Self-driving cars

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Inside a simple computer simulation, a group of self-driving cars are performing a crazy-looking maneuver on a four-lane virtual highway. Half are trying to move from the right-hand lanes just as the other half try to merge from the left. It seems like just the sort of tricky thing that might flummox a robot vehicle, but they manage it with precision. I’m watching the driving simulation at the biggest artificial-intelligence conference of the year, held in Barcelona this past December. What’s most amazing is that the software governing the cars’ behavior wasn’t programmed in the conventional sense at all. It learned how to merge, slickly and safely, simply by practicing. During training, the control software performed the maneuver over and over, altering its instructions a little with each attempt. Most of the time the merging happened way too slowly and cars interfered with each other. But whenever the merge went smoothly, the system would learn to favor the behavior that led up to it.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Reinforcement Learning - MIT Technology Review

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The really obvious consequence of autonomy is a near-elimination in accidents, which kill over 1m people globally every year. In the USA in 2015, there were 13m collisions of which 1.7m caused injuries; 2.4m people were injured and 35k people were killed. Something over 90% of all accidents are now caused by driver error, and a third of fatal accidents in the USA involved alcohol. Looking beyond deaths and injuries themselves, there is also a huge economic effect to these accidents: the US government estimates a cost of $240bn a year across property damage itself, medical and emergency services, legal, lost work and congestion (for comparison, US car sales in 2016 were around $600bn).

Cars and second order consequences — Benedict Evans

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Driverless cars, driverless trucks, distant? Close? All I can tell you is that if you read this morning's Morgan Stanley recommendation of Alphabet ( GOOGL) because of its Waymo division, you will be thinking it is here and now. That's because Morgan Stanley ascribes a $70 billion valuation to Waymo, a 12% boost when it gets recognized for what it is -- the best hope for driverless cars.

Investors Keep Getting It Wrong; Waymo Is Miles Ahead: Jim Cramer's View - Pg.6 - TheStreet

Testing in the real world is critical, Smith said, noting that Drive.ai encounters all kinds of unexpected challenges on the street – including people who purposefully jump in front of the car to see if it will stop.

The road ahead: self-driving cars on the brink of a revolution in California | Technology | The Guardian

The big news Monday was ride sharing firm Lyft teaming up with the self-driving driving technology firm Waymo, in what was described as a “broad and fluid partnership.” That may be an understatement given Lyft, which happens to be Uber’s most potent competitor, already has a deal with General Motors (GM) and Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet (GOOGL).

Autonomous Driving Revolution | The Option Specialist

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Waymo is retiring its fleet of Fireflies to focus on putting its autonomous driving software in vehicles mass produced by the big car makers, company officials said Monday in a post on Medium.

Waymo retiring Firefly prototype autonomous vehicles - Business Insider

In addition to launch of an automated ride-hailing service, Waymo and Fiat Chrysler are also significantly expanding the size of the Waymo test fleet with an additional 500 Pacifica hybrid minivans. Waymo isn’t the first company to launch an automated ride service, Delphi and nuTonomy both have pilot programs in Singapore with six cars each. Uber started carrying some passengers in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2016 and launched a short-lived San Francisco test in December.

Waymo Launches Early Rider Program, Expands Self-Driving Fleet With Fiat Chrysler

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Forget Uber’s autonomous 18-wheelers: if you want a robot to haul a heavy load in the future, it might be worth considering a self-piloting container ship instead. Plenty of people have been building modest autonomous boats in recent years, but the real payoff is in something much larger. As the Economist has pointed out in the past, fully robotic cargo ships could be faster, safer, and ultimately cheaper to run than their crewed counterparts. And that promise obviously hasn’t escaped the attention of some of the world’s largest users of maritime freight. .

Shipping Giants Are Looking to Self-Piloting Boats to Shift Cargo - MIT Technology Review

DDEPENDING UPON WHICH automaker you listen to, you could be riding in a self-driving car within one to five years. As cool as that sounds, the car will look pretty familiar, with a steering wheel and pedals and a dashboard just like you're used to. But in time, those features will change, if not vanish—an idea that excites automotive designers because it opens new opportunities. Seats that turn to face the rear passengers. Screens instead of windows. Who knows what else. This creates new problems, not the least of which is what to do with the airbags. The current model of placing these safety devices in front of a restrained passenger facing forward may not work. "The whole paradigm may need to be shifted," says Tom Matano, car design veteran, now at the Academy of Art University.

This Could Be the First Airbag of the Self-Driving Car Era | WIRED

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More profound is the approach of autonomous vehicles, because once the car doesn't need a driver, century-old design constraints disappear. Imagine a car interior that doesn't need a steering wheel, or windshield, or windows, or forward-facing seats. Imagine the possible interior layouts (mobile restaurant, art installation, party lounge, nap pod) when a car is not owned by a single person, but rather shared and engaged only when it is needed, and made relevant to the task at hand.

