Self-operating shuttle bus crashes after Las Vegas launch (All Things Self Driving)

guest · Oct 23, 2019

Tesla’s Smart Summon parking feature has been used over a million times
Smart Summon will get smarter with time, the company says
October 23, 2019
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20929438/tesla-smart-summon-use-one-million-q3-2019

Smart Summon, the autonomous parking feature rolled out by Tesla in mid-September, has already been used “over one million times,” the company said in its quarterly earnings statement Wednesday.

The feature enables a Tesla vehicle to leave a parking space and navigate around obstacles to its owner. Tesla owners who purchased the Full Self-Driving option on their car received it as part of the version 10 software update that went out on September 26th.
But the company says it expects to roll out over-the-air software updates in the future that may address some of these snags.

“Our neural network learning approach enables us to continue to iterate and improve functionality over time,” Tesla says.
Click to expand...

Update October 23rd, 7:29PM ET: In a call with investors, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would be releasing an improved version of Smart Summon in the coming weeks. Tesla’s “massive fleet” of vehicles “allows us to check these corner cases and learn from them and use them to learn and become rapidly better,” Musk said.
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 23, 2019

Alphabet exec says self-driving cars ‘have gone through a lot of hype,’ but Google helped drive that hype
October 23, 2019
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/alphabet-exec-admits-google-overhyped-self-driving-cars.html

Waymo executives think people have taken its promises of self-driving cars too seriously.

The Alphabet subsidiary went “through a lot of hype that was sort of unmanageable,” said Tekedra N. Mawakana, Waymo’s chief external officer, at a Business Insider conference Tuesday. “Sometimes a lot of hype is so mismatched to what’s happening in the real world.”
Mawakana said the reporting has become a bit more “grounded” today, but he went on to say that the hype had caused people to develop mistaken ideas like they would no longer be able to drive their own cars once self-driving cars became ubiquitous.

The company has dialed back its enthusiastic tone as it falls behind its original timeline for getting full self-driving cars on the road.
Don’t expect that to stop Alphabet execs from referencing Waymo on the company’s earnings call later this month. The self-driving car business often comes up during calls, typically with the word “exciting” attached.
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 23, 2019

Elon Musk says Tesla “early access” full self-driving could arrive by end of year
October 24, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/e...ull-self-driving-could-arrive-by-end-of-year/

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s earnings call today that the company’s full self-driving mode, in a feature-complete release, could arrive as early as the end of this year. That would be made available in an ‘early access’ mode which is essentially a limited beta, and Musk qualified that this isn’t a sure thing.

“While it’s going to be tight, it still does appear that will be at least in limited in early access release of a feature complete self-driving feature this year,” he said on the call.
He added that it’s “not for sure,” but that it “appears to be on track” for a limited private beta by year’s end.

To make use of the full self-driving mode that Tesla plans to introduce, vehicle owners will have to own the FSD upgrade package, which is a $7,000 upgrade after it increased from $6,000 in August.
Musk added in response to a question later in the call that while he thinks ‘early access’ availability could be late this year, but full self-driving “reliable enough that you do not need to pay attention, in our opinion” won’t be available until “the end of next year.”
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 24, 2019

Entire western part of Singapore to become testing ground for driverless vehicles
October 24, 2019
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/new...s-vehicles-western-singapore-testbed-12029878

The entire western part of Singapore will become a testing ground for autonomous vehicles (AVs), under plans unveiled by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) on Thursday (Oct 24).
The expanded testbed - which will include areas such as Woodlands, Bukit Merah and Choa Chu Kang - will see more than 1,000km of public roads opened up to the testing of such self-driving vehicles.

This expansion will allow organisations to progressively test these vehicles in a wider range of traffic scenarios and road conditions, LTA said.
LTA said the move is a response to industry feedback that a more varied test environment will help accelerate the development of autonomous technology.

