According to Reuters, the BlackBerry Unmanned Vehicle R&D Center was unveiled today. After officially abandoning the mobile phone business in September this year, BlackBerry has gradually become a force in the automotive industry, and it is becoming one of the indispensable forces in the current unmanned arms race.

One of the pioneers of smartphones, BlackBerry is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The Prime Minister’s Office said on Sunday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend the unveiling ceremony hosted by local companies. A BlackBerry spokesperson declined to comment on the matter before Monday.

BlackBerry, once known for its mobile phone business, has squandered the company's future in the more profitable software manufacturing and mobile device management business after chopping most of the smartphone market to Apple and Samsung. It is expanding its investment in QNX, a subsidiary of Ottawa, to focus on developing advanced driver assistance and autonomous vehicle technology.

QNX's industrial-oriented software solutions have been used to develop the now-abandoned BlackBerry operating system. After taking this detour, BlackBerry is currently focusing on how its embedded software systems and the large number of sensors and cameras needed to drive autonomous vehicles. Interact with other components.

But compared to Silicon Valley, which has invested heavily in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the BlackBerry, which is more financially constrained, has not been seen as a reliable companion.

“What QNX is doing is providing an infrastructure that you can use to build upper-level algorithms or to get data from sensors steadily,” says Sebastian Fischmeister, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, who started working with QNX in 2009. John Wall, head of QNX, said in an interview on Friday, "Our role is to provide a software foundation for these high-performance computing platforms."

The Blackberry and Waterloo University research team obtained permission to test Lincoln Auto Autopilot-related features on public roads in Ontario last month. Blackberry has signed a direct cooperation agreement with Ford in Detroit with the goal of bringing autonomous vehicles to market in 2021.

John Wall pointed out that BlackBerry is also discussing similar discussions with other "more than one or two" major global automakers, but he also said that "the current highly autonomous auto-driving technology will take a long time to fully Mature."

QNX has provided infotainment and communication systems for millions of cars, giving automakers an option to give them a glimpse of how Tesla, Uber and Google are advancing their autonomous driving programs. . "If the BlackBerry can prove that they have a complete and secure solution, then the BlackBerry can dominate the market for self-driving car operating systems," said Sam Fiorani, an analyst at AutoForecastSolutions.

But the risks remain, QNX faces challenges from chip makers like Intel, which are targeting the market for future autonomous vehicle processors. In order to sell more processor chips, they may discount or even give their own protection and security software. "Some of these companies can afford very large short-term profit losses in pursuit of future market share," said Chris Rommel, director of embedded technology research at VDC Research.