Self-driving cars

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The car rental giant Avis has signed a contract with Alphabet’s driverless-car division, Waymo, to service its first big fleet of autonomous vehicles. As Bloomberg reports, it’s the first real autonomous-car partnership to focus on the rather less thrilling business of managing the vehicles themselves—oil changes, tire pressure checks, and all. But it’s also an interesting indication of how the automotive industry is having to reconfigure itself in order to accommodate the future of car ownership.

Why Waymo’s Partnership with Avis Makes Sense - MIT Technology Review

It’s easy to picture Apple as hopelessly behind in developing the technology required for automated vehicles, as CEO Tim Cook finally confirmed this week that the company is doing. It’s true that the company only recently received a permit for testing self-driving cars in California, and that a host of other firms have been out on the road for years now. But for some time Apple has been quietly hiring some impressive robotics and AI talent for its project. Much more importantly, fully autonomous driving may have less to do with mapping thousands of miles of road in high resolution—something that’s important for helping cars navigate—than developing smarter autonomous systems that can deal with unforeseen circumstances in clever ways.

Apple Isn’t as Late to Automated Driving as You Might Think - MIT Technology Review

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In early January, BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye announced that a fleet of approximately 40 autonomous BMW vehicles will be on the roads by the second half of 2017, demonstrating the significant advancements made by the three companies towards fully autonomous driving. Today, at an event in the heart of Silicon Valley, Intel and BMW announced the kick-off of their autonomous driving trial. The self-driving cars are built on the 7 Series platform and will included technology from Intel’s latest acquisition, Mobileye.

Intel and BMW launched today their autonomous driving cars

As for GM, it’ll be putting its flotilla on the streets in Michigan, now that Governor Rick Snyder has signed a law allowing public-road testing of cars without steering wheels, gas or brake pedals—or any need for human control. But GM engineers will be in the front seats, as they are in test-trips that have been taking place in Arizona and California. Ford Motor Co. has been doing its controlled runs on Michigan roads since 2015, including when it’s snowing.

The Tesla Advantage: 1.3 Billion Miles of Data - Bloomberg

Starting in 2018 GM intends to deploy “thousands” of automated Bolt hatchbacks in what could be the largest such test fleet in operation, according to Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter who weren’t identified. If the plan materializes, GM’s fleet could surpass Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car project, which is currently expanding from 60 autonomous vehicles to at least 160 this year.

GM May Soon Have 'Thousands' Of Self-Driving Electric Bolts In A Lyft Test Fleet

Furthermore, Tesla will roll out feature additions that can be validated with its pre-existing fleet and test-vehicle fleet. Also, Tesla's semi-autonomous functionality is more practical for testing/validating feature add-ons than tests of fully autonomous cars. I still believe level 4 autonomy requires network enhancements, hence the path of development/implementation via over the air updates seems most compatible with the current regulatory environment.

Hey Tesla Competitors: Where's Your Autonomous Car? - Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha

Some experts believe full vehicle autonomy will require large scale data analytics/fleet management to meet regulatory standards. This would imply that cars can communicate to each other via separate network access nodes that gives a centrally regulated database the capability of managing the autonomous vehicle fleet. Hence, 5G data networks would be a pre-requisite technology. The network providers are implementing/testing 5G base station modules currently, with capex ramping from FY'18 onwards for tier-1 networks globally.

Hey Tesla Competitors: Where's Your Autonomous Car? - Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha

Lyft Inc. is expanding its roster of automotive partners as the second-largest U.S. ride-hailing company tries to capitalize on missteps by Uber Technologies Inc. Jaguar Land Rover said it’s working with Lyft on autonomous-driving technology and will offer vehicles for rent to the San Francisco-based startup’s drivers. The automaker, which is a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd., also disclosed an investment of $25 million in Lyft as part of a funding round that closed in April, valuing the business at $7.5 billion.

Jaguar Invests in Lyft, Forming Self-Driving and Car Rental Pact - Bloomberg

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Most driverless cars make use of lidar sensors, which bounce laser beams off nearby objects to create 3-D maps of their surroundings. Lidar can provide better-quality data than radar and is superior to optical cameras because it is unaffected by variations in ambient light. You’ve probably seen the best-known example of a lidar sensor, produced by market leader Velodyne. It looks like a spinning coffee can perched atop cars developed by the likes of Waymo and Uber. But not all lidar sensors are created equal. Velodyne, for example, has a range of offerings. Its high-end model is an $80,000 behemoth called HDL-64E—this is the one that looks a lot like a coffee can. It spits 64 laser beams, one atop the other. Each beam is separated by an angle of 0.4° (smaller angles between beams equal higher resolution), with a range of 120 meters. At the other end the firm sells the smaller Puckfor $8,000. This sensor uses 16 beams of light, each separated by 2.0°, and has a range of 100 meters.

