Ambarella Acquires Automotive Vision Systems Developer Vislab

GlobeNewsWire: Ambarella acquires VisLab S.r.l., a privately held Italian company based in Parma, Italy for $30M in cash. VisLab, the Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Parma, develops perception systems for autonomous vehicles and was founded by Prof. Alberto Broggi. The company has developed computer vision and intelligent control systems for automotive and other commercial applications, including ADAS and several generations of autonomous vehicle driving systems. These include "Porter," an autonomous vehicle that made a 13,000 km autonomous trip from Italy to China in 2010.

"Computer vision is an area of significant focus for Ambarella, and will be critical to our current video markets, as well as future markets such as automotive OEM cameras," said Fermi Wang, CEO of Ambarella. "We are delighted to welcome Dr. Broggi and the VisLab team to Ambarella to jointly define, develop and deploy future generations of computer vision solutions."

"The unique combination of VisLab's computer vision expertise and Ambarella's high performance, power-efficient video processing technology will enable extremely powerful systems," said Broggi. "We are very pleased to join Ambarella and to realize the full potential of our research and algorithms across a wide range of customers' products."

VisLab's 27 researchers will join Ambarella's advanced computer vision development team, working computer vision for future solutions targeting Ambarella's core markets including automotive, IP security, wearable, and flying cameras.

A Youtube video shows Vislab's driverless car test:



Here is Vislab's hardware inside the driverless car: