self-drivingcar
Latest
Honda’s connected cars will communicate over 5G
When it's not busy making billion-dollar acquisitions to expand its robotics line-up, Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank is pursuing its other hobby: smart cars. Central to this endeavour is its partner, and fellow Japan native, Honda. Last year, the two announced plans to make cars emotive using cloud-based tech based on SoftBank's Pepper robot (think Knight Rider's KITT). The fruits of that colloboration are beginning to emerge, in the guise of the auto-maker's AI-assisted NeuV and Sports EV concepts. With the clock ticking down to Honda's 2025 deadline for driverless cars, the duo are moving on to the next phase in their connected cars project, which is all about 5G.
A US freeway may get self-driving car lanes thanks to Foxconn
Wisconsin highway planners are studying the possibility of placing driverless vehicle lanes on I-94 to serve Foxconn's mega factory in Racine County. The Taiwanese company -- supplier to tech firms including Apple, Microsoft, and Nintendo -- reportedly made the suggestion at a meeting with regional officials, according to USA Today's Journal Sentinel.
Las Vegas' self-driving bus crashes in first hour of service
Las Vegas' self-driving shuttle service marked its return by getting into a minor collision, according to local NBC station KSNV News 3. French startup Navya's autonomous electric vehicle shuffles at around 15 MPH on a 0.6 mile circuit in the downtown Fremont East district. But, just an hour into its year-long trial (which follows a successful stint in January) the shuttle was hit by a delivery truck that was backing up.
Renault's self-driving car can avoid obstacles like pro drivers
The Renault Group announced today that its autonomous vehicle control system can avoid obstacles just as well as professional test drivers. The company said that in designing the system, it was actually inspired by these drivers' abilities and used them as a sort of benchmark as to what level its technology should be performing.
Las Vegas expands its self-driving shuttle tests this week
Las Vegas' initial self-driving shuttle trial clearly went well, as the city is coming back for another round. AAA and Vegas are launching a year-long trial on November 8th that will see one of Navya's shuttles drive a half-mile circuit in the downtown Fremont East district. It'll only make three stops each way, and it'll putter about at typical speeds between 10MPH and 15MPH, but it'll give you a chance to see how driverless mass transit works in real life for extended periods. The city has fitted traffic signals with wireless sensors to help them coordinate with the shuttle as it navigates the streets.
Waymo cars won't ask for human help during emergencies
Waymo has begun testing truly autonomous vehicles that don't even need to hand off control to human drivers in dangerous situations. Alphabet's autonomous car development arm has shown off the latest version of its Chrysler Pacifica minivans at an event in California, where the vehicles drove people around without a person sitting in the driver's seat. According to Reuters, the company decided to drop the driver handoff feature after experiments conducted in Silicon Valley back in 2013 showed that users acted like full-on passengers inside the vehicle.
Toyota will test self-driving cars at tough California proving ground
Now that Toyota has unveiled its latest self-driving car prototype, it needs a good test course to put the vehicle through its paces... and thankfully, there's already one lined up. Toyota has struck a deal to test its autonomous vehicle tech at GoMentum Station, the California test course known for its tough, realistic conditions. The automaker's cars will be subjected to "extreme driving events" that wouldn't be safe to test on public roads, and will experience a wide variety of conditions that include bridges and tunnels.
Baidu teams with ride-hailing service to fast track self-driving cars
If Chinese search giant Baidu is going to fulfill its dreams of building a self-driving car platform, it needs maps accurate enough that vehicles can safely get from point A to point B. Thankfully, it has a solution: the company has just forged a partnership with the state-backed ride-hailing service Shouqi. Baidu will supply Shouqi with the tools it needs for both its existing business and driverless cars, including map services, its Apollo autonomous platform and its conversational AI platform DuerOS. In return, Shouqi will supply Baidu with high-precision maps.
Delphi buys nuTonomy to bolster its self-driving car efforts
Delphi is already a significant player in the self-driving car realm, but it's not taking any chances -- it wants whatever edge it can get. To that end, the GM spinoff just bought the autonomous driving startup nuTonomy for an up-front price of $400 million. The move theoretically "accelerates" Delphi's self-driving car plans (it's their pun, not ours) by giving it more than 100 new employees as well as access to nuTonomy's "full-stack" autonomous driving software.
Apple’s self-driving tech appears to be one fully-contained unit
Like so many companies, Apple has been working on its own version of self-driving technology. Last year, we learned that the company had moved away from designing its own vehicle, opting instead to develop a system that could be incorporated into existing vehicles. We've had glimpses of this system before -- it's codenamed Project Titan -- but thanks to Voyage cofounder MacCallister Higgins, we now have an up-close view of it.
