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News Roundup: Waymo Gets Patent For Exterior Airbags On Self-Driving Cars, Ford to Test ‘Cellular-V2X’ Tech in San Diego and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

 

Waymo granted patent for exterior airbags

Google’s self-driving car spinoff company, Waymo, has been granted a patent for an airbag system that would be located on the outside of a car. Since self-driving cars are outfitted with sensors, cameras, radar and lidar on the outside of the car, Waymo engineers argue that the car itself can predict an accident even sooner than a human driver can (or can’t, if he or she is distracted). The concept of exterior airbags could protect passengers in the vehicle from an impact, as well as “reduce the likelihood of severe injuries or damage to objects such as pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, other vehicles, or simply inanimate objects.” Read more from Silicon Beat.

 

Mcity autonomous vehicle testing ground gets big investment from automakers, corporations

Mcity, the University of Michigan’s testing ground for autonomous vehicles, has received a total of $11 million in funding from 11 different companies, both corporations and automakers. Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Honda all contributed about $1 million each, and other corporations like State Farm Insurance, Verizon, LG and others. Mcity is a 32-acre man-made “city” where companies can conduct research and test autonomous vehicles. The hub offers a number of varied conditions for vehicles to test in, such as different road conditions, four-lane highways, high-pedestrian streets featuring fake, mechanical pedestrians, and much more. Read more from HybridCars.com.

 

Ford partnering with AT&T, Qualcomm and Nokia to test ‘cellular-V2X’ technology

Ford Motor Co. announced this week that it has formed a partnership with Qualcomm, AT&T and Nokia to test cellular modems that can connect vehicles to each other and to roadside infrastructure to help better navigate in bad weather or construction zones. “Cellular-V2X” technology, as it is called, aims to connect vehicles with traffic lights, roadside beacons and other vehicles on the road to share real-time information about driving conditions. It’s meant to improve safety, as well as help speed up the deployment of self-driving vehicles. Testing is scheduled to take place in San Diego, California before the end of the year. For testing, Ford vehicles will be outfitted with Qualcomm hardware powered by AT&T’s 4G LTE cellular network and Nokia’s computing technology. Read more from Automotive News.

Image: Rendering of self-driving minivan with exterior airbags by Waymo

Latest GM Recall Leads the D20 Down

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Investor concerns that the U.S. federal reserve may raise interest rates forced a major stock sell-off last week,  knocking 2.2 percent off the Dow and dropping the S&P 500 by 2.4 percent last week.

The Driverless Transportation Stock Index (D20) fared slightly better, sliding 1.4 percent.  Fifteen losers and only five gainers locked in the D20’s loss, down 2.3 points at 158.06.

General Motors (GM) led the way by losing 5.2 percent per share after it announced a safety recall affecting 4.3 million vehicles.  The recall will correct software that in some instances prevents the proper deployment of safety devices such as airbags or seat belts.  GM’s stock closed at $30.48, down $1.68.

Volvo AB (VOLV-B) was one of the few bright spots for the D20.  Rumors that a Chinese firm is interested in acquiring its Bus and Construction Equipment units drove Volvo AB’s stock up. Volvo AB’s stock, which is traded on the Stockholm Exchange, closed at SEK 96.65, up SEK 3.05 or 3.3 percent.

Visit the Driverless Transportation D20 Stock Index page to learn more about it and its component stocks.

 

Up-and-Comers:

SpotHero, the on-demand parking application which raised $2.5 million in 2012 and $20 million in Series B funding in 2015, is turning its attention to autonomous vehicles. Its current system, www.spothero.com, caters to reserving paid parking spots for manually driven cars.  SpotHero’s team is beginning to plan for the day where autonomous vehicles will need to have available spots to drive to and park while they wait for their next assignment.

Volvo Car Group, owned by Chinese Automotive manufacturer Geely, and Autoliv, vehicle safety system manufacturer, have formed a joint venture to create autonomous driving systems.  The new company will have start out with around 200 employees and will be based in Gothenburg, Sweden.  They will focus their attention on creating advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous drive (AD) systems for Volvo as well as other vehicle manufacturers.

 

Volvo Pledges ‘Zero-Fatality’ Autonomous Cars by 2020

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Jennifer van der Kleut

As the race to build the most effective autonomous car heats up, Volvo has taken the competition one step further by promising to have a new autonomous Volvo on the road in which “no one will be killed or seriously injured.”

According to LeftLane News, Volvo safety engineer Erik Coelingh said in a CNN-produced video that the cars will combine advanced safety features with autonomous drive technology to create the alleged casualty-proof car.

Coehling says, first and foremost Volvo is working hard to improve upon safety features such as airbags and energy-dissipating body structures to ensure the car will be as safe as possible in the event of an accident.

Volvo says they are working on exterior “pedestrian airbags” as well as improving interior driver and passenger airbags. The pedestrian airbags will inflate from beneath the front hood of the car to cushion the impact with the pedestrian to help lessen injury, TechInsider explains.

Then, Coehling says they will develop the best autonomous drive technology to hopefully prevent accidents from ever happening. Those features include adaptive cruise control, auto lane keeping, impending collision braking assistance, traffic sign reading, and pedestrian and large animal detection.

For example, sensors will alert the driver if there is an object such as another car in their blind spot when changing lanes.

Some experts say, Volvo is already close to achieving its goal of having no one die in one of its cars. According to Tech Insider, the company tracks how many people in Sweden die in its cars each year; and in the previous generation of its XC90, only one person died. Furthermore, according to the Institute for Highway Safety latest safety data, no one in the U.S. died in an XC90 between 2009 to 2012.

The next stage of its plan-fully autonomous cars.

What do you think of Volvo’s plans? Tell us in the comments.