Safety Without Compromises: Retrospect Offers a Holistic, Risk‑Based Approach to Making Autonomous Vehicles Safer

Michael Woon and his team at Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Retrospect aim to make autonomous vehicle operations safer through their proprietary software tools, data analysis, training, and consultations.

Founded in 2018 by CEO Woon and Mike Diaz, head of software, Retrospect offers a software platform called RiskEngine, an in-vehicle tool that monitors and assesses how an autonomous vehicle (AV) operates. It provides “a holistic, risk-based scoring” of planned trajectories and detects all potential risk disturbances, according to the company website.

Michael Woon [Courtesy photo]

The company motto is “Functional safety. No compromises.”

Still in their infancy, autonomous vehicles have had a handful of concerning accidents and close calls, some of which are shown as examples on Retrospect’s website.

Woon and his team were ahead of the curve on identifying the importance of an independent safety evaluation of AVs. While many manufacturers and operators have their own safety assessments, Retrospect offers “a universal way to talk about AV risk” and “the first publicly available risk metric for AVs,” both of which are sure to appeal to regulators, insurers, and AV customers.

Woon said, “We knew that Autonomous Vehicle safety assurance was a tremendously huge problem for AV companies and public regulators that was not being addressed in 2018-2019,” adding that he knew it would take “a very rare, specialized skillset in Controls Development & Safety Certification to solve.”

Prior to founding Retrospect, Woon served as a senior automotive safety consultant for autonomous vehicles at kVA and as an advanced powertrain controls engineer in GM’s hybrid and electric vehicles group.

‘A 4-year degree’s worth of advice in a few months’

Woon was one of 10 founders to participate in the 2024 Capital One Accelerator, a mobility-focused program that helps startups develop business plans, become capital-ready, build connections, and fine-tune their pitches.

Woon praised the benefits he’d received from participating in the Accelerator, saying that it has been “a much-needed cohort of well-positioned, like-minded entrepreneurs in the mobility sector who have shared candid and invaluable advice with each other.”

He added, “The encouragement and connection, alone, is a life-saver (I can’t emphasize that enough for founders), but the experts, advisors, and mentors that Capital One has brought in have packed a 4-year degree’s worth of advice in a few months in two-hour, bi-weekly meetings you couldn’t find anywhere else—and I’ve been in other accelerators and bootcamps.”

Woon concluded, “The odds are against all entrepreneurs. Not at Capital One’s mobility Accelerator.”

A new dashboard for AV safety and securing investors

In recent weeks Retrospect launched the first Critical Events Dashboard for Autonomous Vehicle Safety, which is now available for public review and assessment. “What starts as a simple demonstration of US incidents today, we hope will evolve into a global solution for managing and assessing autonomous safety,” the company said on LinkedIn.

Unveiled at the Transportation Research Board’s ARTS2024 event last month in San Diego, the company invites folks to follow the dashboard’s progress as more events are added each month.

Up next, Woon is eager to restructure from a boot-strapped, customer-funded pre-seed LLC into a Delaware C-Corp with a “re-crystalized Cap Table setup in CARTA.”

He said the company has two previous customers who have expressed interest in investing in Retrospect and who have connections to AV regulators in the European Union.

“Securing Angel investors and early partnerships and funding will get us our first major AV customer deal in 2024, setting us up for Seed round [at the] end of 2025 or early 2026 given financial and technical validation,” Woon said.

Capital One is a Dallas Innovates Platinum partner. “Safety Without Compromises: Retrospect Offers a Holistic, Risk-Based Approach to Making Autonomous Vehicles Safer” was written and edited by Dallas Innovates’ brand studio.