Category: Driverless cars

y Rita Liao

There are plenty of autonomous driving vehicles testing on the roads of Shenzhen today: Pony.ai, Baidu, DeepRoute, AutoX, you name it. But these vehicles are not really the unmanned vehicles that tech upstarts envision for the future, as they have been required to operate with a safety driver behind the wheel.

A set of provisions introduced by the Shenzhen government is bringing the industry one step closer to a driverless future. The “Silicon Valley of China” that’s home to the likes of Huawei, Tencent and DJI is historically known for its progressive economic policies, so it’s unsurprising that the city just became the first in China to have laid out comprehensive rules governing smart and connected vehicles.

The regulation, which is set to take effect on August 1, grants permission for autonomous driving vehicles to operate without a human in the driver’s seat — though only within areas designated by the city’s authorities.

Continue reading… “Real driverless cars are now legal in Shenzhen, China’s tech hub”

China’s Baidu, Inc. has unveiled its next-generation fully autonomous vehicle (AV) Apollo RT6, an all-electric, production-ready model with a detachable steering wheel. Designed for complex urban environments, Apollo RT6 will be put into operation in China in 2023 on Apollo Go, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing service.

The steering wheel-free design frees up more space to allow the installation of extra seating, vending machines, desktops, or gaming consoles.

Apollo RT6 integrates Baidu’s most advanced L4 autonomous driving system, powered by automotive-grade dual computing units with a computing power of up to 1200 TOPS.

The vehicle utilises 38 sensors, including 8 LiDARs and 12 cameras, to obtain highly accurate, long-range detection on all sides.

Apollo RT6 is the first vehicle model built on Xinghe, Baidu’s self-developed automotive E/E architecture specially for fully autonomous driving.

Continue reading… “Baidu Unveils Next-Gen Autonomous Vehicle With Detachable Steering Wheel”

Carlos Diaz-Ruiz, a doctoral student, drives the data collection car and demonstrates some of the data collection techniques the autonomous vehicle researchers use to create their algorithms

 By ANTHONY JAMES

Autonomous vehicles that rely on artificial neural networks to navigate the world around them have no memory of the past, unlike humans, and are therefore in a constant state of seeing the world for the first time – no matter how many times they’ve driven down a particular road before. 

This is particularly problematic in adverse weather conditions, when the car cannot safely rely on its sensors, say researchers at the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and the College of Engineering, who are currently researching how best to overcome this limitation by providing self-driving cars with the ability to create ‘memories’ of previous experiences and use them in future navigation.

Doctoral student Yurong You is lead author of ‘HINDSIGHT is 20/20: Leveraging Past Traversals to Aid 3D Perception,’ which You presented virtually in April at ICLR 2022, the International Conference on Learning Representations [‘Learning representations’ includes deep learning, a kind of machine learning].

“The fundamental question is, can we learn from repeated traversals?” said senior author Kilian Weinberger, professor of computer science at Cornell Bowers CIS. “For example, a car may mistake a weirdly shaped tree for a pedestrian the first time its laser scanner perceives it from a distance, but once it is close enough, the object category will become clear. So the second time you drive past the very same tree, even in fog or snow, you would hope that the car has now learned to recognize it correctly.”

Continue reading… “Cornell algorithms help self-driving cars learn from own memories”

Baidu’s electric vehicle (EV) arm Jidu Auto on Wednesday launched a “robot” concept car, the first vehicle to be revealed by a Chinese internet company’

Baidu’s electric vehicle (EV) arm Jidu Auto on Wednesday launched a “robot” concept car, the first vehicle to be revealed by a Chinese internet company. 

The concept car, which is free of door handles and can be fully controlled via voice recognition, was launched through an online press conference held on Baidu’s metaverse-themed app Xirang. 

Jidu, an EV venture controlled by Baidu and co-funded by Chinese automaker Geely, plans to mass produce the model, which would be 90% similar to the concept car, in 2023. 

The ‘robot’ EVs will possess autonomous Level 4 capabilities that need no human intervention as well as utilize Qualcomm’s 8295 chips, which will enable users to access voice assistance offline when internet connection is poor. 

Baidu’s EV-making plan comes as tech companies around the world race to develop smart cars after Tesla’s success in commercializing electric vehicles. 

Continue reading… “Baidu’s Electric Vehicle Firm Jidu Unveils First ‘Robot’ Car”

By Darrell Etherington

The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is here — Cruise officially became the first company to offer fared rides to the general public in a major city as of late Wednesday. The milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial capacity.

