Autolane is building ‘air traffic control’ for autonomous vehicles

Summary

The rapid succession of robotaxi deployments from companies like Waymo and Zoox have people in the industry, once again, dreaming about how autonomous vehicles might change our daily lives. That includes driverless taxi rides, sure, but also headier ideas like sending an autonomous vehicle to fetch groceries or pick up dry cleaning. If those things are ultimately going to happen, navigating the handoff moments — like where exactly a vehicle should stop to receive the groceries — will be a crucial piece of the puzzle. Palo Alto-based Autolane is trying to build that layer of infrastructure, and it now has $7.4 million in fresh funding to take on that goal. Backed by VC firms like Draper Associates and Hyperplane, Autolane said it will start by coordinating pickup and drop-off points for companies that want to let robotaxis come onto their private property. The startup has signed a deal with Simon Property Group to coordinate driverless vehicle arrivals and departures at shopping centers owned by the real estate company in Austin, Texas and San Francisco, California. This deal will include creating simple, physical infrastructure like signage (think: the many kinds of Uber and Lyft pick-up and drop-off stanchions that decorate modern hotels and airports) and also software. “I believe we are one of the first, let’s say, ‘application layer’ companies in autonomy,” Autolane co-founder and CEO Ben Seidl told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. “We aren’t the fundamental models. We’re not building the cars. We’re not doing anything like that. We are simply saying, as this industry balloons rapidly and has exponential growth — as is already occurring this year and will occur for the next 10 years straight — someone is going to have to sit in the middle and orchestrate, coordinate, and kind of evaluate what’s going on.” Autolane is starting with robotaxis in mind, but Seidl is clearly focused on the bigger-picture idea of applying his company’s tech to all kinds of tasks a...