Low-Quality Lidar Will Keep Self-Driving Cars in the Slow Lane - MIT Technology Review

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Intel has already launched their own solution for gathering, processing and analyzing the data from autonomous vehicles and helping auto makers like BMW manage that data. Intel’s datacenter group also has the capability enable autonomous vehicle manufacturers to do their training in their datacenters using Intel technology as well. Intel’s approach to autonomous driving t incorporates the endpoint, connectivity and the datacenter, and Intel believes that they have the most complete end-to-end solution. However, in the automotive industry many auto manufacturers mix vendors all over the place, and I wouldn’t consider this to be the only way of building an autonomous vehicle, but Intel does offer the ‘one stop shop’ option.

Chipmakers Get Serious About Autonomous Driving At CES 2017

Intel is acquiring a 15 percent ownership stake in HERE, a global provider of digital maps and location-based services for automotive and the Internet of Things (IoT). Companies plan to jointly develop a highly scalable proof-of-concept architecture that supports real-time updates of high-definition (HD) maps for highly and fully automated driving as well as explore opportunities in IoT and machine learning.

Intel to Acquire 15 Percent Ownership of HERE | Intel Newsroom

Intel, another chipmaker, chose the M&A path by earlier this month acquiring smaller sector player Mobileye, which supplied hardware to Tesla before it switched to Nvidia. According to some, the $15.3-billion deal pits Intel against Nvidia directly, this time over self-driving cars.

Self-Driving Cars May Just Be the Start | OilPrice.com

Intel (Santa Clara, CA) has introduced its Movidius Myriad X vision processing unit (VPU), claimed to be the world's first system-on-chip (SoC) with a dedicated neural compute engine for accelerating deep learning inferences at the edge, enabling devices to see, understand, and respond to their environments in real time.

New Intel VPU delivers AI at the edge | Smart2.0

In the meantime, a relatively new entrant in the playing field made headlines. Computer chipmaker Nvidia announced at a recent conference in Austin, Texas, that it had created a car computer system capable of recognizing patterns and learning behaviors with impressive accuracy. According to the senior director of the company’s automotive business department, Danny Shapiro, the computer learns from video game simulations of traffic and can make 24 trillion calculations per second. The top priority: safety. Nvidia, however, is not just betting on cars. It also has a partnership with truck brand PACCAR to develop self-driving systems for larger vehicles. It seems this is the smart way, as transport experts argue that autonomous trucks will be a much bigger market than autonomous cars.

Self-Driving Cars May Just Be the Start | OilPrice.com

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The platform, dubbed MAX4 combines cameras, radar, lidar and ultrasonic sensors with a sensor fusion and computing platform and generates the appropriate trajectories and steering commands for the vehicle. The platform is designed for easy integration with any automakers' existing and future platforms including hybrid and electric vehicles, the technology company says. Additionally, Magna's compute platform, scalable for high-volume production, is flexible, upgradeable and fully functional - at lower power requirements as compared to alternative solutions. The sensors are included in the package but they might be pre-series versions, the company said. Magna has leveraged its full-vehicle expertise in its design of MAX4 to overcome traditional obstacles in the development and production of an autonomous driving platform. Crucially, integration of MAX4 retains an automaker's existing design and styling freedom for their vehicle, including not taking up cargo space in the rear of the vehicle and personal space in the main compartment. The company’s intention is offering a production-ready yet flexible solution along with the necessary software framework. Magna’s announcement actually is not overly detailed, but we believe that compute platforms with a roughly comparable functionality could be Audi’s zFAS or Bosch’s Vehicle Control Unit (VCU).

Magna platform brings L4 autonomy to existing car designs | Smart2.0

This is more than notable. It's the most important news to come out of Krafcik's keynote. The company is manufacturing the entire suite of sensors on its self-driving cars, which includes the vision system, radars, and light detection and ranging radar known as LiDAR. It's not just unusual; it's unprecedented.

LiDAR measures distance using laser light to generate highly accurate 3D map of the world around the car. Waymo's team of engineers developed two new categories of LiDAR: a short range and a long range LiDAR. This means Waymo self-driving cars now have three LiDAR. The company has been using medium-range LiDAR, which is located on top of the car, since the early days of its project. This is a rate of redundancy that is unmatched in the industry right now.

Waymo's engineers have brought the cost of LiDAR down by more than 90%. Krafcik says the company plans to push those costs even lower as it looks to scale its business.

In 2015, the company's test drivers disengaged—a jargon term that means they had to take manual control of the vehicle because the software failed or for safety reasons—at a rate of 0.8 times per 1,000 miles in California. The rate in California has fallen, even as the company increases it test miles, to 0.2 disengages per thousand. Waymo didn't provide data on disengagements in other states like Arizona or Washington where it tests self-driving cars. Any company issued a testing permit from the California DMV must submit an annual report detailing disengagements.

Waymo Reveals The Tech Inside Its Self-Driving Chrysler Minivans | Fortune.com

At any time, there are now 25,000 virtual self-driving cars making their way through fully modeled versions of Austin, Mountain View, and Phoenix, as well as test-track scenarios. Waymo might simulate driving down a particularly tricky road hundreds of thousands of times in a single day. Collectively, they now drive 8 million miles per day in the virtual world. In 2016, they logged 2.5 billion virtual miles versus a little over 3 million miles by Google’s IRL self-driving cars that run on public roads. And crucially, the virtual miles focus on what Waymo people invariably call “interesting” miles in which they might learn something new. These are not boring highway commuter miles.

