The Ford Motor Company has bought the Israeli machine learning startup SAIPS, the automobile giant announced Wednesday, as part of its pledge to develop driverless cars by 2021.

The acquisition of the Rehovot-based tech company is reportedly in the range of tens of millions of dollars, though no financial details of the buyout were disclosed.

“The next decade will be defined by automation of the automobile, and we see autonomous vehicles as having as significant an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago,” said Mark Fields, Ford president and CEO. “We’re dedicated to putting on the road an autonomous vehicle that can improve safety and solve social and environmental challenges for millions of people – not just those who can afford luxury vehicles.”

SAIPS’ website describes its core expertise as “design, development and implementation of algorithmic engines that are based on Deep Neural Networks (‘Deep Learning’). SAIPS portfolio consists of several algorithmic suites that provide state of the art solutions for the hottest computer vision challenges in the areas of detection, tracking, image enhancement, registration, segmentation, pattern recognition, positioning, 3D, prediction, video intelligence and more.”

In other words, SAIPS’s capabilities can help with on-board analysis of data captured by sensors on Ford’s self-driving cars.

SAIPS, which was founded in 2013, will continue operating as an independent entity under the Ford umbrella, according to reports.

(via Israel21c)

[Photo: Etheridge Ford Dealership / YouTube ]