What Is Vehicle Intelligence?
Vehicle intelligence is the use of AI to interpret what a vehicle’s cameras and sensors capture, covering the driver, the vehicle’s motion and the road around it, and to act on it in real time. Where telematics reports where a vehicle went and how it moved, vehicle intelligence aims to understand why risk is building and help prevent collisions.
Vehicles already produce a lot of data. GPS reports where they are. Accelerometers record harsh braking. Engine systems report fuel use and faults. For years, fleets used this data mainly to look backwards: to see where a vehicle had been and what had gone wrong.
Vehicle intelligence adds understanding. By combining cameras, sensors and AI models, often running on the vehicle itself, it can tell what is happening around and inside the vehicle as it happens. That is the difference between knowing a driver braked hard and knowing they braked hard because they looked down at a phone while traffic ahead was stopping.
Vehicle intelligence vs. telematics
- Telematics collects location, speed and vehicle diagnostics and sends them to the cloud. It is good at reporting what the vehicle did.
- Vehicle intelligence adds vision and AI. It can see the driver and the road, judge risk in context and respond in the moment, for example with an in-cab alert.
The two are complementary. Telematics answers where and how fast. Vehicle intelligence answers why, and what is likely to happen next.
What does vehicle intelligence observe?
A vehicle intelligence system combines signals from several sources:
- The driver: attention, distraction and signs of drowsiness, read by a driver-facing camera.
- The vehicle: speed, acceleration, braking, turning and following distance.
- Traffic: other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists around it.
- The road: road type, weather, surface condition and changes such as work zones.
No single signal decides much on its own. The value comes from reading them together. Two moderate risks, such as a short glance away and a short following distance, can add up to one urgent one.
Edge AI: why the processing happens in the vehicle
Some decisions cannot wait. A collision warning that arrives after a round trip to the cloud is a report, not a warning. Vehicle intelligence systems therefore run their time-sensitive models on a device in the vehicle, often an AI dash cam, so that alerts reach the driver while there is still time to act. The cloud is used for what can wait: organizing events for review, scoring and coaching, and training and testing models.
What can vehicle intelligence do?
- Warn drivers in real time about distraction, drowsiness and developing collision risk.
- Score risk across drivers and over time, through a driver risk score.
- Focus coaching on the behaviors that carry the most risk.
- Explain incidents with video and motion data assembled automatically.
- Map the road, when many connected vehicles together record road conditions and real driving events.
Aftermarket and built-in vehicle intelligence
Vehicle intelligence reaches vehicles in two ways. Aftermarket devices, usually a dual-facing camera on the windshield, bring it to vehicles already on the road and give a mixed fleet one consistent standard. Built-in systems use the cameras, sensors and computing power already in a new vehicle, so no extra device is needed. Many new vehicles already carry driver monitoring and ADAS sensors. The opportunity is to evaluate those signals together rather than as separate alerts.
Vehicle intelligence at Empiric Earth
Empiric Earth was formed when Nexar and Nauto came together. Nauto's fleet safety product was known as Nauto Vehicle Intelligence, and its capabilities now sit in Empiric Earth Fleet Intelligence: a dual-facing dash cam with on-device AI for real-time risk detection and driver alerts, plus software for risk scoring, coaching, incident review, compliance and fleet operations. Predictive Fusion™ Collision Alerts fuse driver attention, vehicle motion, traffic and road context into one judgement about collision risk.
For vehicle manufacturers, Embedded Solutions bring the same safety models into production vehicles, running on the vehicle's own sensors and compute. And across the whole network, connected devices have recorded more than 10 billion miles of real-world driving, which Empiric Earth's World Intelligence products turn into a searchable record of the road.
Browse related terms in the Empiric Earth glossary.
Questions fleets ask first.
Short answers, each written to stand on its own.
What is vehicle intelligence?
Vehicle intelligence is AI that interprets a vehicle’s cameras and sensors to understand the driver, the vehicle’s motion and the road around it, and acts on that understanding in real time, for example by alerting a distracted driver. It goes beyond telematics, which mainly reports location, speed and diagnostics.
What is the difference between telematics and vehicle intelligence?
Telematics reports what a vehicle did: where it went, how fast and whether it braked hard. Vehicle intelligence adds cameras and AI to understand why, by seeing the driver and the road, and can respond in the moment. Many fleets use both, with telematics for operations and vehicle intelligence for safety.
How does vehicle intelligence improve fleet safety?
It warns drivers about distraction, drowsiness and developing collision risk while they can still react, scores risk across drivers, focuses coaching on the behaviors that matter most and assembles video and data when an incident happens. Prevention in the moment is where most of the value comes from.
Does vehicle intelligence need a new vehicle?
No. Aftermarket devices, usually a dual-facing AI dash cam, add vehicle intelligence to vehicles already on the road. New vehicles can also run it built in, using their own cameras and sensors. Fleets with mixed makes and model years often use aftermarket devices for a consistent standard.
What is Nauto Vehicle Intelligence?
Nauto Vehicle Intelligence was the name of Nauto’s AI-powered fleet safety product. Nexar and Nauto are now Empiric Earth, and those fleet safety capabilities are part of Empiric Earth Fleet Intelligence. Existing Nauto customers keep their usual support process and contacts.
See it measured on the road.
Empiric Earth Fleet Intelligence turns these definitions into alerts, scores and evidence your team can act on.