How do autonomous cars work?

Roads filled with self-driving cars may stop existing solely in fantasies and become real, thanks to research innovations in the technology industry.

Advancements needed to produce self-driving cars have been moving quickly, and industry giants predict self-driving cars will soon be available to the public. Nissan, for example, announced it will produce self-driving cars by 2020, while Google is aiming to do so by 2018, according to robohub.org.

Designing a self-driving car is no small feat. The car has to be able to do everything a human driver does, such as navigating, determining its surroundings, predicting what will happen with the surroundings and what the car should do next, according to the website for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project.

To do this, the car uses a global positioning system (GPS), an inertial navigation system (INS) and a series of sensors, according to robohub.org. Information from the GPS and INS are used to position the vehicle while the sensors produce a three-dimensional image of the environment.

GPS works by having satellite signals sent to the vehicle to find the vehicle’s position and velocity. However, this signal can be jammed, the reading is not very precise and can give errors due to background noise and signal reflection, according to a paper submitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

INS uses accelerometers in the vehicle to determine its orientation while still capturing positional information. Using INS and GPS together not only provides redundancy but lets the vehicle continue to navigate when the GPS signal is jammed, decreases noise and gives more accurate information, according to the paper.

A control system is used to make navigation decisions based on the filtered information the vehicle receives from the sensors and positioning systems, according to the site.

Most control systems use designs that make decisions by producing and maintaining a map of their immediate world, and then using it to find the optimal route to the destination while avoiding obstacles such as pedestrians and construction, according to the site.

The path is then broken down into individual commands, controlling the actuators, which determines how the vehicle steers, accelerates and brakes. This whole process is repeated many times every second until the destination is reached, according to the site.

A map of the vehicle’s environment is produced by using sensors such as cameras and lasers. Laser Illuminating Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) shows the vehicle its surroundings by reflecting laser beams off of the objects around the vehicle to determine their distance and size, according to makeusof.com.

LIDAR is extremely accurate for mapping surroundings, but cannot give real time updates on the velocities of surrounding objects. For this reason, radar units are in the front and back of the vehicle, helping prevent the risk of accidents, according to the site.

Cameras are also present not only to provide redundancy, but give the vehicle a sweeping view of its surroundings. This helps provide information such as the dimensionality and depth of objects, according to the site.

The GPS and INS systems provide a broad view of the vehicle’s surroundings while these sensors provide a more in-depth perspective, according to the site. All of the information gathered by these systems is aggregated and used to produce a map.

Obstacles are categorized by the vehicle based on the obstacle’s characteristics, such as the number of wheels and velocity, which are then compared to a preexisting database of obstacles. Knowing the type of obstacle ahead helps determine how the vehicle should react to it, according to the site.

Knowing whether a motorcycle or pedestrian is entering the intersection is important to deciding how to react. The vehicle uses past, present and predicted future paths of all immediate obstacles to determine the best path to take, according to the site.

The vehicle plans its path by first determining a long-range path, such as a major highway to take. It then produces a series of shorter-range paths that can be taken, such as lane changes and making a turn, according to the site.

Safety is taken into consideration when making these decisions, ensuring that the vehicle is actually capable of completing its path given its speed and direction while also avoiding obstacles, according to the site.

The whole process of planning a path, removing unsafe paths and telling the actuators how to behave takes about 50 milliseconds, according to the site.

There are still advancements to be made, such as overcoming limitations in understanding road scenery, functioning in various weather conditions and driving through unstructured detours, such as accidents, according to the site.

Self-driving cars also require new laws to be put into place, as there are inconsistencies across the nation. Companies like Google are pushing for laws to allow self-driving cars to be legal, according to hg.org, a legal resource website.

While pushing for more accepting laws and making new advancements, Google is also proving the worth of self-driving cars, safely driving over 1.5 million miles, according to their website.

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Apple could be building autonomous car in Berlin

Apple has long been believed to be building a self-driving car in secret to compete with the widely-publicized version from Google.

But the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Monday reported that the tech giant has turned to Berlin as the site of an undercover lab to work on the project, citing anonymous “informed sources”.

Between 15 and 20 men and women - “high-fliers from the German car industry” - are working on the project, FAZ further reports, adding that the team of mostly young people aims to have the project finished by 2020.

How believable is it?

“I think it's feasible to find the talent that you'd need [for a self-driving car] in Berlin,” recruiter Mengühan Ünver told The Local.

The founder of tech recruitment platform StartupCVs, Ünver has years of experience in the capital's tech scene, where he had a past incarnation at Google as well as recruiting for his own startup projects.

“You need high-tech talent for something like this, machine learning, visual computing, artificial intelligence,” he went on. “You have that in Berlin, there are very strong tech companies working in this field.”