"This will support the robust testing of AVs’ capabilities to provide inter-town services and longer-haul journeys in a safe manner, and pave the way for the planned pilot deployment of AVs in the early 2020s," it added.
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 24, 2019

Toyota will offer rides in self-driving cars at the Tokyo Olympics
October 24, 2019
https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/24/toyota-self-driving-car-test-tokyo-olympics/

Toyota has revealed details of an upcoming public test for its level-4 automated vehicle and "Chauffeur" self-driving tech, and sports fans headed to Tokyo next year for the Olympic Games will have the chance to try it out. The automaker is offering rides in the car between July and September in the busy waterfront district of Odaiba.

The "complex environment of pedestrians, vehicle traffic, diverse road infrastructure and tall glass buildings" in that area of the metropolis will pose a "challenging setting in which to demonstrate the capabilities" of the autonomous tech, Toyota said.
Per Japanese law, a safety driver will be behind the wheel, ready to take over if needed.
Click to expand...

Toyota: Toyota to Offer Rides in SAE Level-4 Automated Vehicles on Public Roads in Japan Next Summer

guest · Oct 25, 2019

Airless tire makers hope for breakout moment with autonomous driving
October 25, 2019
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-moment-with-autonomous-driving-idUSKBN1X41ED

Makers of airless tires such as Japan’s Bridgestone Corp. hope driverless cars will herald a breakthrough for their niche technology, which is more than a decade old but underperforms standard tires in every way except resistance to puncture.
Autonomous driving - and the eventual introduction of self-driving taxis - could mean greater demand for puncture-resistant tires as greater usage of vehicles exposes them to more flat tires.

“In the past, a car would be driven about 20% of the time and spend the other 80% in the garage,” Atsushi Ueshima of Bridgestone said at the biennial Tokyo Motor Show on Thursday.
“In the age of shared, autonomous vehicles, it will be the opposite, and preventing breakdowns will be a top priority.”
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 25, 2019

Hyundai, Chinese start-up Pony.ai join forces on driverless robotaxi service in California
October 25, 2019
https://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups...onyai-join-forces-driverless-robotaxi-service

While the global market for driverless transport will take many years to develop, commuters in the US city of Irvine, California, will soon be able to hail rides from an on-demand robotaxi service set up by South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Group, using technology from Chinese start-up Pony.ai.

“The pilot introduces BotRide to several hundred Irvine residents, including college students,” said Christopher Chang, head of business development at Hyundai Motor’s strategy and technology division, in a statement. “The goal is to study consumer behaviour in an autonomous ride-sharing environment.”
BotRide marks the first autonomous ride-hailing service to be made available in California. To ensure public safety, each autonomous SUV will have a human co-pilot in charge of monitoring the self-driving system, according to Hyundai Motor and Pony.ai.
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 28, 2019

Waymo tests 'rider only' service and looks beyond robo-taxis
October 28, 2019
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ice-and-looks-beyond-robo-taxis-idUSKBN1X71U7

Waymo Chief Executive John Krafcik said the self-driving vehicle company is now offering limited “rider-only” trips in Phoenix, Arizona, as it looks beyond the robo-taxis business to generate future revenue.

Waymo, a unit of Alphabet Inc, has begun offering fully automated rides, without attendants in the vehicle, to a few hundred early users of its robo-taxi service in Phoenix, Krafcik confirmed on Sunday at a dinner with journalists ahead of a conference in Detroit.
He did not say when or how quickly Waymo would expand “rider-only” services. Riders signed up for the fully automated service have signed non-disclosure agreements, he said.

The company is testing its so-called automated driver on Peterbilt trucks and plans to expand trucking and commercial delivery applications of its technology as part of a project known internally as “Husky,” Krafcik said. Waymo has said it is testing its system on trucks in Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.

“We think trucking is a really interesting application of the Waymo driver,” Krafcik said. He added that current regulations do not allow driverless operation of heavier trucks, however.
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 28, 2019

MIT uses shadows to help autonomous vehicles see around corners
October 28, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/28/mit-uses-shadows-to-help-autonomous-vehicles-see-around-corners/

We’re still not at the point where autonomous vehicles systems can best human drivers in all scenarios, but the hope is that eventually, technology being incorporated into self-driving cars will be capable of things humans can’t even fathom – like seeing around corners. [...] MIT’s newest system uses relatively affordable and readily available technology to pull off this seeming magic trick.

