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

guest · May 18, 2020

EasyMile Self-Driving Shuttles Add Seatbelts To Get Back In Operation
May 15, 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradte...ttles-add-seatbelts-to-get-back-in-operation/

EasyMile is a company that makes low-speed self-driving shuttle vehicles that are popular with local agencies trying to experiment with self-driving transportation, and they operate 16 projects in the USA and more overseas. In March, they shut down operations after an incident where a vehicle stopped suddenly and a passenger flew off her seat with minor injuries.

EasyMile announced today it will resume operations as soon as Covid rules allow. It will add signs warning people of sudden stops, train the in-vehicle operators on them and warning passengers. It will also add seat-belts, but will leave the decision on whether use of the belts is mandatory to local agencies and NHTSA.
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EasyMile: EasyMile given green light to resume passenger operations in the US

People in the US will be riding in EasyMile’s vehicles again as and when Covid-19 measures allow. This comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) outlined conditions to lift a temporary suspension of allowing members of the public to ride the EZ10, after a minor passenger incident.

Very different from autonomous cars, EasyMile’s shuttles are designed for public transportation. They carry passengers at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour and operate on a specified route. Today, there is always a human safety operator on board as the technology evolves and becomes more widely used.
Finally, although they are not standard in mainstream public transport, in an effort to continue to deliver the benefits of this new technology in as safe and acceptable a way possible, we are also adding seat belts to our US-based shuttles.

“We hope what comes out of this is an understanding of how safe and beneficial autonomous shuttles are to communities, and that it helps improve safety and service for all self-driving vehicles on the road in the future, and today.”
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ronjor · May 18, 2020

Tesla 'full self-driving' price will increase by $1,000 on July 1, Elon Musk says

Steven Ewing May 18, 2020
Despite the name, the "full self-driving" tech does not turn your Tesla into an autonomous car; there are currently no self-driving cars for sale. Instead, FSD works with the car's Autopilot suite and includes a number of features, including automatic lane changes, parallel and perpendicular parking assist, the bring-the-car-to-me summon feature, Navigate on Autopilot highway driving assistance and most recently, automatic traffic light and stop sign control. The next bit of software in the FSD suite will allow the car to automatically steer on city streets, as well.
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ronjor · May 19, 2020

GM is developing next-gen ‘Ultra Cruise’ semi-autonomous driving system to combat Tesla’s Autopilot

Published Tue, May 19 2020
General Motors is developing a next-generation semi-autonomous driving system that’s internally being referred to as “Ultra Cruise.”
The new drover-assist system takes the automaker’s current Super Cruise system that has the capability to operate on highway systems to city streets.
Being able to operate on city streets would better position GM’s technology against Tesla’s Autopilot.
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guest · May 19, 2020

Mobileye CEO Sees 'Great Consolidation' Ahead in Autonomous Car Sector
May 19, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/05/19/technology/19reuters-intel-autonomous.html

The autonomous car industry will have to consolidate because it is too difficult for separate companies to cooperate in developing self-driving vehicles, the head of Intel's autonomous car unit said on Tuesday.

Amnon Shashua, CEO of Intel's Israel-based Mobileye, said the strategy of having individual companies each focusing on one component, like safety, sensors or maps, is not sustainable because it's an "end-to-end system" that cannot be broken down.

"It's a formidable task, and there are going to be very very few actors who can go from silicon (chips) to self-driving systems," Shashua said during an online conference by the Israel government-backed EcoMotion.
He said he believes commercial autonomous cars will be available in 2025.
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guest · May 19, 2020

People who know more about self-driving technology trust it more
More knowledge equals less fear, but confusion about the technology is rampant
May 19, 2020
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/0...-say-theyll-never-get-in-a-self-driving-taxi/

Robotaxis have a real public image problem, according to new survey data collected by an industry group. Partners for Automated Vehicle Education surveyed 1,200 Americans earlier this year and found that 48 percent of Americans say they would "never get in a taxi or ride-share vehicle that was being driven autonomously."

