Silicon Valley’s latest self-driving startup hails from Hungary

Formerly known as AdasWorks, AImotive specializes in artificial intelligence software that will enable a car to understand and respond to the environment around it, including other cars and pedestrians.

Unlike many of its competitors, AImotive’s software relies mostly on data from cameras, rather than radar, lidar and 3-D maps.

The system is hardware agnostic, capable of working with cameras and computer chips from a number of suppliers.

The company has raised $10.5 million to date, from investors that also include Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Inventure, Draper Associates, Day One Capital Fund Management and the Tamares Group.

AImotive joins an increasingly crowded field of traditional automakers such as Ford, tech giants including Google and lesser-known startups developing self-driving vehicles in the Bay Area.

Google’s autonomous SUVs have been logging miles on the Peninsula for years, while both General Motors and Uber are now testing their versions of the technology on San Francisco streets.

AImotive’s engineers do not yet have permission from California officials to start experimenting with their vehicles on public roads, Kishonti said.

While cameras cost less, many companies working on autonomous driving lean more heavily on lidar, which functions much like radar but uses laser light instead of sound, or radar.

Each has advantages, but lidar and radar are better at distinguishing objects from images, said Nidhi Kalra, director of the Rand Corp. Center for Decision Making Under Uncertainty.