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News Roundup: Baidu Surprises By Offering Up Its Driverless Technology to the World For Free, Autonomous Trains to Debut in Delhi This June, and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

A roundup of some of the most interesting headlines to come out of the driverless and connected-car industries this week:

Baidu challenges the likes of Google, Tesla by offering its driverless tech to all

Chinese tech giant Baidu surprised industry analysts this week by offering up its driverless vehicle software to the world in what many are calling an attempt to challenge the likes of Tesla Motors and Google. Baidu is naming the project Apollo and says it will offer automakers all the tools they need to build an autonomous vehicle. “Essentially, Baidu is trying to become to cars what Google’s Android has become to smartphones – an operating system that will power a number of driverless vehicles,” CNBC explains. Baidu has been investing heavily in autonomous drive technology over the past year or two. The company has already tested driverless cars on highways in Beijing, and recently obtained a permit to test in California. Read more from CNBC.

 

Driverless Metro trains to debut in Delhi in June

Indian news media is reporting that Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is putting the finishing touches on a new system capable of operating without a driver, and says the public will be able to ride on it come June of this year. The trains will run on only two lines: Pink, which runs between Mukundpur and Shiv Vihar, and Magenta, which runs between Botanical Garden and Janakpuri west, covering a distance of 96 km. Testing took place between October and December of last year. Additional tracks are also being built, and testing will take place in new areas later this year. Read more from the Hindustan Times.

 

Grand Theft Auto 5 being used as simulation environment for driverless systems?

Possibly, soon. Professor Alain Kornhauser, professor of operations research and financial engineering at Princeton University, described the video game “Grand Theft Auto V” as “the richest virtual environment that we could extract data from” this week when speaking to media outlets. The actions of more than 1,000 virtual drivers and pedestrians in the game, along with “disordered roads” and changing weather offer a wealth of unpredictable conditions that can help teach artificial intelligence of driverless systems to respond safely, making the game a top-recommended game for developers to use as a training simulator. Read more from Engineering & Technology magazine.

Photo: A Metro train in Delhi, by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation

Tesla’s Purchase of Solar City Causes Drop for 5th Consecutive Week, But D20 Still Enjoys Broad-Based Gains

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With 18 price gainers and only two losers, it was a broad-based gain this week for the Driverless Transportation weekly stock index (D20). The D20’s 1.8-percent jump more than tripled the Dow and S&P 500’s 0.5 percent gains.

Approaching its all-time peak at 163.5, the D20 closed over 160 for the first time since Jan. 1.

Renesas Electronics (TYO:6723) jumped 11 percent in price this week, moving from ¥571 to ¥634 per share2016_09_02-D20-versus-Dow-absolute-value on rumors that they are buying Intersil and that they have teamed up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) to develop 28nm microcontrollers (MCUs) for autonomous vehicles.

One of the two losers this week was Tesla Motors (TLSA), which lost 10.1 percent of its value and dropped to under $200 per share for the first time since June 2016.  It was the fifth consecutive weekly price drop for Tesla, as uncertainty swirls around the profitability of their purchase of Solar City and its soon-to-be announced quarterly production figures.

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

Up-and-Comers:

Drive.ai, founded in 2015, has begun to reveal its product and business strategy.  The core of its founding group of eight come from Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence lab, and it is around the AI concept of deep learning that Drive.ai will base its autonomous driving system.  Their first product will be a retrofit kit for existing cars that includes their autonomous driving system.

News Roundup: Promising AI for Driverless Cars, Fleet of Driverless Taxis to Hit Singapore, and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

A roundup of headlines from the driverless and connected-car worlds so far this week:

FiveAI’s artificial intelligence system looks promising for autonomous cars

A Britain-based startup working on artificial intelligence (AI) for autonomous cars could prove to be quite the competitor for companies like Tesla and Google. FiveAI has secured millions in venture capital for its system that is “data light” (unlike Google) and requires no human supervision (unlike Tesla). FiveAI’s project will outfit a car with sensors run by a central computer system that is capable of “machine learning,” or applying what it learns from encounters to constantly improve its operations. Read more about FiveAI on Economic Times.

First fleet of driverless cars set to debut in Singapore

A fleet of driverless taxis is set to debut in Singapore next year. The venture is a joint project between Delphi Automotive and the Singapore Land Transit Authority (SLTA). Delphi will reportedly use a fleet of Audi vehicles equipped with automated driving and mapping systems and develop a cloud-based mobility software suite for managing the fleet. Passengers will be be able to hail the driverless taxis, which will reduce transportation costs in the city to less than 90 cents per mile, versus the current cost of around $3-4 per mile. Read more about Singapore’s driverless taxi fleet on E&T Magazine.

