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Volvo and Baidu team up to build self-driving cars for China
It's not just Ford that's working with Baidu to develop self-driving cars for the Chinese market -- Volvo has also revealed its team-up with the tech giant. While Ford announced the partnership earlier, the Swedish luxury automaker says it's the "first foreign car maker to collaborate this closely with Baidu" when it comes to autonomous vehicles. The two companies will pool their resources to create and mass produce electric and fully autonomous vehicles when the time comes: Volvo will be in charge of developing the cars themselves, which will be powered by Baidu's Apollo autonomous driving platform.
Comma.ai's driver assist system is a robot chauffeur for the rest of us
Autonomous vehicle technology is just starting to go mainstream, which means, for the most part, it's still only available to those who can afford a Tesla with Autopilot or a Cadillac with SuperCruise. Both of those cars start at around 60 to 70 grand by the way. So where's the digital chauffeur for the rest of us? Enter Comma.ai.
NVIDIA aims to make self-driving safer with virtual simulations
Amid the torrent of news at CES in January, it was easy to miss the unveiling of NVIDIA's Drive platform -- a way for the company to test out its self-driving algorithms through repeated simulations. At that point, it was more of a concept than an actual product. Today, the company revealed its Drive Constellation system, a multi-server setup that'll let its partners run those self-driving simulations on their own. Think of it as The Matrix for autonomous algorithms: It's a way to train those vehicles to deal with extreme situations, without endangering anyone in the real world. The news comes after NVIDIA announced that it'll be pausing its self-driving testing on roads, following last week's fatal Uber self-driving accident.
Mercedes-Benz on the global training of AI for cars
As the development of autonomous cars moves forward, there are some hurdles that require researchers to travel to countries other than their own. For example, Mercedes-Benz just completed a five-month drive through five continents to encounter situations specific to each region to help the automaker train its AI. Christoph Von Hugo, head of active safety for Daimler AG, joined us onstage to talk about the drive and how the data will be used as a foundation for future self-driving car development. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.
Can Tesla avoid becoming the BlackBerry of electric cars?
It wasn't that long ago that the idea of a semi-autonomous, or even an electric car, driving on public roads was incredibly far-fetched. Sure, there were hybrids from companies like Toyota and Honda, but nothing that anyone with a straight face would call cool. Tesla changed all that, first with its roadster but then (more importantly) with its Model S and Autopilot. Its cars had an EV range of more than 200 miles and made caring about the environment and driving "the future" a status symbol. Tesla changed everything in the automotive world and now, well now, the industry has caught up and Elon Musk's company is mired in what he calls "production hell."
VW taps Google's quantum computers to help develop EV batteries
Quantum computing is all the rage lately, with companies large and small looking for ways to create the technology and then use it to solve a range of issues. Microsoft has a new coding language for quantum computers, Intel has created a test chip for the new tech and scientists are looking for ways to use corkscrew light beams for future practical quantum computing applications. Now Volkswagen and Google are teaming up for comprehensive research in the field, looking to use quantum computers and AI to create better EV batteries, something that Toyota is also pursuing.
Waymo is training cops how to respond to autonomous car crashes
There are a lot of hurdles to clear before autonomous cars can fully take over the roadways. Chief among them is training the police on how to react and handle a self-driving car error, as spotted by Recode. Currently, Waymo is working with local police forces and first responders in Arizona, California, Texas and Washington to educate them on how to identify and access an autonomous car in the event of an accident.
Columbia researchers might have the key to wireless VR
The millimeter wave frequency has the potential to do a lot. So far it's helping power 5G cell networks, but research from Columbia Engineering could expand that to self-driving cars and virtual reality headsets. It's a little dense, but the key bit is that the team figured out a new nonreciprocal way to transmit the waves, by using "carefully synchronized high-speed transistor switched that route forward and reverse waves differently." The school says it's basically like two trains charging head on on the same track, with them switching tracks at the last possible second.
Cadillac’s Super Cruise maps are key to our robotaxi future
Cadillac is doing something new with LiDAR. Instead of sticking a puck on its cars, it's using the sensors to map the highways of the United States and Canada and geofence its semi-autonomous Super Cruise feature, instead of letting drivers use it anywhere they want. It seems like a bold move, but in reality, it's how self-driving cars will initially enter the market.
Networked self-driving cars are smarter and safer
You know what's better than one self-driving car on the road? Two, because then they can pool resources. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication isn't anything new, of course, but researchers at Switzerland's federal institute of technology, EPFL, are taking things one step further. By wirelessly connecting the LIDAR, sensors and navigation systems of two cars in convoy, both can get a fuller picture of the world around them.
