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substack.com
News
Future automated vehicles to require driver training, suggests study
The transition to Level 3 automated vehicles will make behavioural training for drivers paramount, according to new research by the University of Nottingham and the RAC Foundation. The study found that such training can make drivers more measured in their behaviour on the roads and better able to understand their car’s capabilities and limitations.
driverlessguru.com
News in brief
- Volkswagen plans to tweak its strategy to maintain its push for developing electric and autonomous cars, reports Reuters
- The Japan Times reports that a self-driving taxi has begun a four-day road test in Tokyo using a 5G ultrahigh-speed wireless network
- Daimler Trucks has acquired a minority stake in autonomous vehicle sensor and software company Luminar, with the two firms announcing a strategic partnership to enable highly automated trucking
- Waymo reportedly moved its San Francisco-based autonomous vehicles to a 'secured location' in case of Election Day unrest, reports The Verge
- Aeva, a firm developing a lidar sensor for self-driving cars to perceive their surroundings, has agreed to go public, according to Reuters
Automated vehicles
Consumer Reports evaluates driving assistance systems
Independent consumer organisation Consumer Reports (CR) has released a new ranking of the performance of different active driving assistance suites – when vehicles’ adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance systems are engaged simultaneously. CR’s engineers evaluated 17 systems and found that Cadillac’s Super Cruise outperformed other systems, because it uses direct driver monitoring to warn drivers that appear to have stopped paying attention to the road.
consumerreports.org
Connected vehicles
HORIBA MIRA to partner with Vodafone on 5G
HORIBA MIRA and Vodafone have announced a partnership to bring a 5G private mobile network to HORIBA MIRA’s Midlands HQ. The network will provide connectivity for those testing connected and driverless vehicles at the company’s facilities, allowing vehicles to communicate with each other and the surrounding infrastructure.
driverlessguru.com
Policy
Future of Mobility Commission launched
A group of business leaders and public policy experts have unveiled a new body to address questions surrounding the future of transportation, including self-driving and electric vehicles, reports Reuters. The Future of Mobility Commission believes that current regulatory standards "fail to reflect the transformation occurring in powertrains, autonomy, and models of mobility", and hopes to tackle tough problems and improve safety.
reuters.com
Investment
Pony.ai secures new investment
Self-driving tech developer Pony.ai has completed a Series C funding round of $267 million, in its quest to deliver autonomous mobility 'on a global scale'. The investment, led by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, follows a $400 million investment from Toyota in February, and comes soon after it struck a funding agreement with Chinese carmaker FAW Group.
medium.com
Learning
Researchers explore Baidu's open-source self-driving software
Researchers at Concordia University will present a paper next week on what they found when they explored the open-source software behind Baidu's Apollo autonomous driving system (ADS). "We are trying to open up this black box of an autonomous driving system and explain to academics and software designers how this is designed," said Tse-Hsun (Peter) Chen, assistant professor of computer science and software engineering at the university's Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science.
concordia.ca
Deliveries
FMCSA seeks comments on autonomous trucks
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is seeking comments from the trucking industry on how it would like to proceed with autonomous technology for over-the-road commercial freight, according to American Trucker. Regulators reportedly plan to question 2,000 people in the trucking industry before and after four autonomous truck technology roadshows next year, "to collect baseline opinions of automated driving systems".
trucker.com
Safety
Waymo shares autonomous safety framework
Following the opening of its fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Phoenix, Waymo has published its safety framework setting out the safety practices that govern its deployments. The framework maps out the company's approach to safety across three layers: the Hardware Layer (covering the vehicle, steering and driving systems, sensor suite and software platform), the ADS (automated driving system) Behavioral Layer and the Operations Layer.
waymo.com