Yesterday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles started issuing permits to car makers to test self-driving autonomous cars on roads in California . Audi was the first to get a permit, while Google is expected to have the highest number of autonomous vehicles (AVs) with a total of twenty-five. Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have two registered autonomous vehicles each. There are small number of other companies applying.
At the Intellegent Transport Systems Conference in Detroit GM is demonstrating the a self-driving version of the EN-V 2.0, slow-driving petite car designed for the most congested cities.
The Chevrolet Electric Networked-Vehicle (EN-V) 2.0 has the latest intelligent and connected automotive technologies including Lidar and V2X to for automated, low-speed electric driving LSV.
GM will begin offering advanced “intelligent and connected” vehicle technologies in 2017 starting with Cadillac and make driving less work for the hands and feet of drivers with Super Cruise (semi-automated driving) and V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle) communications.
Super Cruise will offer hands-off the wheel lane following, braking and speed control in certain highway driving conditions. GM semi-automated driving technology will also work in stop-and-go driving. This will make driving in heavy traffic and on long road trips easier.
Volvo has opened AstaZero as a test site for traffic safety solutions, in the hopes that by by 2020 no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car. Volvo has been working with magnets that can be sensed in the snow. The Volvo XC90 has advanced run-off road/brake at intersection and AT&T 4G LTE. Volvo also tests autonomous cars in Gothenburg.
Volvo plans development of active safety systems, to prevent accidents with AstaZero as the premiere proving ground, near Volvo Cars headquarters in western Sweden.
The biggest competitor in the world to Google is China’s search giant Baidu and in their parallel universe research and development labs in China and the Silicon Valley are working on self driving cars and possibly bikes which may hit the road later this year.
A Baidu rep told Tech in Asia confirmed that Baidu is in the very early stages of development of driverless cars.
Nissan’s CEO at a news conference reported that fully driverless cars will not be coming in this decade. However features that ease the stress of
The type of tragic truck accident that involved Tracy Morgan and friends may be avoided in the future after research and studies by Virgina Tech.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute will receive $55 million to further study safety efforts for commercial truck drivers and automated vehicles.
The contracts are awarded from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Carnegie Mellon and Sikorsky Aircraft are working with the U.S. Army to show that a drone copter and a driverless ground vehicle can work together to autonomously survey a contaminated site. The unmanned ground vehicle UGV will navigate using sensors looking out for chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear contamination.
The Google self-driving frenzy, started off with an introduction at the at the Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California and splattered across the blogosphere
If and when connected cars become auto-piloted, how will insurance work and who or what will be financially responsible for “accidents” in driverless cars?
Work has begun on the University of Michigan’s Mobility Transformation Center (MTC). Bosch, Econolite, Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Xerox have joined the center as