US Senate reaches deal on self-driving cars
Democrats and Republicans can't get on the same page about most things, but robots driving cars is apparently a-okay no matter your political affiliation. After the House approved a bipartisan pact, both sides in the Senate agreed to a deal making it easier for Ford, GM and other automakers to get self-driving cars on public roads. "We expect adoption of self-driving vehicle technologies will save lives, improve mobility for people with disabilities, and create new jobs," Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Gary Peters (D-MI) said in a statement.
Lyft offers 400 scholarships for online self-driving car course
Online learning portal Udacity launched its first 36-week "nanodegree" course for self-driving car engineering last year. There's a new, introductory course available now as well, focused on bringing students with minimal programming into the larger program. Even better, Udacity has partnered with Lyft (which has self-driving plans of its own) to provide scholarships to the intro course in order to increase diversity to the program. 400 scholarships are available to US-based students with "varying levels of experience;" the application window closes October 1st.
Audi wants autonomous cars to run errands while you're at work
Audi laid out its plans for autonomous vehicles and how it intends to use AI to us back in July, and now the automaker is ready to show off what it's been working on. At this year's IAA auto show in Frankfurt, Audi debuted the AIcon and ElAIne (above and below), a pair of cars capable of Level 4 autonomy (conditional, but fully automated driving) that it claims are empathetic to their drivers' needs. "They will be able to continually interact with their surroundings and passengers, and thus adapt themselves in a better way than ever before to the requirements of those on board," Audi wrote in a lengthy press release.
A 114-year old Mercedes has more in common with a Tesla than you think
I'm extremely nervous to be behind the wheel of the 1902 model (built in 1903) Mercedes Simplex 40. The controls and open air sitting position remind me more of a John Deere tractor than the cars that currently fill our cities and interstates. After a quick tutorial, I got in, depressed the clutch, reached outside the cab to put the vehicle in first gear and nearly stalled an automobile that was the pinnacle of tech when it was built.
Audi knows millennials will have to deal with self-driving boredom
During Audi's elaborate introduction of its new (Level 3 autonomous) A8 in Barcelona, it also talked about the 25th Hour, a research project it says will "define the premium mobility of the future." Simply put, now that you're not driving, what do you do in an autonomous car?
Audi takes its self-driving car where others dare not go
The self-driving future has a ratings scale. The classifications begin at zero, where you're constantly in charge of all the car's acceleration, steering and braking. Basically a car without cruise control. It ends with Level 5, where the car that doesn't even need a steering wheel or a driver. Currently, if drivers want semi-autonomous features they're getting a Level 2 experience. Like Tesla's Autopilot or Cadillac's Super Cruise, the car can drive itself in specific situations (usually on the highway) but require the human behind the wheel to pay attention and take over at a moment's notice.
A car-tracking dongle could make self-driving systems better
George Hotz is intrigued by artificial intelligence. The man who hacked the iPhone and PlayStation 3 as a kid, has moved on to self driving cars with his company Comma AI because of the autonomous vehicle technology's reliance on machine learning. After an initial hiccup that involved the company cancelling a device that would make cars semi-autonomous (because of a run in with regulators), Comma AI is back The new $88 Panda OBD II dongle, like most universal car interfaces, plugs into your car (1996 or newer) and gathers data.
It takes a smart city to make cars truly autonomous
Artificial intelligence is driving the autonomous car. Coupled with robust computers, automobiles of the future will be more powerful than any other device we own. But they'll only be as powerful as their surrounding allows. If your vehicle doesn't know about a traffic jam along its route, like its human counterparts, it'll get stuck in gridlock. That's where connectivity comes in. When self-driving cars hit the road, they'll not only be computing juggernauts but also sharing data with everything all the time.
Elon Musk turned down Uber’s self-driving partnership offer
A new book on Uber by Fortune's Adam Lashinsky is coming out soon, but Bloomberg has revealed one juicy anecdote ahead of time. CEO Travis Kalanick reportedly called up Tesla CEO Elon Musk to propose a partnership on self-driving cars, but Musk rebuffed the offer and even tried to talk him out of it.
Self-driving cars could soon be cheaper and easier to build
There's no shortage of companies working on artificial intelligence for cars. If anything there's a glut. Every automaker and startup seems to be building a nearly sentient system designed to operate cars and avoid objects (especially humans). AImotive (pronounced "AI Motive" -- yeah, it's confusing) is doing the same thing, except it's also designing the accompanying hardware. What's more, it'll play nice with rival software platforms too. The ultimate goal is to create a suite that simplifies the way we connect different hardware configurations.