How Self-Driving and Electric Tech Will Change Life Inside the Car | WIRED

If Uber is to thrive in the future, Kalanick has said, it must master self-driving cars. Any competitor that tosses paid human drivers could undercut Uber's service with cheaper rides. But for Uber to get there first—or at all—it needs help. It needs partners. “The thing about the autonomous car is that it’s an ecosystem that’s going to make it,” says Evan Rawley, who studies competitive strategy and organization at Columbia Business School. As self-driving tech approaches market readiness, the various players have rushed to join forces. Someone builds the vehicle, someone constructs the sensors, someone writes the software, someone runs the dispatch system that actually picks up the riders. Lyft and Waymo; Waymo and Honda; Autoliv and Volvo; Delphi and BMW and Intel and Mobileye; Lyft and Jaguar Land Rover; Lyft and GM..

Uber's Culture Problems Could Sink Its Self-Driving Car Future | WIRED

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Unlike Autopilot, however, GM’s semi-autonomous highway driving features incorporate LiDAR data – Tesla has refrained from equipping its vehicles with the high-resolution laser detection tech, and GM likewise isn’t putting LiDAR on consumer cars. Cost of components and the aesthetics likely make this an unappealing way to go, but GM has an interesting workaround to both use LiDAR data and keep it off production vehicles: It’s deploying a fleet of LiDAR mapping cars that will image highways where Super Cruise is used and make that information available to the system over-the-air.

GM’s ‘Super Cruise’ Tesla Autopilot competitor arrives in a Cadillac this fall | TechCrunch

Today, we’re announcing our plan to invest $1 billion during the next five years in a new artificial intelligence software company, Argo AI. Last August, we shared our intent to deliver a fully autonomous, SAE level 4-capable vehicle in 2021. We’ve made significant progress and are on track to achieve our goal. At the same time, we know rapidly evolving technologies and fierce competition require us to remain flexible and open to new ways of strengthening our team, which is what today’s announcement is all about. Argo AI was founded by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, both alumni of the Carnegie Mellon National Robotics Engineering Center. Both have held leadership positions on the autonomous development teams at Google and Uber, respectively. Salesky and Rander have extensive experience in robotics and understand the field of artificial intelligence.

Ford Invests in Argo AI: An Innovative Partnership on the Road to Autonomy – Medium

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Tesla and Mobileye, an Israeli image-sensing startup, were previously working together on autonomous tech until an ugly public breakup. Mobileye expressed concerns about the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot hands-free system, while Tesla accused Mobileye of trying to block Tesla’s efforts to develop its own vision capability for its Autopilot system. Tesla also earlier this year sued the former head of its Autopilot group, Sterling Anderson, alleging that Anderson breached his contract and poached Tesla’s engineering talent to create a new startup called Aurora Innovation, which he founded with the former head of Google’s self-driving car unit. Tesla settled the lawsuit in April.

Autonomous Car Tech Is the Next Battleground in Silicon Valley | Greentech Media

While Tesla is an unusually litigious company, it’s not the only one that has turned to the courts to try to protect its autonomous car tech and talent. Google’s self-driving car subsidiary, Waymo, sued Uber last year after accusing one of its former engineers, Anthony Levandowski, of stealing confidential documents from the Google company. Levandowski left Waymo to create the self-driving tech startup Otto, which Uber acquired last year (Uber subsequently fired Levandowski after he refused to cooperate with the discovery process of the lawsuit). Uber paid $680 million (mostly in company equity) for Otto’s tech and a team of self-driving car engineers.

Autonomous Car Tech Is the Next Battleground in Silicon Valley | Greentech Media

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Car companies have been major acquirers of self-driving car tech. A report from Navigant research earlier this year put GM, Ford, Daimler, Renault-Nissan and BMW ahead of tech companies like Waymo, Tesla and Uber when it comes to the race for autonomous car tech. A lot of that has to do with their acquisitions and willingness to pay high valuations for the Valley’s self-driving car talent.

Autonomous Car Tech Is the Next Battleground in Silicon Valley | Greentech Media

Ford just dumped a billion dollars into an artificial intelligence outfit. It acquired ride-sharing service Chariot and invested in Velodyne, a company producing lidar, the laser scanning tech many argue is necessary for self-driving cars. GM scooped up self-driving expertise via a startup called Cruise, and partnered with Lyft to put the eventual result on the road.

Automakers Ford and GM Are Beating Google, Uber, and Tesla to the Self-Driving Car | WIRED

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THE AUTOMATIC MOTORIST, A BRITISH short film from 1911, wants you to avoid self-driving cars at all costs. In it, a robot chauffeur is developed to drive a newly wedded couple to their honeymoon destination. But this robot malfunctions, and all of a sudden the couple is marooned in outer space (and then sinking underwater, and then flying through the sky—it’s complicated). Directed by filmmaker and magician Walter R. Booth, The Automatic Motorist is a trick film—a genre of silent films popular in the early 1900s that emphasized special effects. The full 6-minute short should be watched in its entirety, but we present you with a brief analysis below.

This Bizarre 1911 Film Warns of the Perils of Self-Driving Cars - Atlas Obscura