FEBRUARY 25 • 2021 | 13

“It would sometimes take it a week or 
two to calibrate itself for the specific car 
and roadmap, but eventually it would be 
super-accurate, like nowhere else in the 
world,” Mizrachi said.
About one year later, it was a Detroit 
company’s scout who challenged 
Mizrachi to create a cloud-based app 
that would control the car’s speed and 
gear-shifting according to where the 
car was heading. Mizrachi worked on 
the software for a few months, and 
then went to Detroit and connected his 
system to a car.
“The car would be driven once or 
twice, self-learn the map of road grades 
and what the road looked like, and save 
it to the cloud,” Mizrachi said. “The 
next vehicle to drive there would know 
what’s ahead of it.”
Within two weeks, Mizrachi managed 
to show a 5% saving in gas relatively 
to “standard” cruise control. “We had 
become known within the company, and 
I returned home with some money for 
that project,” he said.

SWITCH IN FOCUS
In 2014 Mizrachi’s company recruited 
three private investors from Israel, 
Spain and Mexico, and got out of the 
incubator. He hired between 15 and 20 
of his best students and got to work. 
“We created a beautiful technology,” 
he said. “We demonstrated the ability 
to estimate a truck’s weight with a 2% 
mean error.
“We started working with automakers, 
understanding their needs, and showing 
them that the same building blocks can 
create interesting insights.”
The twist in the company’s story 
came shortly afterward, when gas prices 
tanked. “Nobody cared about saving 
gas anymore,” Mizrachi said. “On the 
other hand, it turned out that all of the 

infrastructures that we had created were 
worth a lot, for they allowed a car to do 
other things, especially if that car was 
autonomous.”
While other companies trying to 
develop autonomous driving rely mostly 
on visual sensors, Mizrachi had realized 
that pictures do not show the full 
picture.
“Not everything can be seen,” 
Mizrachi said. “Some things you need to 
feel. Imagine yourself remotely driving a 
car using cameras and a steering wheel 
in your office. That is not the same.”
The company has created a language 
in which every pothole or bump is a 
different word. Those words are created 
using two mathematical models: While 
SurfaceDNA is a “digital twin” to the 
road, VehicleDNA is the same to the 
vehicle, creating real-time “virtual 
sensors” of the vehicle’s weight, fuel 
consumption, tire health and more.
Mizrachi said that the data that his 
company generated was more valuable 
than alternative solutions:
“If a driver turned on the wipers, you 
could guess it rained. If I had connected 
millions of cars to a cloud, I’d have a 

map of where it rained that day around 
the globe. However, just because it 
rained, and the road is wet doesn’t mean 
it’s slippery. 
“You could drive the Cross-Israel 
Highway at 95 mph in pouring rain and 
everything would be fine,” he continued, 
“but in some places in Israel, even at 40 
or 50 mph, very little rain can send you 
flying. It depends on the road’s texture, 
how much water has accumulated on it, 
the kind of asphalt on the road and your 
own tires.”

AUTOMAKERS STEP IN
The company had been working with 
U.S. automakers for a few years, and 
then the Europeans joined in.
“Four years ago,” Mizrachi said, “a 
BMW software developer called me 
from Munich and said, ‘Imagine that 
in 2021 a car will be able to self-drive 
at 160 mph with the driver sleeping.’ 
I said, ‘I wish the driver luck. Why do 
you think I can help?’ He said that an 
essential condition for that would be 
knowing the grip level between the car 
and the road 300 yards ahead.”
Other German automakers quickly 
realized the potential of the unusual 
partner and also how unusual it was.
“We do things that are completely 
different than what the industry 
does,” Mizrachi said. “We are not car 
engineers. The first time that I arrived 
in Germany to install the system on 
a Porsche vehicle, they opened the 
engine cover and I asked, ‘Where has 

“A BMW SOFTWARE DEVELOPER CALLED ME 
FROM MUNICH AND SAID, ‘IMAGINE THAT IN 
2021 A CAR WILL BE ABLE TO SELF-DRIVE AT 
160 MPH WITH THE DRIVER SLEEPING.’”

— BOAZ MIZRACHI
continued on page 14

Data collected 
from the Tactile 
Processor