Apple would likely have hired a headhunting firm bound by confidentiality to quietly find engineers for the project, he speculated, as well as sending some engineers from the USA – perhaps hired away from Tesla or Google - to form the core of the project.

'Engineers' don't just write code

So much for the technology side – but what about the hardware?

Berlin isn't really a hub for the car industry - but “it wouldn't be a problem to bring the people you need from Stuttgart [Daimler and Porsche], Wolfsburg [Volkswagen], Ingolstadt [Audi] or Munich [BMW] – Berlin is a very attractive city for young engineers,” Ünver said.

SEE ALSO: Reports suggest Apple car will be built in Austria

While it's tough to seduce senior managers away from big German companies, he said, young and ambitious engineers are a different story.

But there are two big questions over the Apple rumours: where to hide the lab? And why Berlin?

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Who Responsible When An Autonomous Car Crashes?

Valentine's Day was a bummer in Mountain View, Calif. For the first time, one of Google's self-driving cars, a modified Lexus SUV, caused a crash. Detecting a pile of sandbags surrounding a storm drain in its path, the car moved into the center lane to avoid the hazard. Three seconds later it collided with the side of a bus. According to the accident report, the Lexus's test driver saw the bus but assumed the bus driver would slow down to allow the SUV to continue.

It was not the project's first crash, but it was the first caused in part by nonhuman error (most incidents involve the driverless cars getting rear-ended by human drivers not paying attention at traffic lights). The episode shines a light on an ever looming gray area in our robotic future: Who is responsible—and pays for damages—when an autonomous vehicle crashes?

The sense of urgency to find clear answers to this and other self-driving vehicle questions is growing. Automakers and policy experts have worried that a lack of consistent national regulation would make rolling out these cars across all 50 states nearly impossible. To spur progress, the Obama administration asked the Department of Transportation to propose complete national testing and safety standards by this summer. But as far as the question of accountability and liability goes, we might already be homing in on an answer, one that points to a shift in how the root cause of damage is assessed: When a computerized driver replaces a human one, experts say the companies behind the software and hardware sit in the legal liability chain—not the car owner or the person's insurance company. Eventually, and inevitably, the carmakers will have to take the blame.

Self-driving pioneers, in fact, are starting to make the switch. Last October, Volvo declared that it would pay for any injuries or property damage caused by its fully autonomous IntelliSafe Autopilot system, which is scheduled to debut in the company's cars by 2020. The thinking behind the decision, explains Erik Coelingh, Volvo's senior technical leader for safety and driver-support technologies, is that Autopilot will include so many redundant and backup systems—duplicate cameras, radars, batteries, brakes, computers, steering actuators—that a human driver will never need to intervene and thus cannot be at fault. “Whatever system fails, the car should still have the ability to bring itself to a safe stop,” he says.

The proliferation of vehicles already on the road with partial automation shows how quickly the scenario that Coelingh describes is coming about. A growing number of cars include crash-imminent braking systems, which rely on optics to detect potential front-end impacts and proactively apply brakes. Audi, BMW and others have developed cars that can parallel park themselves. And later this year Volvo will roll out the U.S.'s first semiautonomous highway driving feature, called Pilot Assist, on the 2017 S90 sedan. The system uses a windshield-mounted computer equipped with a camera and radar to automatically accelerate, decelerate, avoid obstacles and stay in a lane at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour.

Features such as Pilot Assist exist in what tech policy expert and University of South Carolina assistant professor Bryant Walker Smith calls the “mushy middle of automation,” where carmakers still require human drivers to pay attention. “It's not always clear where the line between the human and the machine falls,” he says.

For the time being, some automakers are aiming to keep human drivers clearly on the responsible side of that line. General Motors' forthcoming Super Cruise, which will launch on a Cadillac in 2017 and is similar to Pilot Assist, comes with caveats that the human driver must remain alert and ready to take over steering if visibility dips or weather changes. With Pilot Assist, Volvo puts similar onus on the driver; touch sensors on the steering wheel ensure the person remains engaged.

By the time fully autonomous driving becomes a reality, however, carmakers such as Volvo, Mercedes and Google are confident that they will have these technologies—and many more—so buttoned up that they will be able to take the driver out of the operation and liability picture almost entirely. What is more, a 2014 Brookings Institution study found that current product liability law already covers the shift, so the U.S. might not need to rewrite any laws for automation to continue moving forward.

It is a relatively safe bet for driverless carmakers to say they will foot the bill for everything from fender benders to violent crashes because semiautonomy is showing that computer drivers are likely safer than human ones. Data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, for instance, have found that crash-avoidance braking can reduce total rear-end collisions by 40 percent. And Volvo's Coelingh notes that a study of the European version of Pilot Assist revealed that the computer maintains safer follow distances and has fewer harsh braking incidents than human drivers do.

