Satellite navigation device maker TomTom, has purchased an autonomous vehicle developer. The Berlin based startup is aptly named, Autonomous and has previously provided research and development consultancy services for a number of automated vehicle systems around the world. Although TomTom is most well known for its navigational systems, it has …
Read More »Alphabet’s Waymo LIDAR investment drops costs by 90 per cent
Waymo, the automated car development branch of Google parent company, Alphabet, is set to drop the cost of producing LIDAR sensor technology by as much as 90 per cent. That could help hurdle one of the biggest stumbling blocks on the road to getting automated cars on public road ways. As …
Read More »VW’s driverless car concept has a retractible steering wheel
There are a number of fun electronic, driverless car designs doing the rounds at the various tech firms and automakers around the world and Volkswagen is no different. Its latest concept is an interesting one however, as it features a retractable steering wheel, which could show a future of mixed …
Read More »Waymo is in talks with Honda for driverles car collaboration
It turns our rumours of Google's automated-driving division were half true. While it's not scaling back, it is teaming up with a traditional auto-maker. Waymo, as the division is now called, is currently said to be in formal talks with Honda, to collaborate on driverless car development. Announced as a …
Read More »Germany wants Tesla to stop using ‘misleading autopilot’ name
While the world and his dog seem to be working on automated car features right now, Tesla was the first to put one out there in the wild. However Germany's federal motoring body has asked it to stop calling its system “autopilot,” because it feels that the term could mislead …
Read More »First consumer autonomous car trial to begin in Singapore
Cars that drive themselves is something that we're gradually easing towards with trials and tests, but nobody has begun a full commercial roll out of the technology, until now. In Singapore they've signed off on the first official test of autonomous taxis, with MIT spin off, Nutonomy, beating the likes …
Read More »Ford plans to release car without steering wheel by 2021
Although current legislation still mandates that all vehicles must have some form of manual control, Ford is planning to mass produce a car without a steering wheel or pedals by the time 2021 rolls around. This is an accelerated development, considering fully autonomous cars have often been slated to arrive …
Read More »3D printed ‘Olli’ could be electric, autonomous mini-bus of the future
Although a number of companies are developing autonomous cars for us to not-drive around in, it may be that electric, autonomous public transport is a better solution. While a number of vehicles are being trialled in the UK, a U.S. developer has a new and innovative design, which uses a lot of …
Read More »Alibaba’s internet connected car paves way for autonomy
Chinese online retail giant, Alibaba, has announced a new vehicle created as part of a joint partnership between itself and SAIC Motor Corp, china's largest car manufacturer. Made using the YunOS operating system, the new Roewe RX5 can connect to the internet through your smartphone, with the firms behind it claiming it's …
Read More »Ford autonomous-vehicle test goes smoothly at night
One of the big concerns with self-piloting vehicles, is how they will perform in adverse conditions and at night. Indeed, the optical sensors that many autonomous cars rely on don't function as well in those conditions. Fortunately, lidar doesn't have so much of an issue and in a recent test, …
Read More »First autonomous ‘truck platoon’ crosses borders, arrives safely
The first ever multi-country, autonomous truck platoon has successfully completed a journey across borders, down highways and roadways – all without the intervention of a single human driver. Using advanced tracking and mapping technologies, the more than dozen heavy goods vehicles from various manufacturers, were able to link up and …
Read More »U.S. road agency declares Google’s autonomous AI a ‘driver’
Google's autonomous vehicle control algorithm has been given the designation of “driver,” by the U.S.' National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). This is just one more step on the road to vehicles like the Google pod car being allowed to drive around without someone sat behind the wheel. Despite the …
Read More »Forget passenger drones, what about a drone ambulance?
Although drones have promised lots of interesting developments in film making, surveillance and delivery, they are getting powerful enough to transport people, as we saw recently. But forget making travel easy for the rich, transporting injured people between the scene of an accident and a hospital quickly and without disturbance …
Read More »Tesla scales back car automation, for now
Although most analysts believe that full vehicle automation won't be ready until 2020, Tesla recently jumped the gun and introduced its take on the feature back in October last year to mixed praise and concern. In line with the latter response, Tesla has now released an update which restricts where …
Read More »Google Ford partnership could mirror Baidu BMW deal
Google and Ford are said to be in talks to partner over the development of automated vehicles according to sources that are said to have been “briefed on the matter.” Although yet to be officially detailed, the partnership could well be similar to the deal struck between Chinese search giant …
Read More »Google automated car pulled over by cops… for going too slow
Getting automated vehicles to operate safely on the roads is one of the key concerns of those working on the various technologies that they use, but going too fast doesn't seem like one of them. In-fact the opposite is true in some cases, as a Google automated pod-car was recently …
Read More »Google: people hit our driverless cars ‘surprisingly often’
Google's quest to develop a car that can drive itself across cities and to and from people's houses, places of work and elsewhere, has been one it's been working on for years now. While not there just yet, it's helped push the boundaries of what is technologically possible with an …
Read More »Uber pledges to buy 500,000 automated Teslas in 2020
Tesla's electric vehicles have become more common place on roads around the world over the past few years, as production has scaled up in line with increasing demand, but selling an entire year's worth of cars in one go would be a massive achievement for the Elon Musk founded company. …
Read More »250 million cars to be ‘connected’ by 2020
The automotive industry right now is much like the early days of the smartphone, with the first hints at advanced computational features just cresting the horizon. There are companies all over the world introducing new automation and adding highly connected infotainment systems, but still most people put us well into the …
Read More »Daimler to test self-driving lorries on Nevada roads
There's a lot of R&D going into driverless vehicles right now, with the likes of Google, Baidu and many more traditional auto-makers all pushing to become the first to offer a truly driverless experience on the roads. As much as they're pushing for cars though, others believe the first self-piloted …
Read More »NASA bringing rover tech to driverless cars
Driverless car technologies are coming on leaps and bounds at the moments, with the world's first motorway-only automated features set to hit commercial cars as soon as 2017. However, whether our automated future will look like the cars of old, or something more akin to Google's Pod Car design remains to …
Read More »Elon Musk: driver controlled cars could be outlawed
Although hard drugs may never give the children of users pre-cognitive murder detection powers like Minority Report promised us, one day soon we are going to have the driverless car technology also showcased in that movie and Elon Musk's Tesla is helping to push us in that direction. Speaking at …
Read More »London Underground driverless trains of the future profiled
With all the talk from the likes of Google, Baidu and their contemporaries about driverless cars, it's no wonder that the next generation of trains for London's underground tube system is also going to be driverless. Beyond that though, it's going to come fully equipped with WiFi, air conditioning and usher in …
Read More »Google looking to break into car industry
According to a few unnamed sources over at Jessicalessin, Google is fed up with traditional car manufacturers not wanting to get onboard with its self-driving vehicle scheme and is now pushing to get its own development deal and design the cars itself – much in the same way that it …
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