With the public expecting that autonomous vehicles will offer comfort levels approaching those of a living room environment, Ricardo is developing new software to minimize the risks of motion sickness; the development also promises benefits for conventionally-driven vehicles. The imminent introduction of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) has stimulated consumer... Read more →

Lumotive, a Bill Gates-funded startup developing LiDAR systems for autonomous vehicles, introduced a beam-steering technology which will significantly improve the performance, reliability and cost of LiDAR systems for the emerging self-driving car industry. Initially targeting the robo-taxi market, Lumotive’s patented system uses Liquid Crystal Metasurfaces (LCM) and silicon fabrication to... Read more →

Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development (TRI-AD) and NVIDIA announced a new collaboration to develop, train and validate self-driving vehicles. The partnership builds on an ongoing relationship with Toyota to utilize the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier AV computer and is based on close development between teams from NVIDIA, TRI-AD in Japan and... Read more →

At its GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA announced NVIDIA DRIVE AP2X—a complete Level 2+ automated driving solution encompassing DRIVE AutoPilot software, DRIVE AGX and DRIVE validation tools. DRIVE AP2X incorporates DRIVE AV autonomous driving software and DRIVE IX intelligent cockpit experience. Each runs on the high-performance, energy-efficient NVIDIA Xavier system-on-a-chip (SoC)... Read more →

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has made awards under the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for a Phase 1 Truck Platooning Early Deployment Assessment. This project is being conducted to understand how truck platoons will operate in a realistic, operational environment. Previous research has resulted in the development of truck platooning... Read more →

Volvo Buses and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have demonstrated the world’s first 12-meter autonomous electric bus. The Volvo bus will soon begin trials on the NTU campus. The bus is equipped with four lidar sensors which enables it to detect and stop for objects coming in its way.... Read more →

Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD) and CARMERA, Inc. are conducting a joint proof-of-concept project to develop camera-based automation of high definition (HD) maps for urban and surface roads. This is the first step towards realizing TRI-AD’s open software platform concept known as Automated Mapping Platform (AMP) to support the... Read more →

New research from Rice University and Texas Tech University has found that drivers often fail to spot hazards missed by automated vehicles, and it only gets worse the longer drivers ride in them. The study is published in the journal Human Factors. The researchers examined the behavior of 60 licensed... Read more →

Daimler AG and the BMW Group are to partner on automated driving. Initially, the focus will be on advancing the development of next-generation technologies for driver assistance systems, automated driving on highways and parking features (up to SAE Level 4). The two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding jointly... Read more →

FedEx Corp. unveiled the FedEx SameDay Bot—an autonomous delivery device designed to help retailers make same-day and last-mile deliveries to their customers. With the bot, retailers will be able to accept orders from nearby customers and deliver them by bot directly to customers’ homes or businesses the same day. FedEx... Read more →

Continental and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new platform, expected to be available this year, for sharing vehicle data to enable new digital services that improve driver safety and convenience. At the same time, the platform will help car manufacturers monetize their data and differentiate their brands. Based on... Read more →

Renesas Electronics Corporation announced the first microcontroller (MCU) with embedded flash that integrates a hardware-based virtualization-assisted function while maintaining the fast, real-time performance of the RH850 products. This hardware-based virtualization assist technology can support up to ASIL D level of functional safety, providing greater levels of system integration. The RH850/U2A... Read more →

Autonomous vehicles relying on light-based image sensors often struggle to see through conditions such as fog. MIT researchers have now developed a sub-terahertz-radiation receiving system that could help steer driverless cars when traditional methods fail. Sub-terahertz wavelengths, which are between microwave and infrared radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, can be... Read more →

University of Michigan researchers are teaching self-driving cars to recognize and predict pedestrian movements with greater precision than current technologies. The approach relies on a novel objective function that incorporates the periodicity of human walking (gait), the mirror symmetry of the human body, and the change of ground reaction forces... Read more →

As self-driving cars continue to develop, there will be a staggering amount of data amassed through cars’ navigational technologies. Questions regarding privacy, ownership, cybersecurity and public safety arise, as heavily guarded mapping data is collected and leveraged by companies. The geospatial data can be used to draw new maps identifying... Read more →

Combining human and artificial intelligence in autonomous vehicles could push driverless cars more quickly toward wide-scale adoption, according to researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). That’s the goal of a new project that relies on a technique called instantaneous crowdsourcing to provide a cost-effective, real-time remote... Read more →

NSITEXE, Inc., a DENSO Group company that designs and develops semiconductor IP cores, acted as lead investor and has a stake in startup quadric.io. The purpose of the investment is to help quadric.io’s development of edge processing units (EPUs)—high-performance semiconductors that could be used as a foundation for enabling automated... Read more →

