Ford and security leader ADT announced a $100 million standalone joint venture on Tuesday called Canopy to help prevent theft from vehicles using sensors and AI.
Canopy will initially provide in 2023 an after-market security product for customers to install a camera in a cargo vehicle or pickup that faces toward the rear and relies on AI to identify and report credible threats and trigger an alarm when signs and sounds of breaking glass or metal cutting or “suspicious sounds or motion” near a vehicle are detected.
The insights collected will be distributed to an app to send notifications to vehicle owners. Acoustic sensors, onboard cameras, radar, LTE and GPS are the technologies involved.
“Thanks to AI it will distinguish between true threats and benign ones such as a cat in a pickup or nearby construction sounds,” said Christian Moran, interim CEO of Canopy in a phone call with reporters.
A video Ford and ADT released shows how the system works, even including an audible, “Hey, get away from my truck” from a remote truck owner on receiving an alert. That two-way capability will be available after the initial launch.
Canopy was incubated inside Ford using Ford AI and ADT professional security monitoring. The technology will have the ability to connect signs of a theft to an ADT personnel who may notify authorities if necessary.
Moran said the product will be self-installed initially in any vehicle, not just Ford trucks or cars, and then will be integrated into later vehicles. He said the upfront price and service cost will be announced later.
The goal of the joint venture and the technology is to stop vehicle theft before it occurs, said Franck Louis-Victor, vice president of Ford New Businesses Platforms. He said the FBI reported more than $7 billion of stolen work equipment in 2020. “It is absolutely huge in the U.S. and security is top of mind for customers. Vehicle thefts have risen in the pandemic,” Louis-Victor said.
Software services, such as Canopy provides, are expected to be a $20 billion market for the auto industry in 2030, he added.
An ADT spokesperson said it has worked for the past two years curating a set of data to train the AI to distinguish benign from actual thefts and has validated those models through pilots. It will continue to invest in collecting data as necessary, the company said.
However, Louis-Victor described Canopy as a premium service that “won’t use any data to make any business that is not directly for the Canopy services.”
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