TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The founder of Phiar Technologies, Yu Chen-ping (余正平) joined a recent episode of the Startup Island TAIWAN podcast to discuss the future of augmented reality (AR) car navigation systems, which his company designs.
Yu spoke with host Jon Yu of the Asianometry YouTube channel in December 2022 about the inspiration for Phiar’s AR navigation products and how his company has fared in developing these products. Phiar attracted a lot of attention in the automotive and machine learning industry, which led Google to purchase the company in September 2022.
Phiar seeks to improve upon the navigation systems that are currently available on the market. While studying machine learning as a post-doctoral candidate in Boston, Yu decided that the two-dimensional map navigation system most people are familiar with has some serious shortcomings, namely that it can’t accurately represent real-time road conditions or obstacles.
He thought that accuracy and convenience could be drastically improved if navigation systems displayed road conditions and driving instructions by using AR to overlay instructions and warning on top of a camera feed in real-time. This led Yu to leave school and begin developing a business plan, which became Phiar Technologies.
Yu envisions Phiar’s products as more than just an improved navigation system to help people find their way in difficult driving conditions. More than that, he believes Phiar is developing crucial technologies for the next generation of self-driving cars.
That requires time and resources to develop machine learning programs so that a computer can actively map road conditions and also know how to respond in a safe, practical, and efficient manner.
While Yu’s initial designs were developed for smartphones, the future of self-driving vehicles will require large amounts of computing power that will overwhelm personal smartphones. For that reason, Phiar is focusing on partnering with automotive manufacturers so that future navigation systems will be installed directly into the vehicles.
When asked about major trends in his industry, he said a lot of people are optimistic about the future of self-driving vehicles. However, he cautioned that the goals many have for the market may not be achieved as fast as they would like.
Specifically, a vehicle fully capable of self-driving will require lots of sophisticated sensors, which raises the price and determines what customers a company can target. For most of the population, Yu says they will likely first experience self-driving vehicles as part of ride-share programs, either through Uber-type services or shuttle programs developed by municipalities, rather than being able to purchase the vehicles for themselves.
Yu is also eager to see how the AR programs that Phiar is developing might one day be paired with AR glasses or virtual reality platforms, such as the metaverse. When geographic mapping and business data for a particular region can be interfaced, things will get very interesting, not only for navigation, but also to help customers compare different services based on real-time data.
To hear Yu Chen-ping discuss Phiar Technologies and learn about trends in AR and machine learning, listen to the podcast on the player above, or go to the official Startup Island TAIWAN podcast website on First Story.
