RTI Joins the Teleoperation Consortium to Collaboratively Advance Autonomous Vehicle Adoption

RTI Joins the Teleoperation Consortium to Collaboratively Advance Autonomous Vehicle Adoption

SUNNYVALE, Calif.– June 2, 2021 – Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the largest software framework company for autonomous systems, today announced it has joined the Teleoperation Consortium (TC), and CEO Stan Schneider has joined its Board of Directors. RTI joins leading technology companies, automotive manufacturers, universities, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in a collaborative effort to identify and address the key issues facing the vehicle teleoperation market. RTI will collaborate with the TC to stimulate growth, increase awareness, and drive industry guidance for development and deployment of autonomous vehicle teleoperations.

Vehicle teleoperation, also known as remote driving, is a critical component of the autonomous vehicle ecosystem. Human remote assistance is needed to bridge the gap between current self-driving capabilities and widespread adoption. Teleoperation will help driverless vehicles navigate difficult situations.

The TC is a non-profit business league that enables the collaboration of companies, organizations, and governmental bodies engaged in developing bidirectional vehicle communications. RTI brings extensive experience to the TC through its work with over 250 autonomous vehicle programs. These include dozens of the world’s leading automotive companies such as Aptiv, Baidu Apollo, Xpeng Motors, and most of the largest electric vehicle (EV) startups.

Connectivity for teleoperations is extremely challenging. Applications require high reliability and real-time performance, even though links are often unreliable and have variable bandwidth. Depending on the operator's proximity, communication may also span local, wide area, public, and private networks.

RTI Connext Drive®, the first complete Automotive-Grade connectivity solution for autonomous vehicle development, is the industry’s most prevalent software framework for autonomous systems. It enables easy real-time remote operation over any network. For instance, if the network connection changes as the system moves, connectivity is seamless without reconnecting, secure without renegotiating, and reliable without losing information. Thus, remote operations can continue in real time without interruption. Connext provides the high-speed bi-directional communications needed for teleoperation.

Connext Drive is built on the proven Data Distribution Service™ (DDS) connectivity standard. DDS is prevalent in many industries, from defense to medical devices. Using such a popular and capable standard offers automakers the ecosystem they need to span diverse real-time environments, fuse sensor information with intelligent control within the vehicle, connect to off-vehicle systems, evolve systems over time, and build in security. DDS adds new capabilities to the many standards important in the automotive ecosystem.

RTI CEO, Stan Schneider, holds a PhD from Stanford in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a focus in dynamic control and strategic teleoperation of autonomous systems. He also brings deep experience in consortia, including serving on the Steering Committee and as Vice Chair at the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) for years. He and the company's automotive experts will work with TC members to determine the direction and technical future of the teleoperations market.

"Teleoperation is critical to autonomy across industries," said Stan. "We are already seeing teleoperation used for robotaxis, shuttles, trucks, mining equipment, flying vehicles, military systems, medical robotics and more. Remote humans can assist self-driving cars in unknown or difficult situations, greatly accelerating adoption. We're looking forward to collaboratively defining the teleoperation design that will move the industry forward."

"The Teleoperations Consortium is extremely pleased to have RTI join, and very appreciative to have the deep industry knowledge and experience of Dr. Schneider on the board of directors," said Scott McCormick, President and CEO of the Teleoperations Consortium. "Teleoperations is growing across many verticals besides transportation, and it's important to provide a mechanism for the public and private ecosystem leaders to table important issues, address architectural requirements, and discuss best practices and gaps or inadequacies in existing standards. With people at Stan's caliber, we expect to be able to advance the growth and deployment of teleoperations considerably."

Read more about RTI's work in the autonomous vehicle industry here.

About RTI
Real-Time Innovations (RTI) is the largest software framework company for autonomous systems. RTI Connext is the world's leading architecture for developing intelligent distributed systems. Uniquely, Connext shares data directly, connecting AI algorithms to real-time networks of devices to build autonomous systems.

RTI is the best in the world at ensuring our customers' success in deploying production systems. With over 1,700 designs, RTI software runs over 250 autonomous vehicle programs, controls the largest power plants in North America, coordinates combat management on U.S. Navy ships, drives a new generation of medical robotics, enables flying cars, and provides 24/7 intelligence for hospital and emergency medicine. RTI runs a smarter world.

RTI is the leading vendor of products compliant with the Object Management Group® (OMG®) Data Distribution Service™ (DDS) standard. RTI is privately held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with regional offices in Colorado, Spain and Singapore.

About the Teleoperation Consortium
Headquartered in East Lansing, Michigan, the Teleoperation Consortium (TC) is a non-profit business league established in 2020 to facilitate the interaction and advance the interests of the entities involved in the vehicle communication environment. The organization enables the collaboration of companies, organizations, and governmental bodies engaged in developing bidirectional vehicle communications. To learn more, visit www.teleoperation.org or contact Scott McCormick at sjm@teleoperation.org.