In the long run, “from the manufacturer's perspective,” Smith says, “what they may be looking at is a bigger slice of what we all hope will be a much smaller [liability] pie.”

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Comma.ai snags Tesla engineer to work on autonomous car tech

Comma.ai, the autonomous car startup founded by George Hotz — "Geohot" of iPhone and Playstation hacking fame —has snagged a senior engineer from Tesla. That engineer, Riccardo Biasini, will work on integrating the autonomous software with the car, allowing the computer to control the vehicle, says Forbes.

The company raised $3.1 million earlier this month from Andreessen Horowitz and others, lending some legitimacy to the startup's efforts. Still, $3.1 million won't get you far in the self-driving car world. Nearly every car company has autonomous research underway, with many spending billions of dollars to develop the technology, not to mention huge investments from non-traditional companies like Google and Uber, which have their own self-driving aspirations.

It's possible that Comma.ai has technology that it is looking to develop and then sell to a major carmaker, much like Cruise Automation did with GM earlier this year for a rumored $1 billion.

Hotz has said he wants to develop an aftermarket autonomous driving kit to sell direct to consumers for around $1,000, though it's likely that regulatory bodies from the State of California to NHTSA would have some concerns about such a product, never mind the significant technical hurdles that he'll need to overcome. Still, Comma.ai is making hires and has some cash to burn to try and get there.

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Autonomous Car Successfully Drives Itself 1200 Miles Across China In Six Days

Chinese automaker and Ford's partner Chongqing Changan Automobile Co. announced the successful road trip of its self-driving car. The vehicle traveled from Chongqing in Southwest China to Beijing, which is in the northeast.

The journey covered more than 1,200 miles (almost 2,000 kilometers) and lasted for six days - that's an average of 200 miles (321.8 kilometers) a day. At least two of the company's self-driving cars accomplished the journey where they took routes in a live environment.

In a statement given to the Shenzhen stock exchange, the Chinese automaker said that its self-driving cars have used cameras and radar that allowed the pair to test a number of varying functions. According to the company, the driverless cars were able to assess automatic cruising, assisted driving when there's traffic congestion, lane keeping or changing and speed reduction by way of voice control and traffic sign recognition.

Li Yusheng, the project's chief engineer, said that one car had even reached up to 75 mph on the nation's open highway and managed to adapt to the changing road surface.

"The cars ran up to 120 km per hour on the highway, and adapted to the changing road surface," said Li.

Kong Zhouwei, a car tester, said that when the self-driving cars passed through small tunnels that have dim or zero lighting, their response time was slower. Kong attributed the cars' slow response rate to the difficulty in recognizing the road markings when the cars used their in-vehicle cameras after the external lights changed.

Kong said that the company plans to employ laser radar techniques in order to address this difficulty that the two cars encountered.

Other challenges that were seen during the road test included trucks that seemed wider than the lane and a couple of road sections and gas stations that required the cars to be under assisted driving.

Chongqing joins other Chinese companies such as Baidu, BYD, SAIC Motor, GAC Group and BAIC group in a global race to create self-driving cars with occasional or zero human intervention. The automaker plans to produce self-driving cars designed exclusively for traveling on highways and make them commercially available by 2018. It also plans to mass produce self-driving cars capable enough to navigate the nation's complicated urban roads by 2025.

Around the globe, there are at least 18 companies that are developing autonomous cars. These include Toyota, Audi and BMW to name a few.

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Beverly Hills plans to use autonomous cars for public transport

The swanky California neighborhood of Beverly Hills is planning to introduce a fleet of  self-driving cars to help facilitate public transportation.

Beverly Hills' City Council recently passed a resolution to create the autonomous vehicle program, and is hoping that its efforts will help it gain a reputation as a leader in the self-driving car space.

The idea is that people will use their smartphones to request an autonomous vehicle, which will then take them from point A to point B within the city limits.

The program is still very much in the early stages, but the City Council said in a press statement that they are already working to develop the infrastructure to support autonomous vehicles.

According to a Beverly Hills press statement, the city is currently designing a citywide network of fiber optics cables, which will help smart cars communicate while on the road.

No word yet on what cars will be used in the fleet, but the statement mentions that the city will work to develop relationships with manufacturers of self-driving cars like Google and Tesla.

Beverly Hills, of course, isn't the only city looking to introduce autonomous vehicles into its public transportation system.

Singapore already has a program in place that enables people to hail an autonomous shuttle via smartphone app. Amsterdam has a similar program and London will be introducing a trial this year that uses driverless pods.

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Hyundai joins Cisco on driverless car systems

South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor has teamed up with U.S.-based Cisco to develop connected car technologies.

The technology partnership comes after this month’s announcement that the car company would be developing ‘hyper-connected intelligence’ vehicles in an effort to join the global race towards driverless systems.

