Several manufacturers, including Ford, Volvo and GM, as well as chipmaker Nvidia have outlined various plans for developing autonomous vehicles.
GM revealed plans to invest $500m (£339m) into carsharing company, Lyft, to help the company continue its growth, with the long term aim of creating a network of on-demand autonomous vehicles in the US.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Access deeper industry intelligence
Experience unmatched clarity with a single platform that combines unique data, AI, and human expertise.
Lyft drivers and customers will also have access to GM’s wider portfolio of cars and GM’s OnStar services, and GM will become a preferred provider of short-term use vehicles to Lyft drivers through rental hubs. GM will also take a position on the company’s board.
GM president Dan Ammann said: "We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous. With GM and Lyft working together, we believe we can successfully implement this vision more rapidly."
Ford
Ford has said it is tripling its fleet of fully autonomous Ford Fusion Hybrid test vehicles to 30, making it the largest in the automotive industry.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataThe new vehicles will use Ford’s third-generation autonomous vehicle development platform, and will take to the streets of California this year.
The cars will use ‘LiDAR’ sensors (sensors which use light and radar) made by technology company Voldyne called Solid-State Hybrid Ultra PUCKs, which have a range of 200m. The PUCKs are smaller than the sensors previously used by Ford, and vehicles only require two sensors, rather than four.
Ford said the aim of the second generation of its fleet was to test many of the computing and sensor components required in order to achieve fully autonomous driving capability. It said it is also testing other types of sensors, such as cameras, radar and ultrasonic devices in order to deliver semi-autonomous features to customers.
Nvidia
Chipmaker Nvidia, meanwhile, has titled its speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) ‘Accelerating the race to self-driving cars’, and revealed its Drive PX2 GPU, an AI computer for self-driving cars which uses deep learning and is ‘the size of a launch-box’. Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer at Nvidia said it was as powerful as approximately 150 Mac-book pros.
Huang said the company aims to create the chips the industry uses to power autonomous vehicles, and that computing power would need to increase substantially in order to achieve full autonomy.
The biggest problem he identified was with autonomous vehicle perceptions in cities, where the environment was prone to change rapidly and unexpectedly. One example brought up involved a road where a new lane had been painted over an old lane, but the previous lane markings were still visible.
An autonomous car would need to be able to establish which are the correct markings immediately, which Huang said was hard to programme for. The solution Huang said was deep learning, which allows image recognition technologies to develop visual recognition above human perception capacity. Nvidia is investing in creating the tools to accelerate deep learning , which Huang said requires powerful, specialised computers, such as PX2.
Volvo
Volvo, meanwhile, has begun to look at some of the practicalities of being a passenger in an autonomous car. It has revealed that it is developing intelligent high-bandwidth capabilities with technology provider Ericsson, to allow for interruption free media streaming.
Volvo described autonomous driving as a ‘paradigm shift’ for mobile net demands, and will cause a demand for consistent, high-bandwidth coverage outside of densely populated areas.
The new technology will predict the driver’s route, look at network conditions and then tailor buffering of content in such a way as to create an uninterrupted viewing experience.
Our research shows that almost 70% of all mobile data traffic will be from video in the coming years. This requires an innovative connectivity, cloud and analytics solution that is not only capable of serving multiple moving vehicles across a highway, but also has the capacity to provide the high-quality, uninterrupted video service today’s consumer is accustomed to," said Claes Herlitz, ?head of Automotive Services at Ericsson.
Kia
Kia has introduced a new sub brand ‘Drive Wise’ for its autonomous driving technologies.
The South Korean manufacturer said it planned to manufacture partially autonomous cars by 2020, and aimed to bring fully-autonomous vehicles to market by 2030.
At CES 2016, Kia revealed six types of autonomous technologies it was working on:
– Highway Autonomous Driving
– Urban Autonomous Driving
– Preceding Vehicle Following
– Emergency Stop System
– Traffic Jam Assist
– Autonomous Valet Parking.
At the same time, Drive Wise will also work on user interfaces in cars, with a particular emphasis on interfaces such as gesture control, fingerprint sensors and smart-friendly connectivity.
Tae-Won Lim, senior vice president, Central Advanced Research and Engineering Institute of Hyundai Motor Group, said: "Kia is undergoing a very promising and gradual process of introducing partially and fully autonomous technologies to its vehicles. Although the first marketable fully-autonomous car from Kia will not be available in the immediate future, the work our R&D teams are currently doing to develop our range of DRIVE WISE technologies is already improving on-road safety and driver assistance."
In order to develop these technologies, Kia has made a preliminary investment totalling $2bn (£1.36bn), and gained a license in Nevada to test its technologies on public roads. Kia’s Soul EV will be used for the tests.