MIT researchers (in a research project backed by Toyota Research Institute) created a system that uses minute changes in shadows to predict whether or not a vehicle can expect a moving object to come around a corner, which could be an effective system for use not only in self-driving cars, but also in robots that navigated shared spaces with humans – like autonomous hospital attendants, for instance.

This system employs standard optical cameras, and monitors changes in the strength and intensity of light using a series of computer vision techniques to arrive at a final determination of whether shadows are being projected by moving or stationary objects, and what the path of said object might be.
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 28, 2019

Volkswagen sets up autonomous driving subsidiary, plans Silicon Valley site next year
October 28, 2019
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/volkswagen-sets-up-autonomous-driving-subsidiary-plans-us-site.html

Volkswagen Group announced the creation of a subsidiary called Volkswagen Autonomy (VWAT) on Monday, with the German car giant saying it planned to “make autonomous driving market-ready.”
Alexander Hitzinger, the Volkswagen Group’s senior vice president for autonomous driving, will manage the new company.

“We want to establish Volkswagen Autonomy as a global technology company where we bundle expertise from the automotive and technology industries, combining the agility and creativity of a high-performance culture with process orientation and scalability,” Hitzinger said in a statement.
The last few years have seen a range of tests and developments take place in the autonomous vehicle sector.
Click to expand...

guest · Oct 29, 2019

Uber announces independent self-driving safety and responsibility board
October 29, 2019
https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/29/...self-driving-safety-and-responsibility-board/

In the aftermath of a March 2018 accident involving an autonomous Uber vehicle that killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, Uber retained law firm LeClairRyan to compile a report focusing on the safety culture and safety practices of the Advanced Technologies Group, or ATG. (That’s the division responsible for Uber’s autonomous vehicle development.)

Uber’s new self-driving safety and responsibility advisory (SARA) board is charged with reviewing, advising, and suggesting changes to ATG’s policies. It’s made up of six members who will provide input on organization-wide goals and priorities, and suggest improvements to the way Uber ATG develops driverless technology and brings it to market.
Click to expand...

Introducing Uber ATG’s Self-Driving Safety & Responsibility Board

ronjor · Oct 30, 2019

Automakers seeking profitable autonomous safety features: Aptiv CEO

Nick Carey October 30, 2019
DETROIT (Reuters) - With fully self-driving cars many years from mass market adoption because of the high cost and complexity of the technology, auto supplier Aptiv Plc is seeing soaring demand from automakers for more basic semi-automated driving features, the company’s top executive said on Wednesday.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 1, 2019

Chinese Drone Air Taxi Maker EHang Files For $100 Million IPO On Nasdaq
October 31, 2019
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...er-ehang-files-for-100-million-ipo-on-nasdaq/

EHang, a Chinese company that is preparing to launch what could be the first autonomous air taxi service, filed Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public on the Nasdaq with a $100 million offering of depository shares.

In January, EHang became the first company to receive approval from Chinese aviation regulators to establish a pilot air taxi service.
The company is hoping to expand to other major cities in China, where crushing traffic congestion makes the prospect of an aerial alternative tantalizing, as well as internationally.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 1, 2019

Hailing a driverless ride in a Waymo
After more than a decade, Waymo's driverless ride-hailing service is open to customers
November 1, 2019
https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/01/hailing-a-driverless-ride-in-a-waymo/

”Congrats! This car is all yours, with no one up front,” the pop-up notification from the Waymo One app reads. “This ride will be different. With no one else in the car, Waymo will do all the driving. Enjoy this free ride on us!”
Moments later, an empty Chrysler Pacifica minivan appears and navigates its way to my location near a park in Chandler, the Phoenix suburb where Waymo has been testing its autonomous vehicles since 2016.

It marks the beginning of a driverless ride-hailing service that is now being used by members of its early rider program and eventually the public.
It’s a milestone that has been promised — and has remained just out of reach — for years.

