Today we want to welcome to the Connected Mobility HUB to our friends from Porto, the startup Healthy Road. His co-founder, André Azevedo explain us in this interview what does Healthy Road do and his vision about the mobility sector in Portugal and Spain.

Hello André, very briefly, tell the community who you are and

what is your proyect about:

HealthyRoad develop AI tech for mobility. With our proprietary algorithms we are capable to monitor the driver behaviour, using machine vision we can monitor the driver and passenger states (drowsiness, distraction, stress, fatigue, emotions, etc), and with our sensor fusion algorithms we are capable to monitor the vehicle cabin using several sensors (air particles, microphones, thermal cameras, etc).

What differential value do you contribute in the sector that doesn’t do your competitors?

HealthyRoad AI tech has high accuracy (more than 90%) and is light enough to run in several devices, such as smartphones, computers, tegra’s and other arm processing units. We are the uniq company that is developing algorithms to monitor drivers and passengers using the smartphones as the primordial device. We believe that smartphones are the computing unit of the present and future, they will be the device that is available everywhere and in everyone pocket, so it is the right choice for this type of AI tech.

Who is your product or service aimed to?

Our strategy is focused on B2B at the moment. Our goal is to introduce this tech in every vehicle with the support of the smartphones manufacturers and the automotive manufacturers and their suppliers.

The B2C strategy will grow in 2019, after the POC’s that we are developing this year with companies such as Bosch and Huawei.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

In every car using the driver/passenger smartphone! And as a team that is developing AI tech for mobility, with strong partnerships with companies such as Huawei, Apple, Tesla, Google, BMW, VW, Samsung, etc.

How do you see the mobility sector (in the specific sub-vertical in which you work) in both Spain and Portugal? And internationally?

The mobility sector is starting to explode, many changes will appear, autonomous driving, car sharing/mobility sharing, electric vehicles, drones, hiper charge, etc. But for all of these future opportunities, all of them will need to:

• Monitor driver
  • To monitor the driver and take over the vehicle control if necessary, because he is distracted;
  • To monitor if the driver is focus while autonomous mode is activated;
  • To check if the driver is ready to take over the vehicle control, after an autonomous mode period;
• Monitor passengers
  • To identify the passengers and adapt the environment of the cabin (for example the colors or playlist);
  • To monitor the state of the passengers and change the agressivity of the autonomous driving;
  • To understand that some passenger needs to go to the hospital and automatically change the route;
  • To know who is inside of the car and what they are doing.
  • To identify the passenger/driver and open the vehicle for the client.

… and many other applications, that we will discover in the future.

Name 1-2 startups or consolidated companies that inspire you and why

Tesla – Great challenge that they defined for them and because they are winning the fight, with amazing results (such for example the pre-sales of model 3).
UBER – They are pushing innovation, since the business model to the drones that they are developing. They are really thinking about the future mobility, that will be 100% shared!

Why did you decide to be part of the Connected Mobility Hub?

The automotive/mobility sector is super difficult to enter and make business, and I truly believe that only in conjunction we will reach our results.

But the most important fact that supported our decision, is the Business model of the HUB, that we believe that is the correct one, a truly win-win situation for startups and for the HUB.

Thanks a lot André for joining us and we wish you all the luck with your proyect! Here is a video about Healthy Road. ¡Enjoy!