Google seems to be the most experienced when it comes to clocking miles in autonomous vehicles. However, it wasn’t very clear what Google (or Waymo now) plans to do with the vehicles it is working on. It might change soon as Google recently filed a patent application for what could be a feature useful for driverless pick-ups and drops. Filed earlier this month, the patent would help the autonomous vehicles in effectively determining passenger pickup and drop locations.

Google is looking to operate fully autonomous vehicles in which, with some initial input from passengers, the vehicle can move itself to the location. However, not all locations will be suitable for pickup or drop and while an Uber driver can figure that out easily, it might not be possible for the autonomous vehicle. This is exactly the challenge Google is looking to deal with this patent. A centralised dispatching system which would provide a set of suitable locations for waiting or pickup/drop increasing the safety of these vehicles.

The tech giant hasn’t entirely stayed away from the ride sharing space. Google Ventures is a stakeholder in Uber and in Q3 last year, Google started car pooling in its home region through Waze. The Google self driving project is now operated under the Waymo brand and it recently announced its plans deploy fleet of self-driving vehicles in association with Chrysler. It is being reported that the two could eventually launch a ridesharing service to go against the likes of Lyft an Uber, possibly expanding the pooling service they launched earlier with Waze.

It isn’t clear how exactly Google plans to move ahead with its ride-sharing plans but it is apparent that it might have to go against its ally Uber sometime in future.

Source

The post Uber might not be able to dismiss this ridesharing rival appeared first on TravHQ.

By now, YouTube is flooded with people sharing their experiences of being driven around by their Tesla cars. Until now, if you wanted to get this experience, your best bet was to buy a Tesla. However, Comma.ai, with technology built in a garage promised a low cost solution and at TechCrunch Disrupt SF this year, founder George Hotz unveiled the first official product called Comma One.

While the device won’t make the vehicle completely autonomous, Hotz shares that it will make it semi-autonomous, good for highway use, like Tesla. The device makes use of certain sensors like front radars that are already present in many cars so it won’t work with all cars at launch. However, Hotz hopes to expand the list of supported vehicles over time. The hardware will replace the rear view mirror in cars and will use the camera to identify what is around the vehicle.

He also used the opportunity to take a dig at many other companies working towards bringing autonomous vehicles to masses. According to him, many of them don’t even have a hardware, let alone a product that they can ship. While the product is squarely targeted at Tesla Autopilot, Hotz also appreciated how Tesla is constantly working to improve the system and that the widely talked about crash was an unfortunate incident that was a case of driver not paying attention like most accidents on the road.

Comma One will cost $999 to buy however there will be a monthly cost of $24 for the service. The device is likely to ship in limited quantities before the end of this year.

Source: TechCrunch

The post Comma.ai to start shipping a $999 device by the end of this year to make your car semi-autonomous like Tesla appeared first on TravHQ.

Yes you can be excited about driverless cars now, especially if you live in Singapore. While Uber recently announced that it will start testing driverless cars in Pittsburgh starting this month, NuTonomy has officially launched driverless taxis in Singapore, probably beating Uber to it by few days. This will be the first ever public trial for autonomous vehicles and it will be held in One-North business district.

NuTonomy, a US based driverless vehicle R&D firm founded by MIT PhD graduates in 2013, has partnered with EDBI, the corporate investment arm of Singapore Economic Development Board. NuTonomy will invite residents of Singapore to try out the service for free by booking a ride through its app. The driverless cars being used for testing are built upon Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV as base.

CEO and co-founder of nuTonomy, Karl Iagnemma, said, “nuTonomy’s first-in-the-world public trial is a direct reflection of the level of maturity that we have achieved with our AV software system. The trial represents an extraordinary opportunity to collect feedback from riders in a real-world setting, and this feedback will give nuTonomy a unique advantage as we work toward deployment of a self-driving vehicle fleet in 2018.”

In May of this year, nuTonomy completed a $16M Series A funding led by Highland Capital Partners that included participation from Fontinalis Partners, Signal Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and EDBI, the dedicated corporate investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board.

Uber is working with Volvo to bring driverless cabs and similar to their plan, these public rides will have an engineer from the company to observe the vehicle behaviour and take control in case things don’t proceed how they are supposed to. The data collected through the testing program will help them improve the software for the future.

While NuTonomy is the first company to start public testing of driverless cabs, Uber isn’t far behind. There are many other startups working in different ways to achieve autonomy in vehicles and will be seen in public sooner or later.

The post Uber has just been beaten by NuTonomy in the race to launch self-driving cabs appeared first on TravHQ.

Comma.ai has been in news every now and then because of the promises it gave us for the future of driverless cars. Founder George Hotz started the company in a bid to prove a point, that existing vehicles and off the shelf components can be used to make driverless vehicles at low cost. Now Comma.ai has made 7.25 hours of driverless highway driving data available openly. This is a particularly interesting move considering the fact that while Google and Tesla have been pretty open about their developments, most of the startups in this space weren’t.

Sharing data with other innovators in this space will help the entire industry collectively move forward. Being open helps in improving machine learning. George Hotz has invited people to use the data to replicate the results and build further with the data. He shared that there were missteps along the way and no one needs to repeat them to learn the same lessons. He has also asked Zoox, Tesla, Google and Cruise to share their data.

Most of the companies working towards autonomous vehicles are looking at urban conditions first, with the exception of Tesla maybe, however the data shared by Comma.ai is for highway driving conditions. It could also be of help to the hobbyists that are working on these technologies as their backyard projects. This would also open up the gates to the company for right kind of people and attract them with the message. You can contribute towards a driverless world by using their chffr app that turns your mobile phone into a cloud based dashboard camera and feeds data to comma.ai to help develop their system.

Source: TechCrunch

The post Comma.ai releases self driving car data and asks others to do the same appeared first on TravHQ.