The tie-up follows a series of similar deals between automakers and tech groups looking to design and build future driving technologies. Earlier this month Toyota extended a partnership with the University of Michigan to build artificial intelligence (AI) systems for driverless cars. The initiative is the Japanese firm’s third investment in U.S. university research projects.

In March, General Motors confirmed its acquisition of autonomous software company Cruise Automation for $1 billion (approx. £700 million). The Silicon Valley-based firm, founded by former Twitch exec Kyle Vogt in 2013, designs auto-pilot technologies which can be built into regular cars to transform them into driverless vehicles.

This is the first tech collaboration for Hyundai and forms part of its road map to expand investment into research and the development of connected car systems, such as smart remote maintenance, in-vehicle networks, big data and analytics, and security technologies.

The announcement at the beginning of April detailed: “Hyundai…will bring the future of connected cars closer by co-developing connected car technologies through ‘Open Innovation’ collaborations with global companies. The connected car roadmap will concentrate on industry-leading research and development to foster new talents that will change the way customers interact with their cars and the world around them.”

The carmaker is currently exploring new growth areas as it struggles with disappointing sales in China and other Asian markets – last year Hyundai recorded its lowest annual profit in five years. It is also expected that the company will see weak first quarter results for 2016, amid China’s economic downturn and a shift in consumer preference for cheaper, domestic sports car brands.

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SMRT Is Introducing 24-Seaters autonomous Cars End Of This Year In Singapore

Earlier today, SMRT Services has just announced that it is partnering with 2 Getthere Holding to bring in automated vehicle systems into Singapore. This could happen as early as end of the year.

According to the press release, what we might be seeing end of the year are Group Rapid Transit (GRT) vehicles being tested on the roads.

“The new Singapore-based JV, called 2getthere Asia Pte Ltd will market, install, operate and maintain the Automated Vehicle systems for customers in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific. The JV aims to showcase 2getthere’s 3rd Generation Group Rapid Transit (GRT) vehicle capabilities in Singapore by the end of the year.”

These GRT vehicles are able to carry up to 24 passengers each, and can operate as a low-cost automated transit system that can cater for up to 8,000 passengers per hour in any single direction. What we also do know is that these GRT vehicles, which are similar to automated minibuses, can travel at a speed of 40km/hr. These vehicles are earmarked to be designed for airports, campuses, residential, resort and industrial park networks.

According to 2 Getthere Holding too, the height of the vehicle allows for the air-conditioning to be integrated into the roof, while leaving ample room to accommodate standing passengers comfortably. The interior configuration is flexible, featuring either 8 or 12 seats while allowing up to 8 to 12 standees. There are also automated doors featuring a wide opening to accommodate wheelchairs can be integrated at both sides of the vehicle.

The GRT is also fully electrical, typically equipped with a LiFePO4 battery. The vehicles are completely driverless and automatically guided by 2getthere’s proven magnet based navigation system. There are key safety feature to ensure security of passengers, including an obstacle detection system.

Managing Director, SMRT Services Colin Lim shared that “there is a growing national push to implement future mobility solutions that can meet our first and last-mile connectivity needs in Singapore. As part of the JV, SMRT Services will leverage on our experience in installation, operations and maintenance of transit systems to realise these solutions locally. The Automated Vehicles will complement our existing multi-modal transport operations to bring about seamless connectivity for commuters”.

So yes, all the talks about driverless cars in the future, it is happening and it is already here.

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Autonomous car Completes 1200-Mile Roadtrip Across China

Chongqing Changan Automobile Co., Ford Motor Co.’s partner in China, said it completed a 1,200-mile road trip to test a self-driving car as part of its ambitions to produce highly automated vehicles by 2020.

The car set off from the company’s headquarters in Chongqing and reached Beijing after six days, the automaker said in a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange. The driverless car employed cameras and radar to test automatic cruising, lane-keeping and changing, assisted driving during traffic congestion, and speed reduction through traffic sign recognition and voice control, according to the company.

Changan is among Chinese companies including BAIC Group and Internet giant Baidu Inc. competing in the global race to develop cars that can pilot themselves with minimal or no human intervention. For China, the push for self-driving vehicles is also part of a broader state initiative urging manufacturers to upgrade their technology as lower-cost countries emerge and compete for labor-intensive factory jobs.

For global companies aiming to introduce automated driving in China, local testing is important because of the different traffic conditions, driving habits and signage. Nissan Motor Co., which sells more automobiles in China than any other Japanese carmaker, has signed an agreement to work with the China Automotive Technology and Research Center to adapt safety features such as lane keeping and collision avoidance to suit the country’s driving habits and road conditions.

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This unexpected city might lead the way with autonomous cars

Driverless car research is taking place all over the United States from Dearborn, Michigan to Kirkland, Washington as automakers work to make cars safe enough for the roads.