Inside Waymo's Secret World for Training Self-Driving Cars - The Atlantic

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Did you know that a self-driving car generates about 1GB of data every second? This means connected vehicles require substantial in-vehicle computing and a complex set of technologies for data collection, sensor fusion, edge analytics, and machine learning to sense, interpret, and classify vehicle data. I’m delighted to be part of a team that is delivering incredibly high compute performance per watt with a broad range of power-efficient silicon.

Meet the Future of Driving: High Performance In-Vehicle Compute with Headroom to Grow - IoT@Intel

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Samsung is investing $300 million into an Automotive Innovation Fund that will invest in automotive start-ups and technology, while its new automotive strategic business unit will focus on autonomous and advanced driver assistance services (ADAS). This follows the company's acquisition of automotive audio and auto parts supplier Harman International Industries, with its stated goal of accelerating growth in automotive and connected technologies.

Samsung jumps into autonomous driving market | Smart2.0

General Motors-owned Cruise Automation (San Francisco, CA) has unveiled its 3rd-generation self-driving car prototype. Acquired by General Motors last year, the company - which operates as an independent unit - says its latest prototype represents "the world’s first mass-producible car designed to operate without a driver." The prototype is based on a Chevrolet Bolt EV and features "airbags, crumple zones, and comfortable seats."

GM unit unveils first 'real' self-driving car | Smart2.0

There are many striking differences between a fence post and a human being, but one may prove particularly useful to robotic vehicles: temperature. At least that's what the established thermal imaging firm FLIR and the Israeli startup Adasky think. Both companies are building new thermal sensors for use in autonomous cars, and they believe that the extra data could be used to spot hazards in adverse conditions. Humans and animals on or near the road, in particular, create far more heat than their surroundings. Some high-end automakers, including Porsche, BMW, and Audi, have been fitting vehicles with thermal imaging sensors from FLIR for several years. The vehicles use them to alert a driver to the presence of animals or people on the road at night, which may not show up within reach of the car's headlights. Those sensors offer an image 320 pixels wide by 240 high.

Thermal Imaging Aims to Give Autonomous Cars Better Night Vision - MIT Technology Review

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Tesla and AMD partner on A.I. chip Tesla is getting closer to having its own chip for handling autonomous driving tasks in its cars. The carmaker has received back samples of the first implementation of its processor and is now running tests on it, said a source familiar with the matter. The effort to build its own chip is in line with Tesla's push to be vertically integrated and decrease reliance on other companies. But Tesla isn't completely going it alone in chip development, according to the source, and will build on top of AMD intellectual property. AMD shares spiked after CNBC reported that the company is working with Tesla. Shares of the stock ended the day nearly 5 percent higher and continued to climb after hours.

Tesla building an AI chip for its cars with AMD, GlobalFoundries

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This week we woke up to the fact that autonomous cars could be with us sooner than we thought. That was the message from John Krafcik, chief executive of Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google - or Alphabet as we must learn to call it. At the Web Summit in Lisbon he announced that fully self-driving Waymo cars with nobody behind the wheel were now in operation in Phoenix in Arizona. Now, there will be a Waymo engineer in the back seat - and the cars will only operate on designated routes. But this still looks like a big step on the road to the autonomous driving future. It is not just Silicon Valley making big claims about the progress of this technology.

Tech Tent: Autonomous cars and AI doctors - BBC News

Former General Motors executive Bob Lutz made a stir this week by predicting that the era of the human-driven automobile would be over in 20 years. He says there will still be a few sports cars and off-road vehicles, but for most of us driving will be a forgotten skill. Our special guest Prof Paul Newman, founder of the autonomous vehicle firm Oxbotica, naturally shares that vision of the future. But we also hear a dissenting voice - the transport writer Christian Wolmar thinks such predictions of the advance of autonomy are laughable. He says they fail to take into account all sorts of legal and regulatory issues to which there are no easy answers, and he points to one example: "If you stand in front of a driverless car it cannot drive at you, it cannot kill you so it has to stop." He foresees pranksters causing gridlock by standing in front of driverless cars, or criminals stopping them to rob the occupants.

Tech Tent: Autonomous cars and AI doctors - BBC News

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French developer Navya in Lyon has launched a dedicated electric taxi that is fully autonomous without a steering wheel or place for a driver. The AUTONOM CAB carries up to six passengers at a maxmum speed of 55mph using 22 or 33kWh lithium phospor battery packs (LiFePO 4) with up to 10 hours of operation. To achieve the Level 5 autonomous operation it uses ten Lidar sensors (three giving 360 degree visibility and the rest with 145 degree visibility), six cameras, four radars, two GNSS satellite antennaes and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). These sensors provide at least a triple redundancy across all functions, says the company. It also uses high precision GPS RTK positioning and high resolution maps for navigation.

French company launches fully autonomous taxi | eeNews Europe