WEATHER SHOULDN’T BE AN ISSUE

Sensible 4 was founded as an answer to a problem that was troubling the industry of self-driving cars — the issue of weather. The idea was that if self-driving vehicles ever were going to be part of our everyday life, they had to work everywhere, all the time.

Back in 2016, Harri Santamala was running a self-driving pilot in Espoo, Finland when he met with Jussi Suomela and Jari Saarinen from GIM Robotics. Harri told his new acquaintances that their autonomous shuttle wasn’t able to drive because it was raining.

This, of course, surprised Jussi and Jari, who didn’t see what the big fuss was about. They had been building robots for Finnish weather conditions for some time already.

Out of this first meeting, Sensible 4 was born.

LEVEL 4 AUTONOMY FOR ALL FOUR SEASONS

A couple of weeks later, Harri called Tommi Rimpiläinen and asked if he wanted to join. Three engineers weren’t going to do it. They needed someone with experience on the business side, to join them.

The name Sensible 4 was chosen to represent our sensible level 4 approach to self-driving. Everyone else was hyping full autonomy, so we took a different approach. Tackle smaller domains at the time, master them well and expand.

Another aspect of the name comes from the four seasons. Our autonomy has to work during all seasons of the year.