autonomous vehicles

Final Aim, a Japanese technology firm, utilized Ultimaker 3D printing technology to rapidly design the first autonomous delivery robot in use for Singapore. Final Aim collaborated with the robotics start-up OTSAW Digital PTE LTD to develop the robot Camello to tackle inefficiency issues that Singapore faces in the last mile of the logistics chain.

FedEx and Nuro have announced a multi-year, multi-phase agreement to test Nuro’s next-generation autonomous delivery vehicle within FedEx operations. The collaboration between FedEx and Nuro launched with a pilot program across the Houston area. This pilot marks Nuro’s expansion into parcel logistics and allows FedEx the opportunity to explore various use cases for on-road autonomous vehicle logistics, including multi-stop and appointment-based deliveries.

NVIDIA announced it will acquire DeepMap, a startup building high-definition maps for autonomous vehicles. Maps that are accurate to within a few meters are good enough when providing turn-by-turn directions for humans. AVs, however, require much greater precision. They must operate with centimeter-level precision for accurate localization, the ability of an AV to locate itself in the world.  

The California Public Utilities Commission has authorized Cruise to participate in California’s first pilot program to provide driverless autonomous vehicle (AV) passenger service to the public. Cruise is the first entrant into the CPUC’s Driverless Pilot program, in which passengers can ride in a test vehicle that operates without a driver in the vehicle. Cruise may not charge passengers for any rides in test AVs.

Nobody likes driving in a blizzard, including autonomous vehicles. To make self-driving cars safer on snowy roads, engineers look at the problem from the car’s point of view.

A recent paper by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison addresses the use-phase implications of autonomous vehicles using a stated preference survey to reveal the potential users of autonomous vehicles and the resulting level of competition with traditional modes of transport.

Woven Planet Holdings, a subsidiary of Toyota, announced the acquisition of the autonomous vehicle division of Lyft, Level 5,  in a $550 million deal. Level 5, researchers from Toyota Research Institute and Woven Planet were already working together. The acquisition leads to a team of approximately 1,200 people working on autonomous driving at Toyota.

Walmart announced it will be supporting the development of autonomous vehicles by making an investment in Cruise, a San Francisco-based company producing an all-electric fleet of self-driving cars. The investment aims to develop a last mile delivery ecosystem that’s fast, low-cost and scalable.

Two men are dead after a Tesla traveling in Spring, in the US, crashed into a tree. According to the police no one was driving the fully-electric  Tesla when the accident happened. There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car. The vehicle was traveling at high speed when it missed a turn and hit a tree.

A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed a new early warning system for vehicles that uses artificial intelligence to learn from thousands of real traffic situations. A study of the system was carried out in cooperation with the BMW Group. The results show that, if used in today’s self-driving vehicles, it can warn seven seconds in advance against potentially critical situations that the cars cannot handle alone – with over 85% accuracy.