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Tekcapital Plc (AIM: TEK, OTCQB: TEKCF), the UK intellectual property investment group is pleased to present the technology update for Guident Corp, the US based subsidiary of Guident Ltd.

As part of our enhanced investor relations communications, we intend to release a series of newsletters focused on the technology of each portfolio company. We believe most shareholders understand the value proposition behind the product of each portfolio company, however the product roadmap has been progressing rapidly and we think it’s helpful to Keep everyone up to date on key developments.

Our initial discussion will cover Guident’s unique technology offerings:

1.    Vehicle Remote Monitoring and Control Centre (RMCC)

Guident’s teleoperations solutions consist of two main components. A small footprint communications device and the RMCC (remote monitoring and control centre) software solution.  

The communications device connects to several miniature high-definition video cameras and includes connectivity to both public (4G & 5G) wireless and private Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.

The RMCC consists of a cloud-based software solution connected to the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) fleets and to Guident’s RMCC. Guident’s solution is AV agnostic and can interact with any vehicle’s drive-by-wire system via ROS (robot operating system) or Application Programming Interface (API) integration.

The remote-control centre consists of multiple RCO (remote-control operator) stations equipped with vehicle controls including steering wheel, accelerator, and stop pedals as well as high-definition curved monitor displays. Large dashboard video wall-type displays provide real-time status of the AV fleets being controlled. RCOs continuously monitor their assigned AV fleet which is displayed with green labels, except when the AV encounters an edge case, at which point it stops and requests human assistance while changing its label from green to red. At that point, the RCO through the HD video cameras gains situational awareness to inspect the specific edge case. The RCO then takes control of the vehicle and remotely drives it around the obstruction or situation, and then returns control to the AV system to continue its mission path, at this point the vehicle is displayed with a green label.

Besides the green and red IRL (incident risk levels), Guident provides a yellow label through its patented Artificial Intelligence-based IRL predictive module. This module interacts with multiple data sources to analyze and predict the situations that may possibly disrupt the AV mission path. Data sources include vehicle sensor data, AV performance analysis, scene understanding, real-time traffic, work zone, weather, and other information. The assigned RCO is able to focus on the yellow IRL-level vehicles to attempt to anticipate the situation that may interrupt the mission path and turn the AV IRL to green status.

Current autonomy trends and concerns, and why this technology is needed.

The current state of technology in the automotive industry is experiencing a shift to driverless vehicles. For this reason, automated supervision or safety driver roles will be critical for decades to come for all levels of automation before reaching full autonomy SAE level 5.

We believe human supervised RMCC services enhances the safety and provides redundancy whilst implementing remote driverless solutions for various field use cases, including military applications.

Infrastructure requirements for implementation (e.g., hardware, software, facilities and network connections

There are three (3) components required for human supervised RMCC services for driverless or autonomous vehicles:

1.   RMCC – Remote Monitor and Control Centre

·       Remote-control operator stations include vehicle controls (steering wheel, pedals, other vehicle functions, etc.)

·       Control centre monitoring display dashboards.

2.   In-vehicle equipment

·         For vehicle location, a GPS device in autonomous vehicles, with RTK capabilities for precise location.

·         For remote teleoperation:

GUIDENT RMCC communication in-vehicle equipment.

Public/Private/Military mobile 5G/4G/LTE wireless network.

3.   Cloud service – private or private software telecom services, including AWS, Azure, Google, etc.

Benefits

The main benefits of human-supervised remote monitoring and control of driverless and autonomous vehicles include providing an additional layer of safety via remote operations to address edge cases and protection of humans from dangerous or unforeseen activities including but not limited to:

·    deadlock situations

·    navigation errors

·    accidents

·    allowing vehicle passengers to ask for information or assistance.

Based on ongoing conversations with potential customers, the company identified more potential applications including:

·    remote operation of material handling (teleoperation services of remote forklifts and other material handling equipment for warehouses)

·    remote operation of agricultural equipment

·    remote operation of mining equipment

·    remote operation of unmanned vehicles for military

The solution also creates cost savings achieved by proactive and predictive vehicle maintenance and support.

Guident is uniquely positioned to provide its teleoperation software stack protected by an intellectual property portfolio that includes seven (7) teleoperation-specific patents (5 granted & 2 pending) and copywritten software code for what we believe to be amongst the lowest glass-to-glass latency in the industry. In addition, we believe that Guident is the leading US-based teleoperation software solution providers that delivers a unique approach to teleoperations with its proprietary custom prediction module based on vehicle telemetry and field conditions data.

The business case for Guident has never been stronger and it includes following data points:

–     low latency connectivity and teleoperation is necessary for safer and cost-effective adoption of AVs. Guident’s methods and systems will help increase safety and help bridge the gap from Level 3 to Level 5 autonomy.

–     RMCC is fast becoming a legal requirement in numerous states in the US and other countries

See demonstration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRTgMRvv6wQ

2.   Regenerative Shock Absorbers (RSA)

RSA continuously recover the vehicle’s vibration energy that is otherwise dissipated as heat and friction. RSA’s convert the wasted heat energy into power, generating additional energy for recharging the vehicle battery to extend the vehicle’s range, or to provide energy to power other vehicle components. Anticipated benefits include:

–     Enhanced Sustainability for all vehicles in the fleet, including traditionally powered Internal Combustion Engine, hybrid and electric vehicles

–     Increased Energy Harvesting Efficiency by approximately 70% compared to current energy-harvesting shock absorbers

–     Increase range of EVs by up to 6-12 miles per charge

–     It can be tuned to match existing shock absorber damping characteristics and form factors

Recently the company evaluated a series of real-world RSA use conditions in their testing laboratory in Boca Raton, Florida. With precise force and displacement measurements, they are seeking to rigorously evaluate and quantify the advantages of their proprietary energy-harvesting shock absorbers over traditional oil-filled shock absorbers.

Watch more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc21clEuJbM

For further information, please contact:

About Tekcapital plc

Tekcapital creates value from investing in new, university-developed discoveries that can enhance people’s lives and provides a range of technology transfer services to help organisations evaluate and commercialise new technologies. Tekcapital is quoted on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange (AIM: symbol TEK) and is headquartered in the UK. For more information, please visit www.tekcapital.com.

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Forward-Looking Statements

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