7.4 million in new funding to achieve that goal.

Backed by venture capital firms such as Draper Associates and Hyperplane, Autolane said it will begin coordinating pickup and drop-off points for companies that want to let robotaxis onto their private properties. The startup has signed a deal with Simon Property Group to coordinate the arrival and departure of autonomous vehicles at malls owned by the real estate company in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, California.

This deal will include the creation of simple physical infrastructure like signage (think: the many types of Uber and Lyft ride-hailing props that adorn modern hotels and airports) as well as software.

“I think we’re one of the first ‘application layer’ companies in the autonomy space,” Ben Seidel, co-founder and CEO of Autolane, told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. “We’re not the basic models. We’re not building cars. We’re not doing anything like that. We’re simply saying, as this industry quickly inflates and grows exponentially — as it is already happening this year and will happen for the next 10 years in a row — someone is going to have to sit in the middle and coordinate, orchestrate and evaluate what’s happening.”

Autolane started with taxis in mind, but Seidl is clearly focused on the bigger-picture idea of ​​applying his company’s technology to all kinds of tasks that self-driving vehicles might be able to perform in the future. He wants to move quickly with Autolane because, as he sees it, the startup doesn’t face “any direct competition” at the moment. This is expected to change soon.

Seidel said he was convinced there was a business here after buying a Tesla last year and using the company’s Full Self-Driving Driver Assistance (Supervision) program for the first time.

“Once I had my personal car driving me around town, pretty much flawlessly, my head kind of exploded,” he said. “I was mostly fascinated by the idea that this would change logistics, retail, real estate, where we work, where we live, where we play, how we get around, and what the rates are for the movement of goods, services and people.”

Seidel cited the viral incident earlier this year in which a Waymo robotaxi broke down while navigating a Chick-fil-A driveway in Santa Monica, California, as an example of the problem Autolane is trying to avoid. In this case, the robo-taxi had dropped off its passengers and then had difficulty navigating the fast food company’s notorious lanes. By using Autolane software and precise location for pick-up and drop-off, such problems can be avoided in the future, Seidel said.

He added: “Someone has to impose some order on this chaos, and the chaos has already begun.”

To be sure, companies can do some of this themselves, at least on the physical infrastructure side. It is simply not difficult to make a signal.

“Anyone can do it,” Seidel said. “But that’s not the case for autonomy. Robots need precise instructions, precise geolocation and technological communication. You can’t just put a white label on with some black letters and hope for the best as 10 different types of robots emerge.”

Instead, Seidel said Autolane’s value lies in how it integrates with companies that own properties as well as with self-driving car providers. That’s why the plan is mainly to build application programming interfaces (APIs) for physical locations so that self-driving vehicle companies can receive these precise instructions. He said the companies would have to “merge directly into every one of the robotics companies, the car companies, so they follow your rules.”

Seidel also said he explicitly does not want to work with cities or municipalities.

“We don’t work on public streets. We don’t work in public parking lots. We just offer these tools as a sort of B2B SAS solution, so that Costco, or McDonald’s, or Home Depot, or, in our case, Simon Property Group, the world’s largest retail real estate investment trust, can [real estate investment trust] “We could start to have what I like to refer to as ‘air traffic control for autonomous vehicles,’ which means they know which ones are coming in and which ones are leaving,” he said.