AutonomousDriving
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Nissan’s IMk concept is a chic, boxy and electrified ‘Kei’ car
Nissan wants to show that tiny city "Kei" cars in Japan don't have to be pug-ugly. At the Tokyo Motor Show, it will unveil the IMk EV concept built on a new platform that "signals the future of Nissan design," the company said. While tiny, it packs Nissan's latest tech including the ProPilot 2.0 driver assistant, "seamless" connectivity and a powerful EV drivetrain for its size. The design, meanwhile, uses what Nissan calls "timeless Japanese futurism," and borrows liberally from the country's traditional arts and crafts.
Toyota will be first to use NVIDIA's self-driving simulator
NVIDIA has announced that its autonomous vehicle simulation platform Drive Constellation is now available and that Toyota will be the first customer. The cloud based platform, first announced by CEO Jensen Huang last year, will let self-driving car developers run tests on virtual, rather than real roads. Simulated vehicles can operate in situations ranging from routine to dangerous, "with greater efficiency, cost-effectiveness and safety than what is possible to achieve in the real world," NVIDIA said.
GM's self-driving car reportedly has trouble recognizing pedestrians
It seems that General Motors' self-driving car unit, Cruise, is running into major difficulties, and will likely not be able to hit its late 2019 launch target. Sources close to the project have told Reuters that engineers have been hitting unexpected technical challenges, like being able to detect objects if objects are in motion. For example, vehicles would hesitate or stop when passing a row of parked bicycles, would mistakenly see "phantom bicycles" that caused jerky stops, and would even fail to recognize pedestrians. "Nothing is on schedule," one GM source told Reuters, as Cruise has already missed mileage targets and milestones.
All Cadillacs will have semi-autonomous features starting in 2020
Every model Cadillac sells will be available with semi-autonomous features starting in 2020. The luxury automaker's Super Cruise system for hands-free highway driving will be available across its entire model line in two years; currently, it's exclusive to the CT6 sedan. After 2020, the feature will make its way to other GM lines including Chevrolet, Buick and GMC, according to TechCrunch.
BMW’s new research center is dedicated to autonomous driving
The world of autonomous cars is coming. Maybe it's a utopian future where all the vehicles drive themselves, while traffic jams and road rage are a thing of the past. Or maybe it's just a bunch of fancy robo-taxis (and hopefully buses) that ensure city commuting is less of a pain. No matter how it plays out, it's coming and BMW wants to be prepared, by establishing its own autonomous driving campus.
Police chief says Uber 'likely not' at fault in pedestrian accident
Yesterday, Uber called a halt to all self-driving tests after a highly publicized crash in Tempe, AZ, on Sunday evening. Now, it looks as though Uber might not be at fault for the accident. Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle that, based on footage from the vehicle's on-board cameras, "it's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how [the pedestrian] came from the shadows right into the roadway."
Ford's Co-Pilot360 tech will make driver-assists standard equipment
Contrary to what you might think, Ford isn't ignoring autonomous and driver assist systems, it just hasn't talked about them too much recently. As part of its Ford Uncovered event at its Michigan headquarters in Dearborn, the automaker announced its Co-Pilot360 automation suite. The plan is to make automatic emergency braking systems with pedestrian detection, blind spot avoidance, a lane keeping system, automatic high-beam headlamps and backup cameras standard equipment across most of its trucks and SUVs by 2020. If you want a peek at the tech, this fall the Ford Edge and Edge ST will arrive on showrooms with it.
CNBC: Tesla is working on its own AI chip with help from AMD (update: apparently not)
It's no secret that Tesla always wanted to develop an in-house chip to handle its cars' autonomous functions. Well, according to CNBC, the EV-maker is close to reaching that goal -- with help from AMD. The company is reportedly building its chip on top of AMD technology and is even working with AMD spin-off and chip fabricator GlobalFoundries to make its vision a reality. It also hired Jim Keller, who previously worked with AMD and Apple, to lead its chip division. In fact, they're far enough in the development process to be able to make samples of the processor's first implementation, and Tesla has already begun testing them.
