On August 9, Manhe Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “NISAR” or “the Company”), a provider of intelligent driving platform-based tools and basic software in China, announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan in an angel financing round, all of which was exclusively invested by Chengwei Capital.
The round of fundraising will be mainly used to open up the existing tool chain development market, expand its core R&D team in Germany and China, test and validate closed-loop solutions, and take advantage of industrial resources to advance its R&D shift from tools to functions and from business stacks to operating systems. The Company will help OEMs to gradually realize the hardware-software separation from functional software, to basic software, and then to hardware from a top-level design perspective.
NISAR is an international company focusing on an intelligence-driven integration platform, with headquarters both in Germany, the birthplace of the modern automotive industry, and China, one of the world’s fastest-growing emerging markets. With more than ten years of deep front-line R&D experience in the German automotive and peripheral industries, the core team has been dedicated to creating an integrated flexible real-time operating system for intelligent vehicle development, a highly collaborative SaaS-based developer platform, and a powerful toolchain for artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, in a move to continuously improve the efficiency of deployment and development, and to form an open and win-win ecology for complex software systems across the automotive, robotics, agricultural automation and related industries.
The Company’s developer platform can be visualized as a business engine originally created for game development, providing a sophisticated toolchain based on in-depth industry knowhow, and linking every detail of a huge engineering system. Without the toolchain, it is difficult for even senior engineers to communicate with each other seamlessly. A sound toolchain can allow developers to do more with less. Endowed with the deep learning ability of AI, the whole toolchain can be continuously optimized in an automated fashion.
The SaaS-based developer platform, which is built upon the real-time operating system, allows system architects and developers to tailor their designs with proven widgets based on application scenarios, much like putting together Lego.
Now, the Company is taking the self-driving tool platform as a starting point and a first phase to help its partners in the industry quickly realize small-scale production of self-driving functions. The platform also combines traditional AutoSar architecture and new middleware into a plug-in system software package for different forms of domain control hardware, to create an integrated and flexible real-time operating system ecology by expanding its footprint into vehicle Ethernet applications from business stacks.
Dr. Zhu Ke, founder, CEO and CTO of NISAR, said, “Our strong team has long been committed to cutting-edge mass production projects alongside forward-looking scientific research efforts, in line with our love and passion for intelligent and automated technologies. We are aware that the development process requires a high level of openness and business continuity. From this standpoint, the platform is imperfect whether in China or in Germany. We are currently launching such a revolutionary product for the development and deployment of intelligent software systems that it will enable customers to get access to autonomous driving features, including personalized and customized functions, in a very short period of time.”
The development of automotive intelligence has presented huge challenges to OEMs and suppliers around the world, including faster time to market for each car model, personalized requirements for innovative functions pushing up the complexity of designs, and the rapid iteration advancing self-driving technology into a new cycle.
Dr. Zhu added that a new intelligent software system has placed higher demands on existing tools and system software throughout the overall development process, whether in terms of the complexity of the architecture and the algorithm, the frequency of scenario data iteration, or the diversity of integration and optimization. It’s not enough to meet the future market needs by simply improving or using a range of similar alternatives.
In response to the major pain points hobbling the industry, the Company’s real-time operating system is equipped with a set of functions, including the disassembly, design, description, debugging and integrated deployment of both systems and modules, under a unified platform where several functions can be activated at the same time. It can make business stack information integrated, data and object convection automated, and middleware operating systems open and compatible, along with the combination of compatible open source algorithms and AI-aided design and automation, providing a user-friendly experience and achieving greater synergy by allowing for agile development.
According to Dr. Zhu, NISAR‘s integrated platform can help developers greatly enhance the efficiency of their R&D and deployments regardless of project life-cycle and team size. Taking his experience in Audi’s zFAS development as an example, the leading and scrupulous German carmaker took 2 to 3 months to finish the planning and enter into mass production, even with every member of the R&D team in place. Now, using NISAR‘s integrated platform, such a project can be completed within a matter of days.
NISAR was established in both China and Germany in 2021. Dr. Zhu, the founder, graduated from Technical University of Munich, Germany. He has been engaged in big data analysis and parallel processing research at the German Aerospace Center for many years, and worked as a first-line core leader in German OEMs including Audi, Continental and TÜV SÜD as well as several Tier 1 suppliers for more than 10 years.
The Company’s core team members have, for the most part, previously held important positions at Volkswagen and Continental, with four having received their doctorates in engineering from the top universities in Germany and the United States. Over the past decade, they have both led and been deeply involved in multiple aspects of German automotive engineering especially the development of core functionalities in vehicle systems and in sensor technologies. The team also includes several veterans from the communications and IoT sectors.
NISAR fully expects that its cumulative experience in the German automotive industry can serve to upgrade the sector in China in a way that is truly transformative. What the Company seeks to achieve is not just bring in alternative forms of research and development, but to do something that represents a genuine quantum leap in terms of change.
Furthermore, NISAR looks forward to playing a role as a bridge for the common development of the Chinese and German automotive industries, becoming a mutually-trusted good partner between the auto sectors of both countries. The Company plans to also use its experience and know how in the car industry as an entry point to apply its design tools and system software in agriculture, forestry, mobile robotics and intelligent distributed energy sectors, and by adding intelligent functionalities to mobile terminals, form a cross-industry intelligent industrial operating system.
