Munich Startup: Who are you and what does Cognibit do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Isabelle Garzorz, Cognibit: We are the Cognibit founders Lukas Brostek (40), Alex Knorr (32) and I, Isabelle (31). Our shared vision is to make autonomous driving safe. As neuroscientists, all three of us researched motion perception and behavior modeling at the Center for Sensorimotor Science at LMU Munich. After his postdoc, Lukas worked at a major automobile manufacturer, gaining several years of experience as a development specialist in the field of autonomous driving. He also worked on the topic of "virtual development," i.e., the computer-aided simulation of traffic. It was in this context that the idea—based on neurocognitive insights—arose. Simulation models of the behavior of human road users The business idea was born and together we applied for the Exist Founder's Grant, through which we have been supported since March of this year.
Human behavior as a challenge for autonomous driving
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Isabelle Garzorz, Cognibit: Cognibit stands for “Cognition and behavior in traffic," and that's exactly what we want to achieve with our software—simulate human cognition and human behavior in traffic. Why is this necessary?
An autonomous vehicle must travel approximately 30 billion kilometers before an automaker can be confident that it is safer than a human driver. Due to this scale, testing is now primarily done in simulations. However, this only works if the conditions in the simulation are realistic—after all, the vehicle is also expected to be confronted with difficult traffic situations. And the greatest challenge here is the behavior of the people in traffic with whom the vehicle being tested is expected to interact. At Cognibit, we realistically simulate this behavior.
Out of the black box
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Isabelle Garzorz, Cognibit: Road user models already exist. But we're pursuing a new approach based on neurocognitive research that offers numerous advantages over conventional, purely data-based machine learning approaches. While competitors attempt to extract and simulate human behavior in traffic from traffic data using their "black box" approach, we model the behavior explicitly.
We simulate the entire sensorimotor processing chain, so our road user models also take human limitations into account. For example, we factor in a restricted field of vision, different reaction times, distraction, etc. This is extremely important. With our transparent models, safety-critical situations such as accidents or near misses can be validated and reconstructed in the simulation. Data-based approaches would require an infinite number of data sets to realistically simulate the many variations of traffic-critical situations.
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Isabelle Garzorz, Cognibit: Our biggest challenge was probably the current coronavirus crisis, which canceled many trade fairs and conferences – and thus also the opportunity for us to speak directly with customers, partners, and investors. Nevertheless, the virtual alternatives have worked surprisingly well so far.
In 5 years: Safe autonomous vehicles on the road
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Isabelle Garzorz, Cognibit: In a year, we hope to have convinced our first pilot customers of our product and to continue developing it together with them. By then, we hope to have one or two employees on board to support us in software development and sales.
Our vision for Cognibit in five years? By then, our technology will be widely deployed by autonomous vehicle manufacturers, thus bringing safe autonomous vehicles to the road.
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Isabelle Garzorz, Cognibit: We're a relatively young, newly founded startup, so we're still lacking experience. But so far, we have absolutely no complaints about Munich. Mobility Hub Munich is exactly the right place for us in Germany. Many of our potential customers and cooperation partners are already located there.
Munich Startup: Risk or security?
Isabelle Garzorz, Cognibit: This reflects our product quite well: safety always has the highest priority.