Intel proposes a mathematical formula for self-driving car safety
As autonomous vehicles become a part of the landscape, there are more questions than ever about their safety, and how to determine responsibility when they get in an accident. With so many companies (Alphabet, Uber, GM, Tesla and Ford -- just to name a few) working on different technology, there's also a question of how to establish standards on any level. Now, Amnon Shashua, the CEO of (recently acquired by Intel) Mobileye is proposing a model called Responsibility Sensitive Safety to "prove" the safety of autonomous vehicles.
GM aims to be the first to test self-driving cars in New York City
It looks like New York City will be hosting its first test of fully autonomous vehicles very soon and surprisingly, they're not from Waymo or Uber. Instead, General Motors and Cruise Automation have submitted the first application for sustained testing and are aiming to do so in Manhattan.
Baidu plans to start mass-producing autonomous vehicles around 2019
Like its US counterparts, Chinese internet titan Baidu has been working on autonomous vehicle research for years. After a failed partnership with BMW, Baidu opened itself up to teaming up with other companies, notably bringing on NVIDIA to power its Apollo self-driving car program. The internet giant has another partner now: Chinese automaker BAIC, which will pair its cars with Baidu's tech to start mass production of level three autonomous vehicles around 2019, followed by L4 vehicles around 2021.
California DMV tweaks rules to allow completely driverless cars
California is already more accommodating to self-driving cars than many parts of the country, but it's taking that friendliness one step further today. The state DMV has modified its regulations to streamline the testing and use of fully autonomous cars (that is, ones that don't need anyone behind the wheel). Many of these are subtle but important changes. Car makers no longer need to notify local officials of the "operational design domain" of their machines, summarize all the instances when a car's autonomous driving disengages or certify that a car can't drive itself in commonly restricted conditions.
Japan's latest GPS satellite will guide self-driving cars
Japan just fulfilled a key part of its space ambitions -- and it'll have important ramifications for everything from self-driving cars to self-defense. The country has launched its fourth Michibiki satellite, which expands a "quasi-zenith" system designed to provide greater access to GPS in urban 'canyons' where buildings tend to block signals from lower-orbit satellites. Needless to say, that's vital for autonomous vehicles that need GPS to get their bearings in a country dominated by sprawling cities.
Waymo ad campaign aims to get the public behind self-driving cars
Waymo announced today that it has created "the world's first public education campaign for fully self-driving cars." It's called the "Let's Talk Self-Driving" campaign and it aims to increase understanding of self-driving technology and convince would-be riders that it's safe.
New camera tech could help self-driving cars see around corners
Self-driving cars can detect much of the world around them, but they're inherently limited by their reliance on line-of-sight vision. They're not so good at spotting the visual cues that a car is just around the corner -- you might spot the encroaching headlight beams, but a car might not. MIT's CSAIL team may have a solution, though. They've developed camera technology that uses subtle changes in lighting on the floor to determine what's around a corner. As objects reflect a small amount of light around walls, creating a "shadow," you can piece together images of objects around the corner by capturing video of the floor and tracking the shifting colors.
Senate committee sends self-driving car bill to floor for a vote
The Senate's version of self-driving car legislation is escaping political limbo. Senators in the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee have unanimously approved the AV START Act, which lets car makers pursue safety exemptions for autonomous vehicles based on production volume and gives states control over rules for registration, licensing, insurance and safety (though not performance). The measure now goes to the Senate floor, where it'll eventually face a vote.
Court filing shows what former Waymo engineer allegedly took to Uber
Last year when Uber was considering a purchase of newly founded self-driving truck company Otto, it commissioned a due diligence report that dove into the company, its assets, cofounders Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron and Don Burnette and a few other employees that left Google for the startup. It became a hot item in the Waymo lawsuit against Uber and though Uber and Levandowski fought to keep the document out of Alphabet's hands, a judge ordered it to be turned over to Google's and Waymo's parent company by September 13th. Well that document has now been made publicly available, Recode reports, and some of its contents don't look great for Uber.
Samsung is the latest tech titan to open an AI lab in Canada
If it wasn't already clear that Canada is becoming a hotbed for AI research, it is now: Samsung has opened an AI lab (shown below) at the Université de Montréal. The school's faculty and students (including long-time Samsung partner Prof. Yoshua Bengio) will collaborate with South Korean researchers on a slew of AI-related projects, including self-driving car technology, image recognition, translation and robots. While you may not see the first fruits of this lab for years, it underscores both Samsung's increasing dependence on AI and the tech industry's rapid shift to the north.