Alphabet reportedly considers a $1 billion Lyft investment
Alphabet's autonomous driving aspirations are pretty well-known at this point. The company formerly known as Google owns Waymo, and as a way to further its interests in the space, it's apparently considering a $1 billion investment in Lyft according to Bloomberg. What does Lyft have to do with self-driving cars, pray tell? In May, Waymo and Lyft announced they were working together on testing self-driving taxis. Two months later Lyft announced it would start developing an autonomous platform as a "core" part of its business and that it'd begin licensing the tech out to hardware manufacturers (think: Ford, General Motors and Chrysler). This would give Alphabet another leg up in the space.
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.
Lyft will develop its own self-driving car tech to battle Uber
Lyft is getting into the autonomous driving game too, and opening a research facility in Palo Alto in case you were wondering just how serious the company is. In a post on Medium, the new division's vice president Luc Vincent writes that ten percent of the company's engineers are working on the tech and that that number will only increase as the project goes on. "We aren't thinking of our self-driving division as a side project," he told the New York Times. "It's core to our business."
The promise of self-driving cars starts with better 'eye-sight'
San Francisco's Pier 35 usually hosts cruise ship guests boarding and unboarding their giant floating hotels. It's a cavernous building hundreds of meters long which actually makes it the perfect indoor facility for demoing what 22 year-old Luminar CEO Austin Russell hopes is the future of LiDAR. The company has developed a higher-quality laser sensor that just might make it the darling of the autonomous car world.
GM challenges eight schools to build self-driving Chevy Bolts
Just about every major car company is trying to figure out the best way to build a self-driving car, and GM is tapping a handful of schools to help get the job done. Teams from Virginia Tech, the University of Waterloo, Kettering University, Michigan State University, Michigan Tech, the University of Toronto, Texas A&M and North Carolina A&T have been selected to apply their know-how to a very specific challenge. Long story short, they each have three years to load up a bog-standard Chevy Bolt EV with all the equipment it needs to self-drive on an urban testing course.
Investigation clears Tesla for fatal Autopilot crash
Last May a Tesla Model S ran into a tractor trailer in Florida while in Autopilot mode. The collision resulted in the death of the driver Joshua Brown and prompted an investigation by the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). Today that government agency concluded its investigation and found no defects with the vehicle's Autopilot or Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) features.
Audi and NVIDIA give an AI a crash course in driving
Many of the self-driving demonstrations at CES involved systems required months or even years of training. NVIDIA and Audi decided to see what they could do in four days.
George Hotz wants Comma AI to be the Android of autonomous driving
Hacker, entrepreneur, rabble rouser and freeform rapper George Hotz joined us on the Engadget stage at CES to talk about the decision to open-source his autonomous car research and the state of self driving. He also weighed in on California's regulatory system (he's not a fan) and how he's excited about the future of augmented reality.
Tesla's superfast P100D offers tech-heavy luxury for the rich
When you drive the $134,000 Tesla Model S P100D, you want to tell the world that it goes from 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds. You're like a child excited about a new toy, stopping strangers on the streets to regale them with your tales of wonder. But to many, that staggeringly quick acceleration has little to no meaning. They have no personal barometer to judge it against. They really have to experience it.
Delphi and MobilEye will demo their self-driving tech at CES
We'll finally get a chance to see what MobilEye's been up to since it split up with Tesla at CES 2017 in January. The company and its new partner Delphi will showcase their automated driving system called Centralized Sensing Localization and Planning (CSLP) at the yearly event in Las Vegas. They're calling CSLP the "first turnkey, fully integrated automated driving solution with an industry-leading perception system and computing platform." Their test vehicle will drive 6.3 miles of combined highway and urban roads to tackle various challenges drives face, including navigating tight city streets, looking out for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as merging on the highway.
ICYMI: Channel your Wall-E future with self-driving tech
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Nissan created smart chairs that autonomously move themselves while people are seated in them, modeled off of the car maker's ProPILOT driving system. The chairs are being used in Japan to keep people neatly in line outside of restaurants and when one chair has been vacated, it will move itself to the end of the row, while everyone else is bumped up.
Germany plans to require 'black boxes' in self-driving cars
Self-driving cars in Germany might end up having "black boxes" that can record details of accidents, similar to planes, Reuters reports. Sources say that the proposal from Germany's Transport Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, will also require that riders stay seated in front of the steering wheel, though they won't have to pay attention to traffic or actually steer. As you've probably guessed right now, the legislation follows the recent Tesla Autopilot-related driver death. Regulators and car companies alike will have to work even harder to prove the safety of self-driving cars.