And as automakers continue to make strides in those efforts, other cities are trying to figure out ways they can accommodate self-driving cars. One city working to become a hub of autonomous transportation may surprise you: Columbus, Ohio.

Columbus was selected as one of seven city finalists for the Smart Cities Challenge, a competition hosted by Google-turned-Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs and the Department of Transportation.

The winner of the challenge will be announced in June and will receive $40 million from the Department of Transportation that can be spent in whatever way possible to "become the country’s first city to fully integrate innovative technologies – self-driving cars, connected vehicles, and smart sensors – into their transportation network."

The winner will also get 100 Wi-Fi kiosks with traffic information from Sidewalk Labs,wireless communication data from NXP for cars to communicate, and $10 million from Vulcan to incorporate an electric vehicle infrastructure. Mobileye will also install driver assistance technology in every bus of the winning city.

When considering what cities are most likely to get autonomous transportation off the ground, several other finalists on that list stand out, like Austin, Texas, a testing site for Google's driverless cars, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home to Uber's driverless car efforts.

But it seems too soon to count Columbus out, considering they have an ambitious plan to invest heavily in driverless transportation whether they win the Smart Cities Challenge or not (the winner will be picked in June.)

"We want to be epicenter," Rory McGuiness, deputy director the department of development for Columbus, told Tech Insider. "We want to be synonymous for intelligent transportation systems in same way that Silicon Valley is for tech."

Columbus is home to Ohio's Traffic Management Center, which monitors traffic conditions all throughout the state using sensors and cameras. The city is also spending $76 million on a smart traffic system that when completed will link all 1,250 signalized Columbus intersections and 12 regional communities.

That's actually a great infrastructure to support the implementation of driverless cars.

For driverless cars to operate as safely as possible, it's necessary to make modest changes to city roads. Having cameras and sensors on roads that can collect data on traffic patterns and congestion can help driverless cars navigate faster and safer. And the ability to communicate with traffic lights at busy intersections also has its benefits.

Because Columbus is a finalist in the Smart Cities Challenge, it will also get $100,000 to implement Sidewalk Lab's Flow — a program that will pull data from billions of miles of trips, Waze, Google Maps, and sensors on the roads to help cars maneuver.

The City of Columbus wants to roll out driverless transportation by first testing autonomous vehicles in the neighborhood of Easton. The driverless cars would shuttle workers from the Easton Transit Center to local employers in the area.

McGuiness said the city is currently working with partners to see what vehicles they want to use for the trial, like Honda and Ford.

If Columbus wins, it will dedicate another $8 million of its own money to build out an infrastructure supporting driverless cars.

"For us, regardless if we win or not, we are very much committed to becoming a center of intelligent transportation," he said. "However, getting an infusion of $40 million and other resources will allow conversion to happen much more swiftly."

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Will We Prove That Autonomous Cars Are Safe Before They Go on Sale?

It could take hundreds of billions of kilometers of driving before autonomous cars are pronounced safe, according to a new report. Logging that many kilometers, in order to generate a large enough cache of safety data, could take decades. To put those hundreds of billions of kilometers in context, Google’s self-driving cars have driven 2.4 million kilometers since 2009.

Analysts from the nonprofit RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., who authored the report say that proving self-driving cars to be as safe as human-controlled ones will require robocar developers and testers to employ test methods—virtual testing and simulators, mathematical modeling, and scenario testing among them—that don’t require the rubber to meet the road.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that more than 90 percent of car crashes are caused by human errors such as speeding, drunk-driving, distraction, and fatigue. Besides remaining ever alert and being incapable of failing a breathalyzer test, self-driving cars’ ability to communicate with each other and fixed infrastructure like traffic lights could make driving pretty efficient.

But the statistics will never stack up enough for us to be completely certain that accidents won’t happen, the analysts say.

That’s because human error is a critical benchmark with which to compare self-driving cars. And though we tend not to view it that way, the rate of road injuries and deaths because of human error is pretty low compared to the total distance traveled. Americans drive roughly 4.9 trillion kilometers every year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and for every 160 million miles driven, there are about 77 injuries and about 1 death. To prove that autonomous cars are safe—that they have similar or lower injury and death rates—they would have to log comparable travel distances, the anslysts contend. And that will be impossible before self-driving cars are sold to the public.

Google seems to be aware of these limitations and the safety concerns related to robotic cars. The company’s Chris Urmson recently outlined plans for an incremental roll-out of the cars, with vehicles meant for sunny weather and wide-open roads coming out before models designed for places where it snows and traffic is regularly snarled.

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Amazon and Microsoft will reportedly invest in Here, the self-driving car mapping unit

Amazon and Microsoft are two of the biggest technology companies in the world who have yet to make overt steps toward the world of autonomous vehicles, but that may soon change. Sources are telling Reuters that both companies are interested in providing cloud computing capabilities to Here, the mapping business formerly owned by Nokia and recently acquired by a consortium of German automakers. The car companies, BMW, Audi, and Mercedes' parent company Daimler, are all interested in building self-driving cars.

