Calyo, together with Benedex LTD and Cranfield University, has secured £1.25 million in grant funding provided by the UK Government through the CAM Pathfinder Demonstrate competition for DRIVEN BY SOUND+, an 18-month project developing and demonstrating an all-weather perception subsystem for automated vehicles. 

DRIVEN BY SOUND+ builds on the partners’ earlier DRIVEN BY SOUND⁠ programme, which brought Calyo, Benedex and Cranfield University together to develop and demonstrate a functional safety sensing platform based on Calyo’s 3D ultrasound technology. DRIVEN BY SOUND+ takes that work from successful on-vehicle demonstration towards an integrated, commercially deployable perception system. 

At its core is Calyo Pulse, which uses ultrasound to generate detailed 3D information about the environment immediately around a vehicle. Unlike conventional ultrasonic parking sensors, Pulse provides volumetric near-range perception designed to complement cameras, LiDAR and radar. 

The project will combine Pulse with Calyo PxAI, its edge AI compute platform, together with AI/ML perception pipelines and multi-sensor fusion. The focus is on reliable near-range perception in challenging conditions including rain, fog, spray, glare and low illumination, where optical sensing can degrade.   

A key element of DRIVEN BY SOUND+ is the integration of Calyo’s perception technology with Benedex’s vehicle control and safety platform capabilities. The partners will develop interfaces between perception and vehicle control, allowing information on obstacles, perception confidence and degraded operation to support vehicle responses and minimum-risk manoeuvres. 

Dr Mihai Caleap, Founder and CEO of Calyo and project lead, said: 

DRIVEN BY SOUND showed that 3D ultrasound can give an automated vehicle a fundamentally different way of perceiving its surroundings. DRIVEN BY SOUND+ takes the next step, from demonstrating what ultrasound can see to building an integrated perception system that can operate alongside the vehicle’s existing sensors and autonomous driving software. 

Reliable autonomy needs diversity in how a vehicle senses the world. Ultrasound gives us an independent source of near-range information, particularly in difficult environmental conditions. 

Together with Benedex and Cranfield, we can take that perception from the sensor, through AI and safety processing, and into the vehicle itself. That complete system is what we are now setting out to demonstrate. 

Snir Benedek, CEO of Benedex, said: 

Safe automated driving depends not only on detecting the environment, but on connecting that perception reliably to vehicle behaviour. 

By combining Calyo’s 3D ultrasound perception with Benedex’s vehicle control and safety integration technology, DRIVEN BY SOUND+ gives us the opportunity to demonstrate a genuinely integrated perception-to-action system and the additional resilience it can bring to automated vehicles. 

Importantly, the architecture is designed to be transferable. By integrating redundant perception directly into autonomy-ready vehicle controllers, the same approach can be applied across different vehicle classes and mobility platforms, creating opportunities well beyond a single demonstrator vehicle. 

Cranfield University will support automated driving integration, simulation, data collection and on-road validation using a drive-by-wire research vehicle. The system will progress through simulation and hardware-in-the-loop testing before being demonstrated on-road in representative UK conditions.  

The project will also integrate with modern automated-driving software, including ROS2-compatible interfaces and an Autoware-aligned architecture, helping vehicle manufacturers and automated driving developers evaluate and adopt the technology. 

By project end, the consortium is targeting an integrated perception subsystem validated at TRL 6-7, supported by on-road demonstrator evidence and structured safety artefacts for future commercial evaluation.   

The resulting technology has potential beyond passenger vehicles, including autonomous commercial and specialist vehicles, industrial mobility and mobile robotics where robust near-range perception is critical. 

About CAM Pathfinder 

CAM Pathfinder is funded by UK Government, delivered by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade in partnership with Zenzic and Innovate UK. 

As part of the UK Government’s £150 million CAM Pathfinder programme, delivered by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade in partnership with Zenzic and Innovate UK. All UK Government grant funding is subject to HMG approval. 

About Calyo 

Calyo is a Bristol-based deep-tech company developing AI-enabled 3D ultrasound perception for autonomous vehicles and machines. 

Its Calyo Pulse platform enables machines to perceive their surroundings in three dimensions using sound, providing a complementary perception layer alongside cameras, LiDAR and radar. Calyo PxAI brings this sensing together with edge AI compute, real-time perception processing and multi-sensor integration, supporting complete on-vehicle perception systems. 

ENDS