I love seeing a new self-driving vehicle hit the streets that the general public can ride. So I am excited to read about ELA, a shuttle powered by EasyMile.
Ela is testing this month in the great Canadian north — Edmonton and Calgary, Aberta. It’s a limited time trial, but the good news is that anybody can sign up.
All you have to do is get to Edmonton. It’s a hike, but they have an awesome mall there.
“Musk wrote in an email obtained by Bloomberg News that Tesla needed about 100 more employees to join an internal testing program linked to rolling out the full self-driving capability. Any worker who buys a Tesla and agrees to share 300 to 400 hours of driving feedback with the company’s Autopilot team by the end of next year won’t have to pay for full self-driving — an $8,000 saving — or for a premium interior, which normally costs $5,000, Musk wrote.”
This is so exciting!
On the other hand, as CleanTechnica reminds, Tesla has struggled to fulfill Autopilot promises in the past. So take with a grain of salt.
Last week I had the honor of making my first trip to Kiev, Ukraine, to speak at Navimotive, the largest autonomous vehicle conference in Eastern Europe.
It is so exciting to meet software engineers from all over the world who are working on autonomous vehicles. This is particularly true Ukraine and other geographies that are new participants in the world of autonomous vehicles.
The event was hosted by Intellias, an automotive software firm with over 1,000 engineers. It is fantastic that there are engineers in places like Kiev and Lviv and Odesa working in C++ on similar problems as engineers in Bavaria or Detroit or Silicon Valley or China or India. Self-driving cars truly are going global.
The speakers came from around the globe, including:
Many other international and Ukrainian companies were present as well.
My hope is that in the next few years self-driving cars will become as visible in Kiev as they are in Mountain View, and that engineers from all over the world have the opportunity to contribute to that future!
Next Saturday, September 15, I am excited to speak at Navimotive, organized by Intellias, in Kiev, Ukraine!
Self-driving cars really are becoming a world-wide phenomenon, with contributions across the entire world. Intellias is a Ukranian automotive supplier that works with companies like Volkswagen, HERE, and Yandex. There will also be speakers from GlobalLogic, CloudMade, MAPS.ME, and more.
I’ll talk about Carla, Udacity’s self-driving car, and share some information about upcoming Nanodegree programs we’re building.
If you are a Udacity student in the area, please send me an email (david.silver@udacity.com) and I’d love to arrange a meetup.
One of the great joys of teaching self-driving cars at Udacity is watching the amazing things our students build. I’m based in Silicon Valley, but our students come from all over the world, and I have the opportunity on a daily basis to experience the truly global nature of this transportation revolution.
Case in point: Flux Auto.
One of our Udacity self-driving car graduates, Shilpaj Bhalerao, is the tech lead for a small team building self-driving trucks in India. This is no small feat. India is even more of a challenge for self-driving cars than other parts of the world, due to the complexity of traffic norms, and the infrastructure quality. So it’s super-exciting to watch their 10km autonomous trucking run in action.
Check it out.
No matter where you are in the world, if your dream is to contribute to the future of autonomous transportation, then you can acquire the skills you need with Udacity. Check out our School of Autonomous Systems today.
A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Company published “A Matter of Trust”, a report outlining their autonomous vehicle development process. The document seems pretty clearly intended for government regulators, and indeed they sent the report to Transportation Secretary Elain Chao.
Compared to the Waymo Safety Report released last year, the Ford document is a little more dense, but broadly similar. Both documents discuss how autonomous vehicles work, what sensors are involved, and what processes are in place to ensure safety.
Ford’s document includes more detail about training and procedures for safety operators, as you might expect in the wake of the Uber ATG collision in Arizona.
Ford also share a bit more information about security. The report mentions efforts related to authentication, network segmentation, and physical partitioning.
All in all, it’s a good read to see how a larger autonomous vehicle organization operates.
For the past few months I have been writing about self-driving cars for Forbes.com. My latest post is on the potential for self-driving cars to take throughput (road capacity) and latency (speed) well beyond the plateau at which human drivers stop improving.
“Driving around Naples at 25mph for a year is a triumph, but imagine a self-driving car that can navigate Naples, safely, at 40mph? Or faster? Equipped with an array of sensors and super-computers, self-driving vehicles could react quicker and achieve safer speeds well beyond the ability of human drivers.
Similarly, US highway capacity tops out at about 2,000 vehicles per hour, assuming human drivers. Self-driving (and potentially connected) cars, however, may be able to dramatically decrease the distance between vehicles, and even move in unison with other cars. Think of a pack of bumper-to-bumper race cars traveling at 100mph. The improvement in road capacity would be tremendous.”
Read the whole thing, and also check out the Benedict Evans post on “Tesla, software and disruption” that sparked this line of thought.
A few weeks ago Lyft and Aptiv announced their 5000th paid self-driving car ride in Las Vegas. The Lyft blog announcement quotes Raj Kapoor: “Lyft is the largest network currently deploying a commercial self-driving program to the public.”
I believe that is correct and may, in fact, slightly understate Lyft’s position. Lyft is one of the only companies offering self-driving rides to the general public, since Uber halted its autonomous vehicle testing program earlier this year.
Waymo and several other companies have self-driving car pilots available to pre-screened participants, but few companies are currently opening their network to any member of the general public.
Earlier this year, AAA was running a self-driving NAVYA shuttle through downtown Las Vegas, although the website currently implies the shuttle is offline and will return later this month.
Las Vegas has long been a mecca for self-driving cars for a few reasons:
Waymo announced earlier this year that its Phoenix-area self-driving cars would open to the general public at some point in 2018.
But, for now, the best place for you and me and almost anybody to try out a self-driving car is Las Vegas.
This Thursday, August 23rd, at 9am Pacific Time, I will be hosting an online open house for Udacity’s School of Autonomous Systems. RSVP now to join me, my Udacity colleagues, our alumni, and other potential students, and learn about our many exciting programs!
The School of Autonomous Systems is the home for Udacity’s Self-Driving Car, Flying Car, Robotics, and Intro to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree Programs.
At the Open House, I’ll share an overview of each program, compare them, and describe the careers for which each option prepares you.
We’ll finish with a live question-and-answer session, co-hosted by myself and several of my Udacity instructional colleagues, to answer as many of your questions as we can.
RSVP now to join us on Thursday! And don’t worry if you can’t make it! RSVP via the link, and we’ll send you the recording of the open house so you don’t miss out!
Self-Driving Fundamentals: Featuring Apollo is a terrific, free introduction to how self-driving cars work, through the lens of the Apollo open-source self-driving car project.
It’s perfect for beginners who are in the exploratory phase of their autonomous systems journey, and it does a great job demonstrating how existing basic programming and data skills can be applied to this field.
Upon successfully completing the program, you’ll be ready to combine your newly-acquired self-driving car fundamentals with your existing programming skills to enroll in our Intro to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree program.
The course begins with an overview of self-driving cars, and how they work. From there, we dive into Apollo and it’s multi-layer architecture: reference vehicle, reference hardware, open-source software, and cloud services.
Self-Driving Fundamentals: Featuring Apollo is led by the leaders of the Apollo project, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun, and me!
This is a great opportunity to learn the key parts of self-driving cars, and get to know the Apollo architecture. You’ll utilize Apollo HD maps, localization, perception, prediction, planning and control, and start learning the fundamentals of how to build self-driving cars.
And it’s free! You should learn about self-driving cars with us 🚗
David Silver 