In addition, Amazon is said to be interested in becoming a shareholder in Here, which would ensure the e-commerce giant becomes the primary provider of cloud computing to the company. That would be helpful as Here continues to collect mounds of data from the sensors mounted on the roofs of thousands of self-driving BMW, Audi, and Mercedes vehicles.

The three automakers purchased Here last December for €2.8 billion, or just over $3 billion. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on the report, but noted Here's shareholders "have stressed since the acquisition in early December that they are open to additional investors from all industries."

And Amazon and Microsoft aren't the only companies eyeing Here. Reuters also reports that Renault, the French automaker that owns Nissan, and automotive supplier Continental have both expressed interest. Continental told the wire service yesterday a decision on whether to buy a stake in Here would be imminent.

The amount of interest in Here signals the centrality that high-definition maps will play to the automotive world, especially as more and more manufacturers get into the autonomous game. Uber is building up its mapping division in parallel to its self-driving unit, the former staffed with ex-Google employees and the latter with Carnegie Mellon University engineers. Google Maps product manager Manik Gupta jumped to Uber's mapping division last December. His new boss is Brian McClendon, the former head of Google's entire mapping division. Meanwhile, TomTom has recently started to work with auto parts maker Bosch to develop road maps for self-driving vehicles.

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Mitsubishi Will Convert Missile Guiding System for Use in Autonomous Cars

If there was ever something positive to take out of wars and weapon development, it's that armed conflicts can often drive the technological progress forward at greatly accelerated speeds.

We're about to witness another example that builds on this idea as Mitsubishi Electric Corp., an air-to-air missile supplier for the Japanese Army, is about to shift the focus of its expertise toward the self-driving car market.

Mitsubishi is a little late to the party, but with such solid backing, it's got all the chances in the world to make up for any lost ground. The Japanese carmaker isn't openly interested in building a completely autonomous vehicle (even though it did show one in Tokyo last year), but certain features - such as emergency braking or lane keeping assist - are becoming increasingly commonplace across all segments. If it wants its products to remain competitive in all markets, Mitsubishi has the option to develop its own systems, or buy from those already in the business.

Usually, when you lose the train, the smart thing to do, economically speaking, is to go for the buying option, but Mitsubishi says it will be able to offer solutions that are at least just as good as the competition's no later than next year. Millimeter-wave radars, sonars, sensors and cameras have already been developed by another branch of the company for missile guidance, so all it needs to do now is find a way to adapt them to the needs of a self-driving car.

“All we have to do is to put together the components that we already have,” said Katsumi Adachi, a senior chief engineer with Mitsubishi, talking to Bloomberg. “None of our competitors have such a wide array of capabilities.” The focus is on self-braking and lane keeping systems, the production of which is scheduled to begin in exactly one year. Another year later and Mitsubishi could also delve into the self-parking technology.

The biggest challenge the company will have to overcome is cost-cutting. The prices the military is willing to pay for some products are light years away from what the end user can afford when buying a new car. So while Mitsubishi does have the necessary technology, it'll need to largely re-think it before it can make the transition to a free market. “There's a long way to go,” Mr. Adachi concluded.



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This car is the future of autonomous racing cars

This is the world's first autonomous racing car.

RoboRace is a planned driverless series that will see 10 teams compete to develop the best artificially intelligent controlled car. The vehicles will race at the same events -- though not the same races -- as those of the electric league Formula E.

Developed by London-based Kinetik, the car itself is set to feature in its first 'shows' during the 2016/17 Formula E series.  

While the team behind the car have given very few details about how it will work, or its size, Denis Sverdlov, from RoboRace told WIRED, when the series was announced, that the cars would have top speeds of "more than 300kph (186mph)".

The initial design for the car has been produced by Daniel Simon who said that the low aerodynamic profile is to generate the huge amounts of grip required. "It was important to us that we generate substantial downforce without unnecessary parts cluttering the car to maintain a clean and iconic look," Simon said in a press statement.

"This is largely made possible by using the floor as the main aerodynamic device and we are currently developing active body parts that are more organic and seamless than solutions today."

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Japanese Ministry sets up driverless car panel

Japan’s Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry has set up an industry panel to study driverless cars, reports the Nikkei.

The Ministry is reported to be concerned that driverless car technology in Japan lags US and European technology.

The Japanese panel will consist of car manufacturers and car parts manufacturers.

Among the six car manufacturers are Honda, Nissan and Toyota and among the parts manufacturers are Renesas, Denso and Panasonic.

The target is said to be to start tests on public roads in 2020.

