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Self-driving cars are safer when they talk to each other
Most current self-driving technology relies on cameras, radar and lidar. These sensory devices serve as eyes for the car, mimicking what a human driver can see. But a University of Michigan public-private partnership called Mcity is testing V2V, or vehicle to vehicle communication, and has found that it makes their autonomous prototypes even safer.
Audi teases self-parking A8 ahead of launch
Audi will launch its next generation A8, which is expected to have level 3 autonomous, on July 11th. Ahead of that unveiling, the company released a video of the new vehicle parking itself.
Tim Cook says Apple is working on 'autonomous systems'
Has Tim Cook made the first public admission that Apple is indeed working on self-driving car technology? Bloomberg seems to think so, based on comments made by the CEO in an interview at WWDC earlier this month. After remarking on the exciting automotive trends of self-driving cars, EVs and ride-sharing, Cook said: "What we're focusing on -- what we've talked about focusing on publicly -- is we're focusing on autonomous systems. And clearly one purpose of autonomous systems is self-driving cars. There are others, and we sorta see it as the mother of all AI projects. It's probably one of the most difficult AI projects, actually, to work on. And so autonomy is something that's incredible exciting for us, but we'll see where it takes us."
Bosch and TomTom map roads with radar for autonomous vehicles
Bosch and TomTom have come together to create high-resolution road maps based on radar signals. The product of the two companies' collaboration, a system called "radar road signature," is a move towards automated driving.
Ford replaces CEO Mark Fields with self-driving chief
Ford has fired CEO Mark Fields and replaced him with self-driving car chief Jim Hackett, the company announced this morning. The news comes amid turmoil in the company, including a steep 25 percent drop in car sales so far this year and layoffs of 1,400 salaried employees, with possibly more to come. The news confirms a New York Times report from earlier today.
Mercedes-Benz is building cars that know the road better than you do
As we approach a blind corner on a twisty mountain road above Sunnyvale, there's a moment when I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a pre-production Mercedes-Benz S-Class and I'm not sure that the updated Intelligent Drive will really slow the car down in time for what's up ahead. It does and continues to do so for every corner it encounters. It's an impressive step in the automaker's march toward an autonomous vehicle.
Former Google worker barred from Uber’s self-driving division by court (updated)
A judge has ruled that Uber can keep working on its autonomous vehicles with one key condition: autonomous vehicle lead Anthony Levandowski must be removed from any of Uber's LiDAR-based efforts. Prior to joining Uber, Levandowski worked for Google's Waymo division and allegedly took some 14,000 documents pertaining to LiDAR and other self-driving tech on his way out the door. He's still employed by Uber according to TechCrunch, and has voluntarily removed himself from the autonomous division as of late last month.
A single autonomous car could greatly reduce man-made traffic
Traffic. We all hate it, but what can honestly be done to significantly reduce it? Well, according to an experiment conducted by the university of Illinois, simply introducing a few self-driving cars to roads could be the answer. Conducting experiments in Tucson, Arizona the team discovered that even adding a single autonomous vehicle to the roads can massively reduce traffic. They programmed a self-driving car to loop a track continuously and then added 20 other human-driven cars to the mix. While humans somehow naturally create stop-and-go traffic even without lane changes or other disruptions, thanks to the robotic racer, both traffic and fuel consumption were reduced by 40 percent.
Baidu wants to work with everyone on self-driving tech
Like many big technology companies, Chinese giant Baidu has been working on self-driving cars for a few years now, even investing with Ford in LIDAR sensor company Velodyne. Collaborations between tech firms and carmakers are now commonplace, but after an unsuccessful marriage with BMW, Baidu is seeking new partners -- or rather, all the partners. In a project Baidu calls "Apollo," the company is offering up its whole self-driving platform to the wider industry, from software to reference vehicles, to give the general pursuit of autonomous cars a NOS-like boost.
NVIDIA and Bosch team up for AI-powered autonomous cars
NVIDIA lined up quite a few partners at CES this year, including Audi and Mercedes, to use its powerful upcoming Xavier chip in autonomous vehicles. But days ago, Intel bought MobilEye for $15 billion to develop self-driving software and hardware to use across auto brands. To compete, automotive supplier Bosch announced a partnership today with the graphics chip maker to collaborate on an AI-powered self-driving computer intended for mass-market cars.