Initially, Cruise’s driverless autonomous offering will operate only between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., and only on designated streets in the city. But the limits are part of a plan by regulators and the company to prove out the safety and efficacy of its system before deploying it in more locations at additional times. The new operating window already extends its total active time by 1.5 hours as compared to the free driverless test pilot service it was offering between June of last year and the debut of this paid service.

Continue reading… “CRUISE’S DRIVERLESS AUTONOMOUS CARS START GIVING RIDES TO PAYING PASSENGER”

The UN is advocating for higher speed limits, but only for robocars.

By Ben Zachariah

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has put forward a draft amendment which would allow autonomous cars to drive up to 130km/h – more than double the current limit.

The proposal would mean passenger vehicles with Level 3 autonomous driving technology would be able to perform actions like automatic lane changing on freeways.

With Australia being one of the signatories to the regulatory framework set by the UNECE, the move could allow Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to become available within six months.

Despite the full suite of functions not being approved locally, Tesla allows its Australian customers to purchase FSD for $10,100 as an optional extra.

In recent days, Automotive News reported the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was extending its investigation of Tesla’s Autopilot system – a lower level of semi-autonomous driving tech – to include a total of 830,000 built between 2014 and 2022.

The investigation opened following a spate of accidents and one fatality which have been allegedly attributed to the technology.

Continue reading… “United Nations proposal could open up Tesla’s Full Self-Driving to Australia”

The finalized prototype of Google self-driving car.

Nearly nine out of 10 people in the UK (86%) want self-driving vehicles to be labeled so they can be clearly distinguished from human-driven vehicles, according to a major new survey led by UCL researchers.

The research team surveyed 4,860 members of the British public in late 2021 about their attitudes to self-driving vehicles. The questions were created following interviews with 50 experts involved in developing the technology.

The researchers found that, while experts tended to downplay concerns about self-driving vehicles, members of the public were more skeptical. This skepticism, the researchers said, would not be resolved with better public understanding of the technology, but reflected real uncertainties that developers needed to address.

Most survey respondents were uncomfortable with the idea of using self-driving vehicles (58%) or sharing the road with them (55%)—a trend that has remained consistent over five years of public surveys.

Continue reading… “UK public want self-driving cars to be labelled”

Cruise, Tesla, Alphabet Inc’s Waymo and Aurora Innovation Inc are among many companies aiming to deploy fully autonomous vehicle technology in the United States within the next two to three years.

Self-driving vehicle companies from Tesla Inc to General Motors Co’s Cruise are racing to start making money with their technology, outrunning efforts by regulators and Congress to write rules of the road for robot-driven vehicles. On Tuesday, Cruise said that SoftBank Group Corp will invest another $1.35 billion in anticipation of Cruise launching commercial robo-taxi operations. Cruise needs one permit, from California’s Public Utilities Commission, to start charging for rides around San Francisco in vehicles with no human driver.

Cruise, Tesla, Alphabet Inc’s Waymo and Aurora Innovation Inc are among many companies aiming to deploy fully autonomous vehicle technology in the United States within the next two to three years, whether or not federal regulators give them a clear legal framework for doing so. Autonomous vehicle (AV) startups and automakers are under pressure to start generating revenue from billions of dollars of engineering investment over the past decade.

Proposed legislation to create a national framework of rules to govern autonomous vehicles remains stalled in Congress, despite the industry’s lobbying. That has left autonomous vehicle companies free to deploy robo-taxis or self-driving trucks in some states, such as Arizona and Texas, but not in others. Waymo has provided thousands of rides in driverless robo-taxis in Phoenix, though the service remains limited.

Continue reading… “Self-Driving Car Companies Zoom Ahead, Leaving U.S. Regulators Behind”

Elon Musk told shareholders during Tesla’s quarterly earnings call Wednesday that the company plans to begin mass production of the self-driving taxis in 2024.

New Delhi: Electric car firm Tesla’s “robotaxi” will have no steering wheel or pedals, and it will be as cheap as a bus ride, Elon Musk has said.

According to news reports, Musk told shareholders during the company’s quarterly earnings call Wednesday that Tesla plans to begin mass production of the self-driving taxis in 2024.

“We are also working on a new vehicle that I alluded to at the Giga Texas opening, which is a dedicated robotaxi,” Musk was quoted as saying in a report in The Independent.

“It is going to be highly optimised for autonomy – meaning it will not have a steering wheel or pedals. There are a number of other innovations around it that I think are quite exciting, but it is fundamentally optimised to achieve the lowest fully considered cost per mile or kilometre when counting everything,” he added. 

Continue reading… “Elon Musk Says Tesla Robotaxi Coming In 2024, Will Have No Steering Wheel: Report”