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nuTonomy, a software developer for autonomous vehicles, has secured $3.6 million (£2.5m) in seed funding from Signal Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Fontinalis Partners, and Dr. Steven LaValle.

The funding will boost the company’s work in the US as well as in Singapore, collaborating on the testing of autonomous vehicle technology. At present, nuTonomy’s software is being integrated and piloted with auto OEMs in the US and Europe, with the target of implementing self-driving features in the next few years.

nuTonomy is developing a new technique for decision-making based on methods that have been used in the development of spacecraft, airplanes and other complex automated vehicles. Other approaches to autonomous driving, the company claims, involve cumbersome logic and result in vehicles that travel in a jerky manner.

nuTonomy’s founders have been researching and developing autonomous vehicle technology since 2005. The MIT-based personnel, which started nuTonomy, have formulated robotic technology with funding from NASA and DARPA, who have built and trialled dozens of autonomous vehicle prototypes over the past 10 years.

Co-founder and CTO, Emilio Frazzoli, has overseen the first open-to-the-public pilot of on-demand automated vehicles, which took place in Singapore in 2014, where over 500 Singaporean citizens made use of an Uber-like service to request driverless transportation throughout the Jurong Lake Gardens, a central public park. This pilot helped prove the demand for autonomous vehicle technology in Singapore. nuTonomy has built upon this experience to develop technology for city-wide management of autonomous vehicle fleets in urban settings.