VW's 'Sedric' self-driving car could chauffer you or strangers
Volkswagen is planning for the future. Today the automaker laid out its plans for Sedric -- short for "self-driving car" -- a sort of hybrid between car ownership and ride-sharing. The boxy, Level 5 autonomous vehicle (no need for a human driver) is summoned by a remote dubbed "The Button" and from there "a single touch of the button guarantees mobility for everyone, at any time and at any location," according to a press release.
How Roborace is building driverless race cars
The lights dimmed and a hush fell over the crowd. The last hour had been building to this. Denis Sverdlov, CEO of Roborace, and Daniel Simon, chief design officer, took a step back as some knee-high panels were taken away and a silky cloth was lifted, revealing a mechanical monster underneath. More than a year after the project's announcement, the pair had finally revealed their first production-grade Robocar: a fully electric, driverless race car built from the ground up for a new breed of motorsport. One where the heroes are programmers, concocting the smartest and most competitive AI drivers.
Peugeot concept learns from your IoT gear to improve the ride
While the Geneva Motor Show is just days away, Peugeot didn't wait for the festivities in Switzerland to debut its latest concept. Instead, the automaker revealed an autonomous car here at Mobile World Congress. Dubbed the Instinct Concept, the vehicle blends self-driving tech, home automation and cloud-based connectivity to define user profiles. The vehicle uses Samsung's ARTIK IoT platform to pull in all of your information from mobile devices, wearables and connected home gear to adapt the best driving or riding experience.
Roborace unwraps its driverless electric car
The team behind Roborace has taken a big step toward introducing a fully driverless racing competition. At a press conference in Barcelona, chief executive Denis Sverdlov and chief designer Daniel Simon revealed the final design for its track-ready "Robocar." We've seen images of the vehicle before, but they were merely renders; a hint of what the company was working on. The unveiling of a real car, all curves and carbon fiber, is our best evidence yet that the futuristic motorsport will actually happen.
Alphabet sues Uber over Waymo's self-driving car tech
Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous car business, has sued Uber for stealing crucial technical information about its self-driving technology. Waymo's lawsuit targets Otto, a promising self-driving truck startup that Uber acquired in mid-2016. As we noted in August, Otto was founded and staffed by former Google employees, including Anthony Levandowski. "We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo's various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo's LiDAR and circuit board," Waymo writes.
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.
Inside Mercedes' Silicon Valley research center
A metal typewriter sits on a pedestal churning out the next sentence of a collaborative story. For every line I typed onto paper, the AI computer controlling the hunk of metal replies with what it thinks would be a good follow-up. The goal of the experiment is to see what happens when you feed an artificial intelligence only fairy tales. It's the kind of seemingly idiosyncratic thing you'd expect from IBM, Google or Apple. But I actually found it inside Mercedes-Benz's R&D North American headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Ford's new self-driving Fusion almost looks like a regular car
Ford has shown the first images of its new self-driving Fusion Hybrid with a more powerful computer and improved, better-integrated sensors. It uses an upgraded version of the Fusion Hybrid platform, bolstered by self-driving hardware, a large new computer and electrical controls that "are close to production-ready," the company said in a press release. It also packs lower-profile LIDAR units that appear to be the "Puck" models from Velodyne, a company in which it recently invested $150 million.
Uber admits its self-driving cars have trouble with bike lanes
After reports of Uber's self-driving cars running red lights and failing to stop for pedestrians during trips in San Francisco, the company has also admitted to issues with its autonomous vehicles navigating around (and legally interacting with) bike lanes. A spokesperson told The Guardian that the company was working to fix a flaw that allowed cars to turn into cycling lanes. Instead of merging into lanes ahead of making a right-hand turn, SF Bicycle Coalition executive director Brian Weidenmeier said he saw Uber's self-driving cars make unsafe turns through bike lanes, twice.
Automakers and Google balk at California's self-driving rules
Google and a cadre of automakers are not happy about the state of California's proposed rules for autonomous vehicles, which they say would severely slow their progress towards a self-driving future. Although the state legislature approved autonomous trials last month, the group objected to the state's decision to require certain regulations that the federal government made voluntary it its own policy.