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Michigan invests millions for driverless car testing

Last Tuesday, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) announced its approval of a $3 million grant to fund a driverless car testing facility in Ypsilanti. This performance-based grant went to the American Center for Mobility (ACM), who plan on using the space formerly occupied by a General Motors (GM) powertrain factory closed since 2010.

Autonomous cars have been a trending topic  since development began. Advocates of this technology assert that it promises to make transportation safer, faster, and more enjoyable than current conventional vehicles. However, before widespread use can become a reality, these self-driving cars must be thoroughly tested in both real-world and controlled testing settings. ACM plans to use the Willow Run center as a test track for a variety of situations, such as the high-speed traffic of a modern highway.

ACM plans to use the Willow Run center as a test track for a variety of situations, such as the high-speed traffic of a modern highway.

Michigan invests now but it’s only the first step

The MEDC hopes to reinvigorate the waning domestic automotive industry with this and other self-driving vehicle initiatives. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has emphasized the importance of the project. “Michigan is proud of its auto heritage, but our goal is to be the leader in this industry for generations to come,” he said. “We need to stay on the cutting edge of technology connected with our vehicles.”

This initial grant will cover a number of early-phase costs for the center, including property acquisition, professional due diligence, and start-up support for the ACM. The facility will require an estimated total of $79 million before it will be fully functional and ready for self-driving vehicle testing. While ACM intends to secure roughly $59 million in federal funding, the center will reportedly also seek a further $17 million from the state.

Built by Ford in 1942, Willow Run started life as a production plant for B-24 bombers. After the war, the site was converted to manufacture a variety of other items with a major focus on automobiles. In 2010, Willow Run – then owned by GM – ceased production. Since then, its once-busy assembly facility has been used as a storage warehouse.

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Mitsubishi to adapt military tech for autonomous cars

Mitsubishi Electric Corp has been supplying the Japanese military with the necessary software and components that help guide missiles to their intended target/s. Now, Mitsubishi Motors plans to convert that kind of technology for their autonomous vehicles which they plan to roll out in 2020.

Parts like sonars, sensors, cameras and millimeter wave radars are being studied from which it will become the key components of the brand's self-driving tech. Moreover, the company has also received new orders for automatic braking systems and other devices that will help self-driving cars stick to their lane.

“All we have to do is to put together the components we already have. None of our competitors have such a wide array of capabilities,” said Katsumi Adachi, senior chief engineer at Mitsubishi Electric Corp.'s automotive equipment division.

Apart from the missile-derived tech, Mitsubishi will also be linking each autonomous car to a satellite system that will deliver up-to-date location data to the vehicles. Three more satellites are planned to be launched into orbit around 2018 that will collect data nonstop.

The company will begin production of their lane-keep assist and automatic braking systems by April 2017. Automatic parking systems, on the other hand, will start production in 2018. There is no exact timeline yet when will Mitsubishi be able to demonstrate their self-driving technology.

During the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show, Mitsubishi arrived with the eX concept, an all-electric crossover concept that features semi-autonomous tech. It can communicate with other cars, infrastructures and even pedestrians for added safety. It also comes with lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control and an array of automated functions like lane changing, obstacle avoidance and valet parking.



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Ford CEO: Our first driverless car will be for everyone

Fully autonomous vehicles will be here before you know it. But the reality is, not everyone will have the means to own one. Like most new technologies, when fully autonomous cars come to market, they will likely cost a premium. So the luxury of owning a car that can drive you to work or across town will likely be reserved for the wealthy. But Ford's CEO Mark Fields told Tech Insider Tuesday that when the company rolls out its first autonomous car, it will be for the masses. “When we come out with it we want to make sure that it is true to our brand," Fields said. "And our brand has always been around accessibility, it’s been around ingenuity, and it has been around people to people. It’s a very human brand. And we want to make sure when we come out with an autonomous vehicle that it will be accessible to millions as opposed to maybe just folks who can afford luxury vehicles." One way Ford may accomplish this is by first rolling out its autonomous vehicles in a fleet setting used for mobility services. And it's possible such a service could be here before you know it. Ken Washington, Ford's vice president of research and advanced engineering, told Tech Insider the company aims to have its fully autonomous vehicles ready in four to five years. Washington added, though, that just because the technology is ready, doesn't necessarily mean that laws will be in place for the cars to operate completely autonomously. Ford, though, will be prepared regardless. In January, Ford formed a subsidiary called Ford Smart Mobility. The new business is responsible for designing, building, and investing in mobility services. And in April the company will launch its FordPass mobile app, which will serve as the platform for all of its mobility services. This means, in the future, you would hypothetically be able to use the FordPass app to request a driverless vehicle. Now, the details regarding this scenario are still blurry considering the technology is still being developed and laws governing this technology have yet to be put in place. But the company is thinking ahead and has promised us at least this: Its self-driving cars are coming and they will be accessible for everyone.

