AutonomousDriving
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Should autonomous vehicles save passengers or pedestrians?
Oh, humanity. New research published in Science shows that we, as a race, want to have our cake and eat it too when it comes to autonomous vehicles. Specifically, we're totally okay with self-driving cars that will sacrifice their passengers in favor of not harming pedestrians -- so long as we aren't the passengers when that happens. What's more, those surveyed would like other people to buy those self-sacrificing rides, but don't want to buy one themselves, and don't agree with the idea of enforcing regulations for them. Sure; this makes perfect sense.
Kia plans to deliver semi-autonomous driving features by 2020
Autonomous driving is all the rage these days, but luxury automakers have generated most of the buzz so far. At CES 2016, though, Kia is showing off an update on what it has in store future of driving, and it's doing so with its Soul EV. The company has already outfitted one of the compact SUVs with its next-gen ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) tech, a vehicle that has already been approved for on-road testing by the state of Nevada just last month. Kia is calling this effort Drive Wise, and it's serious about bringing the fully-autonomous systems to market.
Baidu's autonomous car completes full driverless testing
Baidu's working hard to catch up to Google's autonomous car tech, and just recently, its modified BMW 3 series has completed a rigorous, fully autonomous testing on mixed roads. The Chinese Google's autonomous car traveled an almost 19-mile route that began at its headquarters in Beijing without the intervention of a human driver. Wang Jing, its Autonomous Driving Unit's SVP, boasted: "Fully autonomous driving under mixed road conditions is universally challenging, with complexity further heightened by Beijing's road conditions and unpredictable driver behavior." The vehicle made right/left/U-turns, passed other cars and merged into traffic on its own while going at a top speed of 62 mph.
Ford gets serious with self-driving and 3D printing tech
Ford's new Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto must be doing well. The autonomous driving technologies the company's been developing in the facility, which are all part of its "Smart Mobility" plan announced at CES this year, are entering advanced engineering and implementation phase. For starters, the company will work on making its sensing and computing technology viable for actual use. It will also bring Pre-Collision Assist with Pedestrian Detection that's already loaded on Ford Mondeos in Europe to a Ford vehicle in the US by next year. More importantly, the Detroit-based automaker plans to install driver assist technologies across its product lineup within the next five years. Those technologies include park assist, lane-departure warning and rear cross-traffic alert.