PAVE says its data doesn't reflect skepticism or fear based on the killing of a pedestrian by one of Uber's autonomous vehicles, nor the series of drivers killed while using Tesla's Autopilot. In fact, those events don't even register with much of the population.
But those who reported knowing a lot about the deaths were more likely to tell the survey they thought autonomous vehicles were safe now.
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According to the survey data, getting a ride in a robotaxi might change some of those minds. Three in five said that they'd have more trust in autonomous vehicles if they had a better understanding of how those vehicles worked, and 58 percent said that firsthand experience—i.e. going for a ride in a self-driving car—would make them trust the technology more.
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guest · May 21, 2020

Top safety official at Waymo self-driving unit stepping down
May 21, 2020
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-w...self-driving-unit-stepping-down-idUKKBN22X2Q9

Alphabet Inc’s Waymo self-driving unit said on Thursday that its chief safety officer, Debbie Hersman, was stepping down but would remain as a consultant to the company.

Hersman, the former chair of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), joined the company in 2019 to oversee its product safety program.

“We can confirm that Debbie has decided to return to her family home on the east coast and will continue on as a consultant to Waymo,” the company said in a statement.
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Founded 11 years ago as a small project inside Google, Waymo is now widely considered the leader in developing self-driving technology. But Waymo and its principal rivals are still years away from building large-scale businesses around that technology, analysts believe.
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guest · May 22, 2020

Autonomous delivery companies stress need for clearer rules on deployment
May 22, 2020
https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/22/...-stress-need-for-clearer-rules-on-deployment/

During an online event this week hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), three panelists — Cruise’s Eric Danko, Wing’s Nick Devereux, and Nuro’s Matthew Lipka — spoke about the need for regulation of autonomous delivery systems during health crises like the pandemic

Some experts predict the pandemic will hasten the adoption of autonomous technologies for goods transportation. Despite their need for disinfection, self-driving cars, autonomous drones, and robots can minimize the risk of spreading disease. But the laws haven’t caught up with the use case, according to Danko, Cruise’s director of federal affairs.

“[...] we need a rule-making to update [the] Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards [specifying the design, construction, performance, and durability requirements for vehicles], which were written at a time when nobody could’ve conceived of the idea of self-driving vehicles. The majority of those standards bake in the assumption of a human operator.”
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guest · May 23, 2020

Scale AI releases free lidar data set to power self-driving car development
May 22, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/scale-ai-releases-free-lidar-195639181.html

High-quality data is the fuel that powers AI algorithms. Without a continual flow of labeled data, bottlenecks can occur and the algorithm will slowly get worse and add risk to the system.

That need is what led to the creation of Scale AI, a startup that uses software and people to process and label image, lidar and map data for companies building machine learning algorithms. Companies working on autonomous vehicle technology make up a large swath of Scale's customer base, although its platform is also used by Airbnb, Pinterest and OpenAI, among others.
The company, in collaboration with lidar manufacturer Hesai, launched this week an open-source data set called PandaSet that can be used for training machine learning models for autonomous driving.

"Machine learning is definitely a garbage in, garbage out kind of framework — you really need high-quality data to be able to power these algorithms. It's why we built Scale and it's also why we're using this data set today to help drive forward the industry with an open-source perspective."
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Scale: Sophisticated LiDAR technology meets high-quality data annotation

PandaSet aims to promote and advance research and development in autonomous driving and machine learning.
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hawki · May 26, 2020

"Amazon in talks to buy driverless-technology startup Zoox

Amazon.com Inc. is in advanced talks to buy Zoox Inc. in a move that would expand the e-commerce giant’s reach in autonomous-vehicle technology...

Zoox, founded in 2014, has been working to develop the hardware and software needed to create electric-powered, robot taxis that would be summoned by smartphone app starting this year..."

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a...ogy-startup-zoox-2020-05-26?mod=mw_latestnews

guest · May 27, 2020

Autonomous car company Aurora increases hiring amid industry struggles
May 27, 2020
https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/27/aurora-commits-to-hiring-as-it-crosses-the-500-employee-mark/

Autonomous vehicle (AV) startup Aurora today announced it has roughly doubled its workforce to 500 people (up from 250 as of May 2019) and committed to hiring workers across the company as it welcomes 22 remote interns and a trio of executives.