There are, of course, caveats to this milestone. Waymo is conducting these “completely driverless” rides in a controlled geofenced environment. [...]
Click to expand...

ronjor · Nov 3, 2019

The surprisingly boring road to self-driving cars

Jon Evans @rezendi03 Nov 2019
Few new technologies have ever been more anticipated and more predicted than the self-driving car. Anyone who drives cannot help but imagine not having to drive any more. It has been said that they will change our cities, our homes, our commerce, even our fundamental way of life.
But at the same time, the actual progress has seemed … well … glacial, to the casual driver’s eye.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 3, 2019

Tesla updates driving visualization to detect traffic cones
November 3, 2019
https://electrek.co/2019/11/03/tesla-driving-visualization-detect-traffic-cones/

Tesla has again updated its driving visualizations powered by Autopilot to detect construction cones and plan around them.

Powered by Autopilot’s suite of sensors and the automaker’s computer vision system, Tesla renders the vehicle’s surroundings on the screen.
It’s in no way a substitute for watching around the car, but it has been regarded as a confidence builder for Autopilot.
The automaker wrote in the release notes of the update:

“The driving visualization now displays traffic cones. In cases where a traffic cone is detected and Navigate on Autopilot is engaged (requires Full Self Driving Capability), [...]"
It means that Autopilot not only detects them, but they will now act on seeing them if on ‘Navigate on Autopilot’, which suggests or initiate lane changes based on where you are going.

As usual, even though the system is improving, Tesla makes it clear that drivers need to pay attention at all times and be ready to take control.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 3, 2019

Waymo's Latest Partnership Shows Self-Driving's Potential In Deliveries
November 2, 2019
https://www.ibtimes.com/waymos-latest-partnership-shows-self-drivings-potential-deliveries-2858687

Waymo, Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) self-driving car company, announced this week that it's expanding its partnership with AutoNation (NYSE:AN), an automotive retail company, to include auto parts deliveries.
Waymo said that its autonomous vehicles will be used to help shuttle car parts between several AutoNation locations and other repair shops in the Phoenix, Arizona area. The announcement adds to Waymo's existing partnership with AutoNation, in which some of the self-driving car company's vehicles are used to provide rides to AutoNation customers.

While the expanded partnership may not seem like a big deal at first blush, it's important for investors to know that the move is yet another step for Waymo toward the self-driving business-to-business (B2B) delivery market.
The delivery potential
While Waymo has received a lot of attention for the company's robotaxis (which currently run in a limited capacity in the Phoenix area), the company has always been clear that the same technology that drives its people-moving vans can be used for delivery of goods as well.
Click to expand...

ronjor · Nov 4, 2019

MIT CSAIL teaches autonomous cars to navigate occluded intersections safely

Kyle Wiggers@Kyle_L_Wiggers November 4, 2019
Truly autonomous vehicles — those without human safety drivers at the wheel — must be capable of determining when it’s safe to merge into traffic. Intersections with obstructed views make this somewhat challenging, but researchers at Toyota and MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) say they’ve developed an AI model that can estimate collision risk highly accurately.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 4, 2019

Long read
Guide to autonomous vehicles: What business leaders need to know
This special report from ZDNet and TechRepublic looks at how autonomous vehicles are empowering and reshaping the enterprise
November 4, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/guide-to-autonomous-vehicles-what-business-leaders-need-to-know/

Few technologies have been more anticipated heading into the 2020s than autonomous vehicles. Tantalizingly close and yet still perhaps decades from market adoption in some use cases, the technology is as promising as it is misunderstood.

You've heard the consumer hype, but what gets less ink are the transformative changes that autonomous vehicles will bring -- in some cases already are bringing -- to the enterprise.
This guide will help you sort the hype from the business reality and tell you all you need to know about the autonomous vehicle revolution on the ground, in the air, and even at sea.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 4, 2019

MIT engineers are teaching delivery robots how to navigate to your doorstep
Withour compromising your privacy
November 4, 2019
https://www.techspot.com/news/82621...ng-delivery-robots-how-navigate-doorstep.html

In context: Technology has solved many of the world's problems, but not without introducing plenty of its own -- some worse than others. On the less-serious end of that scale, we have autonomous delivery robots. These bots promise faster and more convenient shipping for customers, but they've also forced tech companies to figure out the best way to safely guide the machines to your doorstep.

