Waymo, the autonomous car unit of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said John Krafcik is stepping down as chief executive after five and a half years at the helm. In a statement, Waymo said the chief executive duties will be divided between two current company executives — Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov. Ms. Mawakana was Waymo’s […]
Tag: selfdriving
Amazon to Buy Zoox, in a Move Toward Self-Driving Cars
SEATTLE — Amazon said on Friday that it was buying the autonomous ride-hailing start-up Zoox, an ambitious move that could put the tech giant in the business of moving people and not just packages. Amazon agreed to pay more than $ 1.2 billion for the company, according to a person familiar with the deal. He […]
Self-driving meal machines are now feeding students at Purdue University
[embedded content] Not a week seems to go by without news of yet another fleet of delivery robots taking to the streets or hitting the grounds of a college campus. The latest educational establishment to welcome the wheel-based delivery robots is Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. From this week, its 43,000 students and staff will […]
AI Weekly: How self-driving cars could reduce emissions, eliminate parking spots, and add $1.3 trillion to the U.S. economy
During Tesla’s inaugural Autonomy Day on Monday, CEO Elon Musk spoke about an idea first articulated in a document published three years ago — an autonomous taxi service built on the back of Tesla’s growing Model 3 and Model S network. It would be powered by the company’s Autopilot software and would allow any owner […]
Pony.ai tests robo-taxi program on its employees, promises self-driving trucks next
Guangzhou, China-based self-driving startup Pony.ai is joining an exclusive club of companies that have launched autonomous ride-hailing programs. At this year’s Shanghai Auto Show, it took the wraps off of PonyPilot, a test project for “product-ready” driverless cars within a geofenced area in Guangzhou. It’s currently available to Pony.ai employees and “select affiliates” by invitation […]
Self-driving spacecraft could protect Earth from asteroid impacts
[embedded content] In case Earth is ever threatened by an asteroid, we should have a new protector to look out for us — Hera, a self-driving spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA engineers are currently designing Hera and planning its first mission to the Didymos asteroid pair, to be presented to European […]
Self-driving apple harvesting robot suctions the fruit off trees
[embedded content] Picking apples isn’t a challenge that you’d necessarily think calls for the latest high tech robotic technology to solve. That hasn’t been enough to stop California-based startup Abundant Robotics, however. The company has developed a cutting edge solution to the apple-picking problem in the form of an autonomous tractor-style vehicle which can navigate […]
U.K.’s ‘advanced’ self-driving car trials won’t require human safety drivers
It’s not just rival companies that are racing to introduce self-driving cars to the market. Different countries are also seemingly competing to cement their high tech-friendly statuses by embracing autonomous vehicle testing. With this in mind, the U.K. government announced that it is moving toward “advanced trials” of self-driving cars — meaning trials which do not […]
Photography news: Careful, self-driving cars can ruin your camera sensor
Gannon Burgett/Digital Trends Afraid of missing out on the latest photo industry news while you’re out, well, actually taking pictures? Photography News of the Week is all the news you might have missed this week, published on the weekends. Alongside the biggest stories of the week, like Nikon’s new budget zooms, the new Fujifilm 100-200mm […]
After conquering the Sahara, the U.K.’s self-driving rover is ready for Mars
U.K. Space Agency The above image may look like a scene from some as-yet-unannounced Hollywood adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. In fact, it’s a picture from recent tests which took place in the Sahara desert, the world’s largest hot desert region, where an autonomous driving software for future Mars rovers was […]
Self-driving car tech will soon help to judge gymnastics competitions
Fujitsu Lidar, the laser-bouncing tech used in self-driving cars, is pretty versatile. When it’s not making autonomous vehicles smarter, it can be used for uncovering lost cities, finding bodies in unmarked graves, helping protect areas from wildfires, and … judging athletic contests? That’s the application that Fujitsu has in mind with a new lidar-based system […]
Intel, Mobileye, and Champion Motors team up to deploy Israel’s first self-driving taxi service
(Reuters) — Volkswagen and Intel’s Mobileye are planning to roll out Israel’s first ride-hailing service using self-driving cars starting early next year. The two companies are forming a joint venture with Israeli car importer Champion Motors, under which Volkswagen will provide the electric vehicles and Mobileye its autonomous driving technology, the companies said in a […]
Sit back, relax, and enjoy a ride through the history of self-driving cars
Seemingly within just a few years, autonomous cars have gone from science fiction fantasy to road-bound reality. But while it seems like this technology emerged virtually overnight, the path to self-driving vehicles has been a long and winding one. While it’s not easy to compress the history of self-driving cars into just ten milestones, we’ve […]
'Cocaine Cowboys:' Some Google employees allegedly threw a party in 2015 with 'controlled substances' after a successful self-driving car demo
Thomson Reuters On Tuesday, The Information published a report detailing the struggles that Waymo, the self-driving car company spun out fro Google, has gone through during its lifespan. According to a tweet by the reporter who wrote the story, a big milestone for the technology in 2015 was marred by a drug-fueled celebration that’s become […]
Nvidia ‘more than happy to help’ if Tesla’s self-driving chip doesn’t pan out
CEOs from Tesla and Nvidia spoke during their respective second-quarter 2018 earnings calls about new autonomous-driving artificial intelligence chips for the next generation of Autopilot in Tesla cars. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was asked about Tesla’s previously announced plan to switch to in-house A.I. chips, which are still in development. Huang spoke first about Nvidia’s […]