Aurora’s hiring spree — which has a specific focus on mid- to senior-level engineers in software and infrastructure, robotics, hardware, cloud, and firmware — comes at a particularly fraught time for AV companies. The economic fallout from the pandemic has begun to take its toll, with even well-funded ventures like Cruise, Kodiak Robotics, and Ike shedding hundreds of employees collectively.

“We are actively hiring and with the industry shakeup right now, there’s a lot of new talent on the market, an opportunity we intend to take full advantage of. Our mission to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology has never been more crucial, and we’re hiring across the board, in software and hardware engineering, business, and operations,” an Aurora spokesperson told VentureBeat via email.
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Analysts predict the pandemic and its effects, like testing delays, will result in consolidation, tabled or canceled launches, and shakeups across the autonomous transportation industry.
According to Boston Consulting Group’s Brian Collie, broad commercialization of AVs won’t happen before 2025 or 2026 — at least three years later than originally anticipated.
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ronjor · May 28, 2020

Nuro’s driverless delivery robots will transport medicine to CVS customers in Texas

By Andrew J. Hawkins@andyjayhawk May 28, 2020
This represents a shift in Nuro’s typical operations
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ronjor · May 28, 2020

Optimus Ride begins delivering food to families in need in Washington, D.C.

Kyle Wiggers@Kyle_L_Wiggers May 28, 2020
Optimus Ride, a startup developing self-driving shuttles principally for transportation, today announced that three of its vehicles will begin making deliveries at the Yards, a waterfront development in Washington, D.C., beginning this week. From D.C.-area restaurant and brewery Bluejacket, they’ll ferry boxes containing a week’s worth of food and ingredients furnished by the Neighborhood Restaurant Group and the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture to families in need. Recipients are identified by Pathways to Housing, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending homelessness.
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guest · May 29, 2020

SoftBank leads $500 million fundraising for Didi's self-driving unit
May 29, 2020
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-d...ing-for-didis-self-driving-unit-idUKKBN23513Y

China’s Didi Chuxing said on Friday it had completed a fundraising round of over $500 million (£406.50 million) for its autonomous driving subsidiary that was led by SoftBank Group’s (9984.T) Vision Fund 2.

The ridehailing giant said in a statement the round marked the first time Didi’s autonomous driving business had brought in external funding since it became a standalone unit last year and was also the single largest fundraising round in China’s self-driving sector.
Didi said it would use the capital to invest further in the research and development of autonomous driving technology as well as testing, and accelerate the deployment of autonomous driving services.
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Autonomous driving technology has remained popular with investors even amid the pandemic. Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) this month raised an additional $750 million in its first external investment round, while China’s Pony.ai raised $462 million from investors led by Toyota Motor (7203.T) in February.
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guest · May 30, 2020

Waymo’s robot minivans are ready to roll in the Bay Area for the first time since COVID-19 outbreak
May 30, 2020
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/30/21275441/waymo-self-driving-car-delivery-bay-area-resume-covid

Waymo’s self-driving cars are returning to Bay Area roads for the first time since the company halted its public testing in early March because of the coronavirus outbreak. The Alphabet-owned company plans to return its fleet of autonomous minivans to service starting June 8th, according to an email obtained by The Verge.

Waymo’s self-driving cars will be put to use delivering packages for two Bay Area non-profits: illustrator Wendy McNaughton’s #DrawTogether, which provides art kits to Bay Area kids; and Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
The company is the latest autonomous vehicle operator to discover that doing deliveries allows it to sidestep restrictions that would otherwise require them to keep their autonomous vehicles off the road.
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One Bay Area-based driver told The Verge they were glad to get back to work, but that this latest announcement about non-profit delivery suggests the company may have “found a loophole to get back to testing.”
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guest · Jun 2, 2020

Self-driving vehicle startup Argo AI completes $2.6B deal with Volkswagen, expands to Europe
June 2, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/01/s...-2-6b-deal-with-volkswagen-expands-to-europe/

Volkswagen Group finalized Tuesday its $2.6 billion investment into Argo AI, the Pittsburgh-based self-driving car startup that came out of stealth in 2017 with $1 billion in backing from Ford.

The deal turns Argo into a global company with two customers — VW and Ford — as well as operations in the U.S. and Europe and an instant jump in its workforce. Autonomous Intelligent Driving, the self-driving subsidiary that was launched in 2017 to develop autonomous vehicle technology for the VW Group, will be absorbed into Argo AI. AID’s Munich offices will become Argo’s European headquarters.
The company has fleets of autonomous vehicles mapping and testing on public roads in Austin, Miami and Washington, D.C.

