The Future of Autonomous Driving Is Built on Collaboration

Imagine a world where self-driving cars are safe and affordable for everyone. A future where various levels of autonomous driving are offered on all models — not just the highest-priced luxury sedans. This is the vision of aiMotive, one of the world’s leading independent automotive technology providers. 

And it’s a vision we wholeheartedly support through BlackBerry® QNX®, which now serves as the foundation for aiDrive, aiMotive’s flagship product.  

Headquartered in Budapest, aiMotive is a major contributor to — and benefactor of — the Hungarian capital’s growing reputation as a hub for automotive innovation. The company has won numerous professional awards for its contributions to the advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) and autonomous driving systems (ADS) markets. Today, aiMotive works closely with major OEMs and tier-one suppliers to help guide the future of the automotive sector. 

“Our greatest strengths have always been collaboration and flexibility,” explains aiDrive Lead Software Engineer Krisztian Holman. “We don’t provide a closed system — if a client wants just one small part of our portfolio, we’ll provide that. If someone wants to develop their own software stack, we’ll give them the tools to make that possible.” 

One of aiMotive’s most significant challenges involved porting between different hardware platforms, which required immense development work. In order to make an impact, it needed to be as integration-ready as possible. The aiMotive team found a solution in the QNX® Neutrino® real-time operating system (RTOS).

With QNX embedded in over 215 million vehicle systems worldwide, we’re a market leader in automotive software, working closely with multiple automakers and suppliers. QNX is also fully ISO26262 ASIL D certified, and its microkernel architecture is designed both for ease of development and automotive safety. Finally, our RTOS supports the POSIX API — the basis of aiDrive. 

These factors together made us the ideal partner to help aiMotive achieve its long-term goals. Realizing this, the company made the decision to port aiDrive over from its previous platform. It took aiMotive only a few months to get the solution up and running on QNX.

The company was shocked. It went in expecting the port to be a considerable undertaking. Instead, because they didn’t need to modify much of aiDrive’s low-level code, aiMotive’s software engineers found the transition quite easy to manage.

“When Krisztian’s team began porting aiDrive to QNX, we had this assumption that it would take a great deal of time and effort,” recalls Gábor Pongrácz, SVP of aiDrive. “I was really amazed at how fast they were able to achieve their goal. It’s rarely that simple with software tools in our industry.”

Now working in direct collaboration with BlackBerry, aiMotive has turned its attention towards the future. In that regard, it has some big plans.

“Our long-term vision is to create ADAS solutions that evolve with time, based on collected data,” says Pongracz. “This continuous development won’t simply benefit individual drivers but has the potential to transform the entire automotive industry. And BlackBerry QNX will play a crucial role in helping us achieve that vision.”