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Uber Reportedly Orders 100,000 Autonomous Cars From Mercedes

Uber has reportedly ordered at least 100,000 autonomous S-Class Mercedes Benz cars in a bid to expand its own car fleet. The move would cut costs and expand services to customers.

Uber has reportedly ordered at least 100,000 autonomous S-Class Mercedes Benz cars, a move that comes as the ride-sharing service makes continued efforts to enter the self-driving car industry.

The company, despite dominating the ride-sharing service field, doesn't have a fleet of cars of their own. Rather, it relies on contracted drivers to use their own cars to ferry people around, making this move all the more curious. So what gives? Outside of saving money, what would Uber want to do with Mercedes? As it turns out, both companies have one crucial thing in common: they've both invested heavily to make automated cars a reality, something not expected to become a reality until at least 2020.

For Uber's part, the company raided Carnegie Mellon University last year in search of its brightest software engineers. In this case, CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center was the perfect target. Not only did members of the staff possess the technical know-how needed to develop cars that could see and steer themselves, but a new facility where Uber would be working was close by. When all was said and done, Uber poached 40 researchers and scientists, leaving one of the world's top robotics research institutions in a pickle, so much so that Uber felt inclined to donate $5.5 million to the institution later that year.

Similarly, Mercedes has been working for the past few years on building autonomous driving technology into its street-ready vehicles. In 2013, the car-maker designed an S-class limousine that was able to park and maintain safe distances from other cars in tight, stop-and-go traffic without any driver on the German streets of Mannheim and Pforzheim. Alongside this has been a partnership between Mercedes and Nokia to develop 3D smart maps. The efforts intensified when Diamler, Mercedes' parent company, along with BMW and Audi, jointly purchased Nokia's digital mapping company, with the premise of the purchase being that it would help create "highly automated driving."

Even more important, is Google's recent advances in the same field. As Google continues to make strides towards making their own driverless cars a reality, Mercedes has responded with strides and advances of its own.

Uber has a lot to gain by partnering up with Mercedes, which is why the rumored order of 100,000 autonomous cars is so important. Analysts suggest the autonomous car technology market would be worth $25 billion come 2020, though they also believe these cars wouldn't find themselves on the roads until a decade later at most due to government regulatory hurdles.

This is huge for Uber, which, despite operating in more than 50 countries and about 300 cities around the world, isn't making profits.

Mercedes also has much to gain from this deal, as the purchase of 100,000 S-Classes in one go is the rough equivalent of how many S-Classes Mercedes managed to sell in a single year. If we assume that Uber worked out a deal for the bulk order, which reduced the suggested U.S. price of $95,000, and got each car for $80,000, then that works out to an $8 billion price tag, or about eight percent of the earnings that parent company Daimler made off of Mercedes Benz in 2015.

However, even as Uber and Mercedes look forward to the future, rivals are making plans of its own. Mercedes competitor BMW said that it was considering launching its own ride hailing service, which would compete with the likes of Uber.

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A self-driving car for $20,000? Honda has one, kinda

The Obama administration has proposed spending $4 billion to accelerate autonomous-car technology during the next decade. For $20,440, you can get a Honda capable of driving itself pretty well on a highway today.

Honda Motor Co. HMC, -0.51%   is releasing automated safety features on its entry-level vehicle Civic LX sedan, a step that takes some of the most sophisticated technology on the market available and makes it accessible to significantly more buyers, including younger ones. General Motors Co. GM, +0.59%  , set to launch a new version of its small Chevrolet Cruze this year, is the next compact car in line to add advanced-safety bells and whistles.

This reflects a growing availability of advanced-driver assistance systems, or ADAS, such as lane-keeping assist, automatic braking or adaptive cruise control in the market. As auto makers offer the components needed to power these functions in option packages as low as $1,800, they are being snapped up at a far higher rate than electrified vehicles.

After a decade of spending much of its time and billions focused on boosting fuel-efficiency, Washington is increasing its focus on technology that could save lives.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering ways to make ADAS features more ubiquitous, and Congress will hold a hearing Tuesday from Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG, -0.29% GOOGL, -0.26%  Google X team and General Motors.

A test drive in Honda’s relatively cheap new Civic shows how today’s technology convincingly and economically attacks a growing problem.

On a 25-mile commute in Metro Detroit in Honda’s new Civic, much of the drive can be completed with hands off the wheel and foot off the accelerator as long as lane markings remain visible and another vehicle is in front of the car. A camera mounted at the rearview mirror watches the road, and the car’s central nervous system tells components when to slow down, swerve or slam the brakes.

Auto makers advise against treating ADAS-equipped cars as self-drivers. Questions about liability and a thicket of regulatory ambiguities lead to a cautious approach by marketers afraid of lawsuits or embarrassing situations.

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