Spinout About: Energy and Eatron Technologies secured funding from UKRI’s Faraday Battery Challenge to create a pioneering AI-driven decision engine. This innovation aims to enhance battery lifespan, expedite time-to-market, and solidify the UK's role as a frontrunner in AI-powered intelligent battery management systems.
Image Credit: University of Birmingham
Present battery management systems (BMS) rely on basic, practical techniques that trade accuracy for lower computational demands. Conversely, integrating conventional AI-powered methods into BMS proves challenging due to their intricate nature, demanding training requirements, and the necessity for extensive input data.
About: Energy spun out of the University of Birmingham and Imperial College London in 2022 and launched its first product - a proprietary software platform called “The Voltt” - in April 2023.
The new venture, named aiMAGINE, amalgamates About:Energy's cutting-edge, precise electrochemical battery models for swift and precise calibration. This collaboration with Eatron harnesses their distinctive edge and AI-powered cloud platform to provide remarkably accurate evaluations of state-of-charge (SoC), state-of-health (SoH), and patented predictions for remaining useful life (RUL).
The integration of AI with electrochemical models enriches predictions by addressing intricate physical behaviors that are beyond modeling capabilities. Consequently, the innovative AI-powered decision engine (AI-DE) will furnish the BMS with remarkably precise operational parameters, substantially prolonging battery pack lifespan and streamlining integration processes.
Implementing our novel AI-powered intelligent battery software layer with this revolutionary AI-DE can extend a battery pack’s first life by up to 20%. This makes it possible for OEMs to design optimally-sized, more cost-effective battery packs, and this actively contributes to our sustainable e-mobility goals by reducing raw material consumption and CO2 emissions.
Dr. Umut Genc, CEO, Eatron
Dr. Kieran O’Regan, Co-Founder and COO, About:Energy notes, “The use of our advanced electrochemical models vastly streamlines AI model training, and this facilitates both ease of integration and a reduced time-to-market for OEMs and Tier 1s. The high-fidelity modeling reduces the need for physical experiments while delivering a clearer, more accurate picture of battery health. Armed with this information, an AI-DE-equipped BMS can deliver not just a longer battery lifetime, but faster charging times, too.”
Leveraging their established connections with OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, Eatron and About:Energy aims to adapt the system for application in both two- and four-wheeled electric vehicles. This collaborative endeavor was initiated subsequent to their initial partnership discussions at the Battery Technology Global Business Innovation Programme in Japan.
Innovate UK facilitated this convergence, gathering some of the UK’s most promising innovators in battery development and technology.
The funding from UK Research and Innovation’s Faraday Battery Challenge, administered by Innovate UK, constitutes a segment of an £11 million initiative. This initiative targets the expeditious advancement and market introduction of cutting-edge battery technologies within the UK. Its aim is to bolster the growth of the domestic battery sector's supply chain.
Integral to the UK Government's net zero transport objectives, this initiative not only fosters job opportunities in advanced AI technologies but also enhances consumer trust in electric vehicles.