Ebbon Group moves into automotive AI with Zegami partnership

Ebbon Group has moved into artificial intelligence (AI) with a new partnership with Zegami, and the creation of a new business entity, Ebbon Intelligence.

Ebbon Intelligence will be 80% owned by the Ebbon Group and 20% by Zegami.

Ebbon Group have invested in perpetual rights to use the existing technology assets and future developments of Zegami for all the automotive sector.

A team from Zegami will also work with Ebbon on an ongoing basis to help adapt technologies for the fleet, rental, risk, compliance, and other related automotive sectors.

The group says the first practical application of the new relationship is likely to be in the field of smart repair and damage identification.

This will allow the pinpoint accurate assessment of the depth and detail of the damage to vehicles during lease or rental periods.

Robert Pilkington, director at Ebbon Group, said: “We are very excited by this new venture with Zegami. Their cloud-based platform is extremely sophisticated, highly visual and has been used at the cutting edge of machine learning-based healthcare and life science.

“Its strength lies in analysing large imaging databases and the use of machine learning to extract meaningful insight in a host of practical applications.

“Our focus initially will be on vehicle damage systems and identification of the changes in condition of vehicles between hires for rental, movements for leasing and for potential applications to commercial vehicles from our DAVIS compliance platform.

“We also believe the new venture will allow us to identify and exploit many future opportunities, especially in areas such as vehicle and driver risk and safety management.”

Ebbon-Dacs reported a sharp increase in usage of its electronic vehicle delivery and collection solution, MoDel, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Zegami combines advanced image analysis and AI algorithms to manage and “unlock” the value of large data sets.

Craig Gibbin, Ebbon Group co-director, said: “Our aim is to stay ahead in the markets in which we operate and we believe the application of AI will allow us to both enhance our existing platforms and enter new fields that help the entire automotive sector.”

The business was born out of a collaboration led by Roger Noble, Zegami’s CEO and Oxford University scientist Steve Taylor, Zegami’s chief scientific officer.

It was founded as a spin off from the University of Oxford in 2016 after enabling a cancer research project to simultaneously analyse large collections of images and data with machine learning.

Roger Noble, CEO and founder at Zegami, said: “We are really excited to be working with the Ebbon team, who are leading experts in the application of imaging AI to the automotive sector.

“It perfectly builds on the scientific and medical imaging applications and expertise we have built up over the last five years.”