Volkswagen has revealed some of the features of the updated Passat, which will launch later this year. Among the technical updates are an upgrade to the plug-in hybrid system in the Passat GTE that extends the all-electric range to to up to around 55 km (34 miles) in the WLTP... Read more →

Mercedes-Benz considers empathy and trust to be central factors for the acceptance of self-driving vehicles. For people to have trust in the machine, they must immediately and intuitively be able to recognise what an autonomous vehicle intends to do. Mercedes-Benz is conducting research into this “informed trust” with the help... Read more →

With no need to park, autonomous vehicles (AVs) will clog city streets and slow traffic to a crawl, according to a new paper by University of Santa Cruz transportation planner Adam Millard-Ball, an associate professor of environmental studies. However, a policy fix could address these problems before autonomous vehicles become... Read more →

Boeing has successfully completed the first test flight of its autonomous passenger air vehicle (PAV) prototype in Manassas, Virginia. Boeing NeXt, which leads the company’s urban air mobility efforts, utilized Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to design and develop the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and will continue... Read more →

The Texas Department of Transportation is going to create a Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) Task Force to become a central point for CAV advancement in Texas. The task force is designed to be a one-stop resource for information and coordination on all ongoing CAV projects, investments and initiatives in... Read more →

Hyundai Mobis and KT Corp. have launched 5G communication in the Hyundai Mobis proving ground in Seosan, Chungcheongnam-do, and have begun to collaborate to develop connected vehicle technology by actively utilizing this network. Source: Hyundai Mobis KT built the infrastructure in the Seosan proving ground; Hyundai Mobis is the first... Read more →

Foretellix, an Israel-based start-up automating the verification and measurable safety of autonomous vehicles, has closed $14 million of series-A funding. Led by 83North, Jump Capital, and Nextgear Ventures, the investment will accelerate Foretellix’s development, customer programs and deployment of its coverage-driven verification solution. The company has now raised more than... Read more →

Stop & Shop is partnering with Robomart to launch driverless grocery vehicle service in the Greater Boston area beginning in Spring 2019. The vehicles will bring a selection of Stop & Shop produce as well as meal kits and convenience items directly to consumers. Stop & Shop customers in the... Read more →

Mcity at the University of Michigan has outlined a test track-based concept for evaluating the safety of highly automated vehicles before they’re tested on public roads that could emerge as a model for a voluntary standard for safety testing. The project comes after two highly publicized fatalities last year stoked... Read more →

Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Company announced the first formal agreements in a global alliance. Volkswagen CEO Dr. Herbert Diess and Ford CEO Jim Hackett confirmed that the companies intend to develop commercial vans and medium-sized pickups for global markets beginning as early as 2022. The alliance will drive significant... Read more →

Nissan unveiled its Nissan IMs electric all-wheel drive concept vehicle with full autonomous drive capability at the 2019 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). The IMs concept features new proportions and stretched interior space—including a unique “Premier Seat” 2 + 1 + 2 seating architecture—designed to create a new vehicle... Read more →

Baidu, Inc. has introduced Apollo 3.5, the newest and most powerful release of the open, reliable and secure software platform for the development of autonomous driving systems through on-vehicle and hardware platforms. Apollo 3.5 is the first open source autonomous driving platform that can perform in complex urban and suburban... Read more →

At CES 2019 last week, NVIDIA showcased DRIVE Localization—an open, scalable platform for vehicles to position themselves on high-definition maps with unprecedented robustness and accuracy, using mass-market sensors. It’s vital for a self-driving car to be able to pinpoint its location within centimeters so it can understand its surroundings and... Read more →

Cepton Technologies Inc., a provider of 3D LiDAR solutions, announced two new LiDAR products: the Vista-M and Vista-X. The Vista series LiDAR solutions are built with Cepton’s patented Micro-Motion Technology (MMT) and run on the NVIDIA DRIVE in-vehicle AI computing platform—providing high resolution and long-range imaging to enable all levels... Read more →

Mercedes-Benz has selected NVIDIA to help realize its vision for next-generation vehicles. The partnership builds on a longstanding collaboration between the two companies. Both companies, said NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang, agree that the car of the future must be software defined—starting from creating the software for today’s requirements,... Read more →

The City of Sacramento will partner with Deepen AI, Inc. and Foresight AI, Inc. on a project designed to speed the development and safe deployment of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology for the benefit of the city. The project will use Deepen AI’s 2D and 3D annotation technology, and Foresight AI’s... Read more →

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Daimler Trucks announced that it will invest €500 million (around US$570 million) over the next years and create more than 200 new jobs in its global push to bring highly automated trucks (SAE level 4) to the road within a decade.... Read more →

Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) introduced the first SAE Level 2 automated truck in series production in North America with the latest enhancements to the Freightliner new Cascadia. Level 2 automation means the truck is capable of both lateral (steering) and longitudinal (acceleration/deceleration) control. According to NHTSA, 94% of crashes... Read more →

In a briefing at CES 2019, Dr. Gill Pratt, Toyota Research Institute (TRI) CEO and Toyota Motor Corporation Fellow said that one of TRI’s most significant breakthroughs this year was the creation of blended envelope control for its Guardian driver assistance system. The control combines and coordinates the skills and... Read more →

A coalition of industry, non-profit and academic institutions has launched a campaign to inform the public and policymakers about the potential and the reality of advanced vehicle technologies and self-driving vehicles. Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE) will hold events across the country to introduce driver assistance and self-driving technology... Read more →

At CES 2019, NVIDIA announced the first commercially available Level 2+ automated driving system, NVIDIA DRIVE AutoPilot, which integrates multiple breakthrough AI technologies that will enable supervised self-driving vehicles to go into production by next year. At CES 2019, Continental and ZF announced Level 2+ self-driving solutions based on NVIDIA... Read more →

Transdev, a leading operator and global integrator of mobility solutions, is partnering with ZF and e.GO, a manufacturer of electric vehicles to develop a new shared mobility solution by integrating the autonomous driven e.GO Mover shuttle with the operating System by Transdev. The e.GO Moove GmbH joint venture (which partners... Read more →

Innoviz Technologies and HARMAN International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets, have formed a strategic partnership to make Innoviz’s high-performing, solid-state and mass-producible LiDAR solutions (earlier post) available to OEMs globally. HARMAN will leverage Innoviz’s LiDAR offerings to... Read more →

At CES 2019, ZF will unveil a steering-wheel- and pedal-free robo-taxi to show how its technologies enable new forms of urban mobility. Users can hail the taxi using their smartphone or tablet; the robo-taxi will maneuver autonomously to pick them up. It can then chauffeur them to where they wish... Read more →

At CES this year, ZF is highlighting its sensor portfolio which can detect vehicle surroundings and thereby help to enhance the safety of conventional and automated vehicles. The resulting architecture—including a new, full-range radar, solid state LiDAR, innovative cameras and acoustic sensors—are combined with a powerful and scalable NVIDIA platform... Read more →

BYTON revealed more about the interior of its first production model, the M-Byte SUV (earlier post), at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2019 in Las Vegas. Positioned as the next generation smart device, BYTON is designed for the future of autonomous driving in which the automobile will become a mobile... Read more →

Israel-based Arbe is launching Phoenix, its automotive 4D imaging radar beta product. This new front-end system, powered by Arbe’s proprietary chipset technology, enables evaluation and development towards production and full commercialization of 4D imaging radar for all levels of vehicle autonomy. Phoenix provides an image 100 times more detailed than... Read more →

Location technology specialist TomTom (TOM2) will collaborate with DENSO on its software platform for autonomous vehicles. TomTom’s High Definition (HD) Map will work in combination with DENSO in-vehicle sensors such as cameras and radars to power the localization, perception and path planning functions for a complete autonomous driving system. This... Read more →

AutoX, one of the first companies to offer a grocery delivery service using self-driving vehicles, will showcase its latest autonomous vehicle technology at CES 2019 in Las Vegas this week. Following the launch of its pilot program to deliver groceries in August 2018, AutoX has continued to perfect and improve... Read more →

In advance of CES, Velodyne Lidar, Inc. introduced new technology that will serve as the cornerstone of future advanced driving safety systems. The Alpha Puck, Velarray & VelaDome. Velodyne unveiled the VelaDome, a compact embeddable lidar that provides an ultra-wide 180° x 180° image for near-object avoidance. The compact sensor... Read more →

The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) will introduce the TRI-P4 automated driving test vehicle on 7 January at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. The P4 is based on the new fifth-generation Lexus LS flagship sedan and will be used in TRI’s two-track Guardian and Chauffeur automated driving system development (earlier post).... Read more →

Rio Tinto has successfully deployed AutoHaul, establishing the world’s largest robot and first automated heavy-haul, long distance rail network. (Earlier post.) The average return distance of these trains is about 800 kilometers with the average journey cycle, including loading and dumping, taking about 40 hours. Since completing the first loaded... Read more →

Autonomous Intelligent Driving GmbH, a a wholly owned subsidiary of Audi AG and the center of excellence for urban autonomous driving in the Volkswagen Group—announced a partnership with Luminar Technologies Inc. to deploy its LiDAR technology. Since launching in March 2017, AID has been scouting the best complementary LiDAR solutions... Read more →