autonomous vehicles
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Carnegie Mellon will help Argo AI advance its self-driving vehicle tech
Ford's autonomous vehicle arm Argo AI is already testing self-driving vehicles in a handful of cities. But the company has a few key puzzles to solve before it can deploy its fleets on a large scale. To help answer the remaining questions -- like how can autonomous vehicles reason in highly unstructured broken-traffic conditions -- Argo is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The newly formed Carnegie Mellon University Argo AI Center for Autonomous Vehicle Research will work to advance the next-generation of self-driving tech.
Ford will test new self-driving cars in Detroit
Ford is testing a new fleet of self-driving vehicles in its homebase of Detroit. Argo AI, Ford's autonomous vehicle arm, announced it would deploy its third-generation vehicles in Detroit and Corktown. The Ford Fusion Hybrids will be equipped with a "significantly upgraded sensor suite", as well as new sets of radar and cameras with higher resolution and higher dynamic range, wrote Argo AI president Pete Rander in a blog post.
Volkswagen ends deal with self-driving startup Aurora
Volkswagen is cutting ties with Silicon Valley self-driving startup Aurora after only a year, amidst talks of working with Ford's Argo AI instead. Financial Times reported the news of the split, adding that VW expects to reach a deal with Argo AI this summer. Sources told FT that VW declined to renew its contract with Aurora after a trial run, ending some projects earlier this year.
Lyft has completed 55,000 self-driving rides in Las Vegas
One year ago, Lyft launched its self-driving ride service in Las Vegas. Today, the company announced its 30-vehicle fleet has made 55,000 trips. That makes it the largest commercial program of its kind in the US. Unsurprisingly, Lyft says it's thrilled. "So far, we've been very pleased with what we've heard from our passengers taking a self-driving ride with us in Las Vegas," the company wrote in a blog post.
Waymo resumes testing self-driving trucks in Arizona
Waymo -- Alphabet's autonomous vehicle company -- announced that it would resume testing its trucks on Phoenix freeways. The company had pulled its Class 8 trucks off the road back in 2017, after some brief tests in the state. Tests of the self-driving trucks will commence in Phoenix this week, a Waymo spokeswoman told Engadget over email. Each truck will be operated by two "trained" drivers, with the eventual goal being to move towards a completely driverless model.
Daimler has a plan to get autonomous trucks ready for the road
Daimler Trucks is creating a global organization focused on putting automated trucks on the road over the next decade. The Autonomous Technology Group will be in charge of building an automated roadmap for the trucks, as well as setting up the appropriate operations infrastructure and network. The new initiative comes right after Daimler announced a $570 million investment into automated trucks at CES in Las Vegas back in January.
Einride's autonomous truck begins daily delivery test in Sweden
Swedish AV startup Einride has begun testing its all-electric delivery truck on a public road in Sweden. As a part of a year-long trial, the Einride T-Pod truck began the first of what will be many daily freight deliveries this week in the city of Jönköping. The 26-ton truck, which we took for a test spin during MWC, is operated completely remotely via a 5G network -- the vehicle doesn't even have a driver cabin for a backup driver.
Lyft hires ex-Google engineer to be its new head of AI
Lyft announced today that it is hiring Tal Shaked, an engineer who previously worked at Google, to serve as its first-ever head of machine learning and artificial intelligence. According to the company, Shaked will largely be focusing on improving technologies used to match riders and drivers and finding new ways to apply machine learning to the ride sharing firm's platform. Essentially, Shaked's job will be to make Lyft's services smarter.
FarmWise and Roush are making autonomous vegetable weeders
Silicon Valley startup FarmWise Labs announced today that it is teaming up with Michigan-based manufacturing and automotive company Roush to create autonomous vegetable weeders. The companies will work together over the course of the year to create prototypes for self-driving robots that will be able to navigate across crops. If all goes well, they will start to scale up with additional units in 2020.
Tesla alleges self-driving car startup Zoox stole company secrets
Tesla filed a lawsuit this week against four former employees for allegedly stealing trade secrets and providing them to a rival company. According to the complaint filed with the US district court for Northern California, the ex-Tesla workers gave confidential information to autonomous vehicle start-up Zoox. The documents allegedly allowed the company to accelerate the development of its technology by cribbing off of Tesla's proprietary work.
