Mobile

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 […]

Mobile

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 […]

Emerging Tech

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 […]

Emerging Tech

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 […]

Emerging Tech

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 […]

Mobile

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 […]

Top Stories

'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 […]

Computer

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 […]