Mapping neighborhoods in detail beforehand is one solution, but that becomes much less reliable over time.
So, what's the alternative? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in partnership with Ford, may have found an answer to that question. MIT's engineers recently developed a preliminary navigation method that uses environmental clues to help delivery robots plan out a route to their destination on-the-fly.

The research team reportedly assigned "semantic labels" to "context features" in the images such as the color grey for a front door, blue for a driveway, green for a hedge, and so on.
We look forward to seeing how MIT's technology performs in the wild, but it will likely be a while before that day comes.
Click to expand...

MIT: Navigation method may speed up autonomous last-mile delivery

ronjor · Nov 4, 2019

The top 3 companies in autonomous vehicles and self-driving cars

By Macy Bayern | November 4, 2019
As autonomous driving continues down the road to reality, these companies are fueling the movement.
Click to expand...

ronjor · Nov 5, 2019

Take a peek inside Lyft’s lab where 400 engineers are working on self-driving cars

Lora Kolodny@lorakolodny Katie Schoolov Andrew Evers@andevers6 05 Nov 2019
Lyft has 400 engineers working on its autonomous vehicle initiatives today.
Rather than build driverless cars from scratch, it is developing a virtual driver using cameras, radar and lidar sensors.
So far, Lyft has integrated its driverless systems into Ford Fusion and Chrysler Pacifica vehicles, which are operational with test drivers on board in Palo Alto, Calif.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 5, 2019

Nio, Mobileye partner on self-driving consumer passenger cars in China
November 5, 2019
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...onsumer-passenger-cars-in-china-idUSKBN1XF1YD

Chinese electric car startup Nio Inc (NIO.N) and Intel Corp’s (INTC.O) self-driving car technology firm Mobileye on Tuesday said they would partner to develop autonomous vehicles for the consumer market in China and eventually other countries.

Under the agreement, Nio will manufacture and produce at mass scale a self-driving system designed by Mobileye, which will be integrated into Nio’s electric-vehicle consumer lines, as well as Mobileye’s driverless ride-hailing services.
The self-driving kit provided by Israel-based Mobileye includes the vision processing chip, camera, radar and lidar sensors, as well as safety and mapping software.

“The deal with Nio will also enable us to harvest data in compliance with Chinese regulations and improve mapping to support autonomous driving,” Shashua said.
Click to expand...

guest · Nov 5, 2019

Uber test vehicles involved in 37 crashes before fatal self-driving incident
November 5, 2019
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ore-fatal-self-driving-incident-idUSKBN1XF2HA

Uber Technologies Inc’s autonomous test vehicles were involved in 37 crashes in the 18 months before a fatal March 2018 self-driving car accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Tuesday.

In one incident, the test vehicle struck a bent bicycle lane bollard that partially occupied the test vehicle’s lane of travel. In another incident, the operator took control to avoid a rapidly approaching oncoming vehicle that entered its lane of travel. The vehicle operator steered away and struck a parked car. The NTSB will hold a probable cause hearing on the crash Nov. 19.
Click to expand...

hawki · Nov 6, 2019

"Uber in fatal crash had safety flaws say US investigators...

Elaine Herzberg, 49, was hit by the car as she crossed a road in Tempe, Arizona.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NSTB) found the car failed to properly identify her as a pedestrian.
The detailed findings raised a series of safety issues but did not determine the probable cause of the accident.
The safety board is expected to make that finding when it meets on 19 November...
'The system design did not include a consideration for jaywalking pedestrians,' NTSB said..."
Click to expand...

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50312340

Log in or Sign up

Self-operating shuttle bus crashes after Las Vegas launch (All Things Self Driving)

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

hawki Registered Member

Log in or Sign up

Self-operating shuttle bus crashes after Las Vegas launch (All Things Self Driving)

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

ronjor Global Moderator

ronjor Global Moderator

guest Guest

guest Guest

hawki Registered Member

Useful Searches