Optimus Ride is testing its self-driving shuttle in the Brooklyn Navy Yard
New York City is getting a self-driving shuttle, sort of. Optimus Ride announced plans to deploy its self-driving system at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the second quarter of this year. The vehicles will run in a closed loop on the Navy Yard's private roads. While this is a far cry from self-driving shuttles weaving through Times Square, the company claims this is first commercial self-driving vehicle program in the state of New York.
GM is doubling the staff for its self-driving car business
General Motors is ramping up its autonomous vehicle business. According to Reuters, the company is planning to hire 1,000 people over the next nine months to work on Cruise, a GM subsidiary that develops self-driving car technology. The hiring spree would double the amount of staff currently under the Cruise umbrella and would mark a major investment in autonomous efforts.
Las Vegas taps Elon Musk's Boring Company for transport project
Your next visit to Las Vegas might include a peek at the possible future of transportation. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has recommended choosing Elon Musk's The Boring Company to develop an underground tunnel loop that would use autonomous electric vehicles to shuttle people around the city's Convention Center (aka the LVCC). A proposed expansion (below) would include a much larger loop that would cover much of the Strip, McCarran International Airport and Las Vegas Stadium.
Singapore is testing Volvo's full-sized driverless buses
Universities have proven solid training grounds for self-driving shuttles in Michigan and Melbourne. Now, a campus in Singapore is set to test a full-sized autonomous bus from Volvo. The Swedish auto-maker's single-deck 7900 electric vehicle will carry up to 80 passengers at a time from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
I drove an autonomous delivery truck from 1,200 miles away
With all the talk of 5G phones at MWC this week, it's easy to forget about the practical uses for the public, enterprise and more. Applications across a range of industries are on display in Barcelona, and one of the most interesting is from Einride. The Swedish company has already made headlines for its T-pod autonomous, and all-electric, delivery truck. Einride later revealed the T-log, a version of the T-pod, but as the name suggests, a model designed for logging. Here in Barcelona, the company is showing off a new setup for the first time: a system that allows someone to operate the T-pod truck remotely over 5G. And in this particular case, from over a thousand miles away.
Nissan's autonomous chairs politely carry you through queues
Back in February, Nissan took a break from rolling out electric vehicle chargers to develop intelligent office chairs that pushed themselves in. It wasn't a new product, but a proof-of-concept stunt to demonstrate their assistive parking technology. But with new developments to show off comes a new seat demonstration. Voila: The Nissan chair that queues in line for you.
Driverless buses to hit Finnish city's streets
Finland has been testing autonomous EasyMile buses on public roads for a little while now, but away from the hustle and bustle of its big cities. Now the Scandinavian country is ready to try out the adorable, driverless people-movers on the mean streets of Helsinki.
Dear Veronica: All hail our robot chauffeur overlords!
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-412137{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-412137, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-412137{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-412137").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Welcome back to Dear Veronica! This week, I struggle with issues of control -- mainly, how ready am I to enter into the world of autonomous vehicles? It's a tricky subject, since we've still got some time before robots rule the roads, but worth thinking about! I also share some of my favorite tools for posting to social media, and we will all help Mohsin figure out which AAA shooter he wants to drop his money on. Help him decide in the poll below! Subscribe in iTunes, RSS or YouTube!
Google's self-driving cars don't crash as much as humans do
Evidence is already starting to pile up that autonomous vehicles are pretty darn safe, but would you like to slap a number on it? Okay, we've got one: according to a study commissioned by Google itself, self driving cars get in one less crash per million miles driven than human-controlled vehicles. Or, in other words, a self-driving car is 27-percent less likely to crash over a extended period of time.
NHS vehicles trial tech that turns traffic lights green on command
Traffic lights are a pet peeve for many city-dwelling drivers. You'll be running late for a meeting, but all of your attempts to make up the time are thwarted by successive red lights. Bad luck on the road can be particularly problematic for ambulances in the UK -- when they're rushing to the scene of an accident, every second counts. To help out, Newcastle University is spearheading a new project that gives NHS vehicles priority at the lights.
