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Phiar and TomTom

Projecting the future of navigation with Augmented Reality.

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Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as a

way of enabling live-perception in cars. To
maximize its transformative impact,
however, it needs to be accessible to the
mass market.
Integrating AR into automobiles comes with the promise of an improved driving experience.
However, with the wide variety of information that can be displayed using AR, this new
technology runs the risk of overwhelming and even distracting the driver. Therefore, it's
important to make conscious design decisions about what is being shown to the driver and on
which display of the car.

Coming together
Two years ago, TomTom and Phiar teamed up to bring a seamless AR user experience to the
future of automotive navigation. Through this collaboration, we have combined our expertise as
frontrunners in our respective fields.

When searching the market for innovations in the field of AR, experts at TomTom came across
Phiar's AI-Powered AR Navigation. Impressed especially by the Phiar Spatial-AI Engine’s ability to
detect and track objects on the road, we approached the start-up with a proposal to collaborate.

Both Phiar’s AI and AR software and TomTom’s new Navigation software were still being developed
at the time. This meant that we could incorporate each other’s feedback while building our
respective products, making this collaboration even more unique and mutually beneficial.

Bringing AR to the car

Together, we have created a joint solution with the Phiar AI/AR component pre-integrated and
tested with the TomTom Navigation SDK. The final product is based on validated learning derived
from multiple rounds of simulation tests, as well as drive tests, conducted in advanced
development vehicles with system integrators and an OEM.

TomTom’s advanced navigation SDK and Phiar’s breakthrough computer vision-powered spatial AI
make it possible for OEMs and system integrators to offer AR capabilities.

Phiar’s lightweight Spatial-AI Engine enables vehicles to understand their environment better in
real time. Using this understanding, Phiar’s real-time perception performs object recognition and
tracking, depth estimation, lane detection, semantic segmentation and 3D localization. To avoid
overwhelming drivers with information and achieve an informational balance, TomTom Navigation
provides easy-to-integrate Navigation UI components. Especially in a multi-display cockpit design,
these ensure that the right information is displayed at the right place at the right time on both
the AR displays and the traditional displays in the car.

The benefits of collaboration

By combining our expertise, Phiar and TomTom have created an innovative driving platform that
delivers a cohesive driver experience. Relevant information can be overlaid on top of the road
ahead, making navigation cues and ADAS notifications explicit and thus easy to understand.

For automakers, this pre-integrated solution can ensure that AR capabilities add value for their
users, improving the driving experience, while minimizing cost and time-to-market. With this
collaboration, we are integrating Phiar’s AI and AR capabilities as a standard joint offering with
TomTom’s navigation portfolio.

“
As the automotive cockpit becomes increasingly intelligent with a wide range
of functions to perform and information to provide, prioritizing and
structuring what’s displayed to the driver is essential in order to avoid
cognitive overload. We're working closely with TomTom and making it easy for
OEMs and Tier 1 companies to integrate vision-powered spatial AI and offer AR
capabilities that utilize vehicle IVI SoC, camera and sensors to provide drivers
with a far more intuitive navigation experience.

Gene Karshenboym
CEO, Phiar

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