Robot shuttle debuts at Japanese shopping mall

The joint project between France’s EasyMile and Japan’s DeNA has finally come to fruition. The “robot” shuttle debuted on Monday. It is planned to go into full operation, shuttling passengers around Japan’s busy Aeon Shopping Mall in Chiba’s Makuhari district, next month. Read more about the shuttle on DriverlessTransportation.com and read about the shuttle’s debut this week on Japan’s Press-TV.

 

Top 5 Driverless Startups – AI from Budapest to San Francisco

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Burney Simpson

Agree or disagree – the top 5 self-driving startups are AdasWorks, comma.ai, drive.ai, Nauto, and nuTonomy?

That’s the conclusion of the new analysis from CB Insights “Who’s Who in the Rise of Autonomous Driving Startups.”

CB Insights selected the five by using its ‘CB Insights Company Comparison Tool’ to look at small, early-stage startups that have raised funds this year. (It chose to disregard Zoox because it has already raised $100 million with a goal of garnering more than $200 million.)

Each firm has its own zing but the term artificial intelligence regularly arises as core to its work. In brief:

  • Budapest-based AdasWorks develops advanced driver assistance systems software for vision, artificial intelligence and navigation technologies. It has raised more than $8 million from such investors as Bosch Venture Capital, Nvidia, and Draper Associates.
  • San Francisco-based comma.ai plans to sell an aftermarket autonomous kit so owners of standard vehicles can get in the game. It is led by George Hotz, and backed with $3.1 million from Andreesen Horowitz.
  • Artificial intelligence software creator drive.ai was founded by a group at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. It was recently granted a license to test its vehicles on California roads. It has raised $12 million from undisclosed investors.
  • Nauto is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and has raised nearly $15 million from Draper Nexus Ventures, Playground Global, others. Nauto says it is building the “onramp to autonomous driving” with its “artificial-intelligence powered” connected camera network utilizing the Cloud. Targets fleets, insurance companies, professional drivers.
  • MIT spinoff nuTonomy is in the midst of testing autonomous taxis in a Singapore business park. It has raised nearly $20 million from Fontinalis Partners, Samsung Ventures, others.

MINING TERABYTES

CB Insights chose the five startups after it “mines terabytes of data and knowledge contained in patents, venture capital financings, M&A transactions, hiring, startup and investor websites, news sentiment, social media chatter, hiring activity, and more.”

Photo: Mercedes-Benz R&D Center by Design Milk, 2015.

 

 

 

Feds: Driverless Cars Must Have Driver’s Seat, Steering Wheel, Brake Pedals

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Jennifer van der Kleut

As the U.S. federal government scrambles to try and create a consistent national policy for driverless vehicles, a new report says they think they should still match much of the features of traditional cars.

Much to the frustration of companies like Google that are working hard to try and bring driverless cars into the mainstream, the federal government is insisting that driverless cars on American roads have traditional features like driver’s seats, steering wheels and brake pedals.

It’s no surprise that Google isn’t happy about this, since their famous self-driving test cars only have one out of those three things; their cars have no steering wheels or brakes.

This isn’t the first time proposed government regulations have clashed with the objectives of tech companies or vehicle manufacturers out there, actively working to develop self-driving cars. In the final days of 2015 (which was one year later than initially planned), the California Department of Motor Vehicles proposed state law that would require a licensed driver capable of taking over the car in an emergency be present, in addition to a steering wheel.

In that case, though, the federal government stepped in. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) declared that Google’s artificial intelligence system satisfied the DMV’s requirement for a licensed driver.

In light of that save, news outlets are reporting that Google representatives are once again surprised and unhappy about the DOT’s latest proposal.

Some industry analysts are declaring the new proposed regulations a good thing, though; a “green light of sorts.”

As Bloomberg analysts said this week, “Existing U.S. laws pose few barriers to adoption of autonomous vehicle technology so long as cars and trucks stick with existing designs allowing humans to take control. It’s only when manufacturers push the envelope by developing vehicles without such things as traditional steering wheels and brake pedals that regulations may block new autonomous technology.”

The DOT has been scrambling to create a national policy for driverless cars since January, with the publicized goal of having them ready by late June to early July. As Scientific American reports, there are currently 23 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have proposed as many as 55 different laws regarding driverless cars.

NHTSA: Google’s Artificial Intelligence System Counts as a ‘Driver’ for Self-Driving Cars

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Jennifer van der Kleut

You may remember the big upset a few months ago, when California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) proposed new legislation that would require all vehicles-even self-driving ones-to include a human driver, steering wheel and pedals.