“Building a safe, scalable and trusted self-driving service, however, is no small task. It’s also not a cheap one,” Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC CEO John Lawler said in a blog post.
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guest · Jun 2, 2020

Yandex updates its self-driving tech on the 2020 Hyundai Sonata
The Russian internet giant revealed its fourth-generation self-driving car
June 2, 2020
https://www.engadget.com/yandex-hyundai-sonata-self-driving-vehicle-090000104.html

Today, the Russian internet giant Yandex revealed its fourth-generation self-driving car, a collaboration with Hyundai. This generation brings Yandex tech to the 2020 Hyundai Sonata. By the end of this year, Yandex plans to add 100 Sonatas to its self-driving fleet, which includes a robo-taxi service in Innopolis, Russia, and vehicles in Michigan.

As part of the upgrades, Hyundai’s Mobis team modified the Sonata’s electric control units to interface more effectively with Yandex’s self-driving control tech.
Yandex says these changes make it easier for the vehicle to “see” pedestrians and vehicles in tricky situations, like when they’re exiting an alley or driveway, or turning onto a busy street.
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guest · Jun 3, 2020

S. Korea's self-driving upstarts take on tech giants
June 3, 2020
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-06-korea-self-driving-upstarts-tech-giants.html

In a workshop that blends a corporate office with a tool-packed garage, around 20 South Koreans are looking to take on the multi-billion-dollar giants of Uber, Tesla and Google parent Alphabet with a self-driving car of their own.

The RideFlux start-up brings together engineers who have given up well-paid jobs with some of the South's most prestigious firms to try to build a ride-sharing company for the tech-savvy nation.
Their modified Hyundai Ioniq, festooned with cameras and proximity sensors, is the first autonomous vehicle to go into regular service on public roads in the country.

For now, under South Korean law a safety driver has to sit behind the wheel, poised to intervene if necessary—they do so at least once a day on average—leaving space for two passengers.

"Our aim is to put self-driving cars without safety drivers operating in all parts of Jeju in the next five years," he said.
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guest · Jun 3, 2020

Kitty Hawk ends Flyer program, shifts focus to once-secret autonomous aircraft
June 3, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/03/k...fts-focus-to-once-secret-autonomous-aircraft/

Kitty Hawk is shutting down its Flyer program, the aviation startup’s inaugural moonshot to develop an ultralight electric flying car designed for anyone to use.

The company, backed by Google co-founder Larry Page and led by Sebastian Thrun, said it’s now focused on scaling up Heaviside, a sleeker, more capable (once secret) electric aircraft that is quiet, fast and can fly and land anywhere autonomously.

“Going forward, we are doubling down on Heaviside as our primary platform,” Alex Roetter, president of Flyer and Thrun wrote in the blog post published Wednesday. “But we would never have gotten here without launching and learning from Flyer, and the amazing team of people who built and operated it.”
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ronjor · Jun 4, 2020

Study: Autonomous vehicles won't make roads completely safe

Tom Krisher, Associated Press June 4, 2020
A new study says that while autonomous vehicle technology has great promise to reduce crashes, it may not be able to prevent all mishaps caused by human error.
Auto safety experts say humans cause about 94% of U.S. crashes, but the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study says computer-controlled robocars will only stop about one-third of them.
The group says that while autonomous vehicles eventually will identify hazards and react faster than humans, and they won’t become distracted or drive drunk, stopping the rest of the crashes will be a lot harder.
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guest · Jun 7, 2020

Baidu says autonomous driving tech could go several more years without profit
Baidu committed to self-driving cars
June 5, 2020
https://www.abacusnews.com/tech/bai...ral-more-years-without-profit/article/3087715

Chinese internet giant Baidu has been developing self-driving technologies for seven years without making money, but the company is committed enough to the future of transport to keep going for at least another seven more, the head of its autonomous driving unit Apollo said on Wednesday.

