Mitsubishi Electric and BlackBerry recently announced that the Japanese manufacturing company’s new automotive in-cabin system, FLEXConnect, will be powered by BlackBerry IVY — an edge-to-cloud vehicle data platform. One of the end results should be increased road safety by anticipating safety risks, lower driver distractions, and the ability to highlight potential driving hazards.
The collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric is one of many from BlackBerry, which continues to partner with automotive players. In this case, BlackBerry IVY allows the Mitsubishi Electric FLEXConnect platform to both pull out and analyze the data from internal and external sensors. It also uses machine learning to process the data collected at the vehicle edge compute node.
Vito Giallorenzo, SVP General Manager of IVY and Head of Corporate Development at Blackberry, said BlackBerry IVY was “unique in how it enables automotive OEMs to leverage a multitude of vehicle signal data in real-time and cost effectively into valuable insights.”
At the same time, they are also aiming to raise the bar for in-cabin experiences. Mark Rakoski, VP of Advanced Engineering at Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America, said in a statement that FLEXConnect establishes “a new cabin experience standard.” “With BlackBerry IVY, we’re able to bring innovations like this to market faster, and in full confidence that the security and privacy of user data is protected,” he said.
The benefits of road safety and signal data may be a win-win for both companies, OEMs, and drivers.
