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New laissez-faire robocar rules may arise
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
19 Jun 2017
While very few details have come out, Reuters reports that new proposed congressional bills on self-driving cars will reverse many of the provisions I critiqued in the NHTSA regulations last year....
LIDAR (lasers) and cameras together: Which is more important?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
29 Mar 2017
Recently we’ve seen a series of startups arise hoping to make robocars with just computer vision, along with radar. That includes recently unstealthed AutoX, the off-again, on again efforts of comma...
California publishes robocar intervention reports: Google/Waymo vastly outpaces competition
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
08 Feb 2017
California published its summary of all the reports submitted by vendors testing robocars in the state. You can read the individual reports. They are interesting, but several other outlines have creat...
Combining automation and mobility to create a smarter world
MIT News
20 Jan 2017
By: Catherine Marguerite | Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology
Daniela Rus loves Singapore. As the MIT professor sits down in her Frank Gehry-designed office in Cambridge, Massachus...
NHTSA ODI report exonerates Tesla in fatal crash
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
20 Jan 2017
NHTSA released the report from their Office of Defects Investigation on the fatal Tesla crash in Florida last spring. It’s a report that is surprisingly favorable to Tesla. So much so that even I am...
Google car is now Waymo
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
14 Dec 2016
Google’s car project (known as “Chauffeur”) kickstarted the entire robocar revolution, and Google has put in more work, for longer, than anybody. The car was also the first project of what becam...
Oxbotica’s autonomous vehicle software learns its environment and how it changes over time
Kassie Perlongo
10 Oct 2016
Oxbotica, a UK technology company with a focus on mobile robotics and driverless vehicles, has created Selenium, an autonomous software system acting similar to a 'brain' for a vehicle. Selenium can...
Robocar parking is incredibly cheap
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
27 Sep 2016
Some people have wondered about my forecast in the spreadsheet on robotaxi economics about the very low parking costs I have predicted. I wrote about most of the reasons for this in my 2007 essay on R...
Michigan’s automated driving bills
Bryant Walker Smith
26 Sep 2016
Michigan's Senate are reviewing several bills related to automated driving. SB995, 996, 997, and 998 are now out of committee, and SB 927 and 928 are not far behind. These bills seem to be a mixed bag...
Critique of NHTSA’s newly released regulations
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
22 Sep 2016
The long awaited list of recommendations and potential regulations for robocars has just been released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the federal agency that regulates ...
US Department of Transportation issues guidance for automated driving
Bryant Walker Smith
21 Sep 2016
With the recent announcement, the US Department of Transportation is enthusiastically embracing automated driving. It's saying that self-driving vehicles are coming in some form (or many forms) and th...
Robocar recap: Tesla radar, MobilEye fight, and the Comma One $1,000 add-on-box
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
20 Sep 2016
Tesla’s spat with MobilEye reached a new pitch this week with Tesla announcing a new release of their autopilot and plans. As reported earlier, MobilEye announced during the summer that they would n...
Pittsburgh and Singapore are now pilot sites for self-driving car services
Frank Tobe
19 Sep 2016
Two self-driving car events of note: Uber just began operating a fleet of Volvo self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, and nuTonomy launched the first autonomous pilot taxi program last month in Singapore. ...
50 different state regulations for robocars is not a bad idea
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
18 Aug 2016
At the recent AUVSI/TRB conference in San Francisco, there was talk of upcoming regulation, particularly from NHTSA. Secretary of Transportation Foxx and his NHTSA staff spoke with just vague hints ab...
Robocar platooning, or just carpool?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
12 Aug 2016
At the recent AUVSI/TRB symposium, a popular research topic was platooning for robocars and trucks. Platooning is perhaps the oldest practical proposal when it comes to car automation because you can ...
Google develops a Chrysler minivan
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
05 May 2016
If you had asked me recently what big car company was the furthest behind when it came to robocars, one likely answer would be Fiat-Chrysler. In fact, famously, Chrysler ran ads several years ago duri...
How would a robocar handle an oncoming tsunami?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
19 Apr 2016
Recently, a reddit user posted a short video of a lucky driver in Japan who was able to turn his car around just in time to escape the torrent of the tsunami....
Autonomous truck platoons travel across Europe
Frank Tobe
14 Apr 2016
A dozen trucks arrived in Rotterdam after traveling across Europe in the European Truck Platooning Challenge. Six different truck makers participated: Scania, Daimler, Volvo, IVECO, MAN and DAF....
