Moment AI, an Arlington-based automotive safety startup, is partnering with George Washington University to develop software that could reduce crashes caused by driver health emergencies, the two announced last week.
The company will give the school $140,000, roughly a third of the money it has raised overall, to help develop technology that could sense signs of various health problems drivers could experience while on the road — think seizures, strokes, heart attacks or fatigue. The long-term goal is for the artificial intelligence system to take control of the car if the driver should become incapacitated.
In this work, Moment AI CEO and co-founder Megan Gray aspires to a lofty and personal mission of driver equity thorough AI, she said in an interview. A former project manager at Google, Gray had to leave her job and move back in with her parents after being diagnosed with epilepsy. Her doctors said the seizures meant she would no longer be allowed to drive. Her goal is to get people back on the road who are prohibited from driving because of health reasons, she said.
“People don’t realize how much independence epilepsy can take away,” she said. “I was no longer able to work places too far away. I decided that I would drive again. I would just have to build my own technology to make it happen.”
Moment AI is one of 14 companies selected last May for “Emerge,” an accelerator program specifically for startups founded by people from underrepresented communities. Emerge is a joint effort of SoftBank Investment Advisers and WeWork Labs.
The four-person Moment AI came to life in 2019, launched by Gray and Jacob Sutton, Moment AI's chief technology officer. The partnership with GWU will essentially double Moment AI's workforce with student talent, Gray said. The company has agreed to cover the cost of fellowships, undergraduate student tuition and half of doctoral student tuition for those who work on the project. That money will be released on a per-semester basis.
The 20-month development partnership is with GWU's Center for Intelligent Systems Research, headed by Samer Hamdar, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. He's received a few grants for his research in driver safety, including one from the National Science Foundation. Moment AI will get to tap into Hamdar's research and laboratory.
Hamdar said he was intrigued by Moment AI's mission. At the same time, he saw an opportunity to get the center's research, which includes high-quality image and video datasets collected from driving simulators, possibly into the hands of industry, including automobile insurers.
"She's looking at a practical application, that got me very interested," Hamdar said. "But she is also looking into issues of driver's health and how to make it more equitable to different parts of society."
Gray would not say how much money SoftBank has invested into Moment AI, but each of the 14 startups chosen for Emerge likely received at least $150,000, Bloomberg reported.
Both Hamdar and Gray are applying for multiple awards from various science and technology institutions, like the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and others.