“We are very confident internally that we will persist and continue investing in autonomous driving for another seven years,” Li Zhenyu, Baidu’s corporate vice-president and general manager of Apollo said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Whether this investment makes sense, we will only know at the end of the game.”
Li said the money to keep Apollo going will come from its parent company, Baidu, although he declined to reveal how much the Beijing-based search engine company has invested in the self-driving program so far.

Autonomous cars are high on the development agenda for both the US and China, but fully autonomous technology has been hard to achieve due to the complexities inherent in navigating busy, real-world environments.
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guest · Jun 10, 2020

Ford launches Spin internationally as escooter demand surges
June 10, 2020
https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/10/ford-launches-spin-internationally-as-escooter-demand-surges/

Spin has launched its electric scooter service in Germany — its first international market — as the Ford-owned mobility company touts record growth due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Spin, which operates across dozens of U.S. cities, said it has seen a 34% increase in new daily users week-on-week since April, while trip durations have risen by up to 44%. In other words, people appear to be turning to micromobility because public transit services are operating vastly reduced services or to maintain social distancing — or a combination of the two.
From today, Spin’s dockless escooters are officially available in Cologne, Germany, followed by launches in Dortmund and Essen next week.

In addition to its European launch, Spin revealed plans to extend its service domestically, with a number of new cities coming next month, including Atlanta, Georgia.
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guest · Jun 13, 2020

Ohio gets $4.4M for autonomous trucking corridor
June 12, 2020
https://statescoop.com/ohio-gets-4m-autonomous-trucking-corridor/

Ohio has received a $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to build an autonomous trucking corridor along a freeway running between Columbus and Indianapolis the state announced Friday.

The grant will partially fund a $8.9 million project led by the Ohio Department of Transportation, a state-led autonomous transportation initiative called DriveOhio, the Transportation Research Center proving ground and the Indiana Department of Transportation.
In addition to the project’s partners, the state also plans to partner with technology providers, truck manufacturers, regional logistics councils and private freight companies.

Ohio is heavily involved in testing autonomous vehicle technology. A cohort of four Ohio cities — Columbus, Athens, Dublin and Marysville — participated in the DriveOhio initiative to further research on connected and autonomous vehicles.
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guest · Jun 15, 2020

Self-driving map will tell where Apple Cars are being tested across US
June 15, 2020
https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...l-where-apple-cars-are-being-tested-across-us

Regulators in the United States are encouraging Apple and other self-driving vehicle system creators to collect and share data on tests of their autonomous driving platforms, to help promote it development and earn the public's trust over the use of the technology.

Unveiled on Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Automated Vehicle Transparency and Engagement for Safe Testing (AV TEST) initiative will provide a way for the public to view where testing of self-driving vehicles is taking place across the United States.
More details will also be provided than locations, such as the type of vehicle being tested. This ranges from the self-driving cars and trucks to low-speed shuttles and driverless electric delivery vehicles.
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Speaking to Reuters, Deputy NHTSA Administrator Jamie Owens hopes AV TEST will offer better transparency to consumers that are skeptical about the technology. The scheme will help encourage "everybody to up their game to help better ensure that the testing is don in a manner fully consistent with safety," said Owens.
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guest · Jun 16, 2020

Industry-wide consensus needed to put autonomous vehicles on the map
June 16, 2020
https://www.computerweekly.com/news...-needed-to-put-autonomous-vehicles-on-the-map

Getting self-driving vehicles on UK roads by 2030 will require industry-wide consensus to create large-scale platforms for collecting, processing and sharing connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) specific mapping data, says a report from Zenzic, the organisation dedicated to accelerating self-driving in the UK.

Its Geodata report – analysis and recommendations for self-driving vehicle testing is designed to help the self-driving vehicle industry agree on defining how mapping data can be shared between companies and authorities, to speed up the development of safe self-driving vehicles without hindering competition.
The study said solving the current fragmentation of geospatial mapping data was vital to enable self-driving vehicles to be safely on the road, both in the UK and globally.
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ronjor · Jun 16, 2020

We’re never going to get meaningful data on self-driving car testing

By Andrew J. Hawkins@andyjayhawk Jun 15, 2020
DOT is asking for volunteers, but safety advocates say the agency is settling for ‘table scraps’
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Self-operating shuttle bus crashes after Las Vegas launch (All Things Self Driving)

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