Robust and transparent governance is key to building trust in driverless cars
Alan Winfield
12 Apr 2016
Sooner or later there will be fatal accident caused by a driverless car. It's not a question of if, but when. What happens immediately following that accident could have a profound effect on the nasce...
Calculating why we should make a lot more robocars
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
24 Mar 2016
I frequently read that people claim one effect of robocars will be car share (when they work as taxis) and fewer cars being made (because most cars stay idle 95% of the time) — which is good news ...
Why Google’s crash is a good thing
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
04 Mar 2016
Reports released reveal that one of Google’s Gen-2 vehicles (the Lexus) has a fender-bender (with a bus) with some responsibility assigned to the system. This is the first crash of this type — all...
Could robotaxis be the answer to electric car depreciation?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
21 Jan 2016
I’ve been electric car shopping, but one thing has stood out as a big concern. Many electric cars are depreciating fast, and it may get even faster. I think part of this is due to the fact that elec...
Google’s detailed intervention rates reveal the real unsolved problem of robocars
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
15 Jan 2016
Hot on the heels of my CES Report is the release of the latest article from Chris Urmson on The View from the Front Seat of the Google Car. Chris heads engineering on the project (and until recently l...
California’s new DMV regulations may kill the state’s robocar lead
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
18 Dec 2015
Be careful what you wish for. Google had previously requested that state regulations on robocars be clarified, to help ensure that their cars were legal. When California's DMV finally released its pr...
Why Tesla’s Autopilot and Google’s car are entirely different animals
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
28 Oct 2015
In the buzz over the Tesla autopilot update, a lot of commentary has appeared comparing this Autopilot with Google’s car effort and other efforts and what I would call a “real” robocar — one t...
Volvo says it will accept “full liability” when its cars are operating autonomously
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
08 Oct 2015
In a statement released yesterday, Volvo said it would accept full liability whenever one of its cars is in autonomous mode....
Robocars don’t need fancy dashboards and streets
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
07 Oct 2015
Yesterday I attended the “Silicon Valley reinvents the wheel” conference by the Western Automotive Journalists, which had a variety of talks and demonstrations of new car technology. Now that rob...
IEEE driverless car roundtable
CIS Blog
30 Sep 2015
[focus07]
Hear about the current state of the driverless vehicle industry from experts including IEEE Member Jeffrey Miller, IEEE Fellow Wei-Bin Zhang, Bernard Soriano, and Bryant Walker Smith. In ...
Former DARPA Program Manager Gill Pratt to direct Toyota’s new $50M robotics investment
Ioannis K. Erripis
04 Sep 2015
In a surprise move today, Toyota held a press conference (see video below) announcing a substantial investment in robotics and AI research to develop "advanced driving support" technology, with forme...
When do robocars become cheaper than standard cars? Automated Vehicle Symposium recap (Part 1)
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
24 Jul 2015
I’m in the Detroit area for the annual TRB/AUVSI Automated Vehicle Symposium. Those in Ann Arbor attended the opening of the new test track at the University of Michigan, but I was at a small event ...
Powering the robocar: Ultracapacitors and other energy sources
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 Jun 2015
A reader recently asked about the synergies between robocars and ultracapacitors / supercapacitors. It turns out they are not what you would expect, and it teaches some of the surprising lessons of ro...
Robocar roundup: Google accidents, Baidu cars, startups and more
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 Jun 2015
Here’s a roundup of news stories in the field of robocars....
Automated vehicle crashes
Bryant Walker Smith
29 May 2015
Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported on several past crashes involving automated vehicles. (Per SAE Standard J3016, I use the term "automated vehicle" instead of "autonomous veh...
Why Tesla’s purported liability ‘fix’ is technically and legally questionable
Bryant Walker Smith
26 May 2015
An interesting article in last week’s Wall Street Journal spawned a series of unfortunate headlines (in a variety of publications) suggesting that Tesla had somehow “solved” the “problem” ...
Robocar roundup: Google deploys nextgen cars on city streets; Mercedes Freightleiner tests in NV
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
19 May 2015
[clear]
Google has done over 2.7 million km of testing with their existing fleet, they announced. Now, they will be putting their small “buggy” vehicle onto real streets in Mountain View. The c...
Will motion sickness really be a barrier to self-driving cars?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
14 Apr 2015
Earlier this week I was sent some advance research from the U of Michigan about car sickness rates for car passengers. I found the research of interest, but wish it had covered some questions I think ...