Naturally, Google was quite unhappy about the proposed law, since its large fleet of self-driving test cars feature neither steering wheels nor pedals, and though employees are always in the cars to collect data, the eventual idea is that the cars would be fully autonomous.

Therefore, it was big news this month when the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA) went in the other direction and said that Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) system could satisfy the requirement for a “driver.”

In other words, a car’s “driver” doesn’t have to be human.

“This is a critical first step for Google towards commercializing self-driving cars—a goal it wants to meet by 2020,” said Fortune Magazine.

At this point, though, the victory is still only in theory. As Fortune points out, the challenge now will be for Google to prove that its AI meets the same high standards as human controls.

“NHTSA’s interpretation doesn’t mean fully autonomous vehicles are legal for public use. The next question is whether, and how, Google could certify that the self-driving system meets a standard that currently applies to vehicles with a human driver, says NHTSA’s chief counsel Paul A. Hemmersbaugh in a letter,” Fortune writes. “This, in turn, leads to the next obvious hurdle: NHTSA must first test or find some way to verify such compliance.”

Karl Brauer, senior analyst for the Kelley Blue Book automotive research firm, told Reuters that though he believes there are still important legal questions that need to be answered before autonomous cars can go mainstream, NHTSA’s declaration could help that process.

“If NHTSA is prepared to name artificial intelligence as a viable alternative to human-controlled vehicles, it could substantially streamline the process of putting autonomous vehicles on the road,” Brauer said.

Industry experts and Google reps appear to be cautiously optimistic about NHTSA’s declaration.

“In general, NHTSA’s determination seems to be a victory for Google, letting it go forward with its intended self-driving vehicle design,” said the folks at CNET. “However, individual state rules will still apply as to how Google’s cars can be operated on public roads.”

Could China’s More Relaxed Regulations Push Baidu’s Driverless Car Past Google, Ford and Others?

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Jennifer van der Kleut

When one thinks about driverless car testing these days, names like Google, Ford, GM, Tesla Motors and potentially even Apple instantly come to mind.

But perhaps there’s one other company whose name is escaping you-one that some experts think could possibly even speed right past the others-Baidu.

Baidu is a Chinese company that many don’t realize is already out there, testing driverless cars in varying weather conditions  in different spots around China. And, thanks to China’s more relaxed regulations, some think they could very well leave industry leaders in the dust and get a driverless car to market first.

It certainly seems as though Baidu has the clout to succeed, as the company is valued at around $55 billion.

In addition, Motley Fool reports, “Baidu also has the big ambitions to go with its big size: The company hopes to have driverless cars in 10 Chinese cities within three years. By comparison, Google has been working on the technology since 2009 and only has driverless cars on the road in two cities — Austin, Texas and Mountain View, Calif. Ford has driven a driverless test vehicle at Mcity, a simulated city at the University of Michigan, while GM hopes to begin road testing one on its campus by the end of this year. None of these American companies have taken any steps toward testing in China.”

Motley Fool also points out that the Chinese seem eager to adopt the technology, where most surveys still indicate at least half of Americans remain skeptical of it.

“Baidu is focusing on China, where the market for autonomous vehicles could be nearly as large as North America’s by 2035, according to data from IHS Automotive. Indeed, according to a recent University of Michigan survey, 96 percent of Chinese drivers would be interested in purchasing an autonomous vehicle, compared to only 66 percent in the U.S.”

Plus, regulations in America complicate a move toward autonomous transportation-there is currently no consistent national policy, and a small handful of states have conflicting regulations, while others have no law on the books at all.

By contrast, in China, Motley Fool points out that there is a one-party, “top-down” regulatory system, where local laws are not allowed to contradict national laws.

To its benefit, Baidu has reportedly made several presentations to China’s president on the merits of autonomous and connected vehicle technology.

“Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly considers autonomous vehicles and digital technology key areas of opportunity for Chinese manufacturers,” Motley Fool reports.

Though historically, China has been a century behind other nations in automotive technology, Baidu’s co-founder and CEO says he is confident Baidu has the technical expertise to reach its autonomous transportation goals.

“Robin Li, Baidu’s co-founder and chief executive officer, has invested heavily into a subfield of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, which aims to improve search results and computing tasks by training computers to work more like the human brain,” Bloomberg Business reports. “[Wang Jing, Baidu’s senior vice-president in charge of its autonomous drive division,] thinks the company can leverage its expertise in artificial intelligence, data mapping and Internet connectivity to excel in autonomous driving technology.”

“Google enjoys a huge lead in autonomy today. But don’t underestimate the Chinese will to compete,” Michael Dunne, president of Dunne Automotive Ltd. in Hong Kong, said to Bloomberg.