Artificial intelligence (AI), driverless cars, robotics, and other emergent technologies are already having dire climate consequences. Training a single large language model (LLM) creates the same carbon emissions of five cars over their lifetime, according to one academic paper. And it’s not just energy use, but it’s driving demand for rare-earth metals, while financial efficiencies in manufacturing can spark an increase in consumption – bad news for pollution, landfills, and emissions. And this is only the beginning.

At the moment, data centers and data transmission networks are already responsible for 0.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, though some pin the number closer to 2% – similar to global air travel emissions. The rule of thumb that a Google Search was on par with boiling a kettle has been rightly debunked, though beefing up its search engine with AI will unquestionably boost its carbon footprint – we just don’t know by how much, until that data is made available. And right now, it isn’t. 

The impact of AI on climate change

Making machine learning more accurate usually means creating bigger models with more parameters churning through ever bigger data sets for training. “Since AI models are, on average, getting bigger, their energy costs are definitely rising as well,” says Sasha Luccioni, climate lead at AI developer Hugging Face. “So far, all of the numbers and research are mostly about training AI models, but we actually have very limited information about the energy costs of their deployment. Since we are increasingly putting AI models in many products and services – think navigation, smartphones, voice assistants – the energy costs of that are consequential too.”

Research suggests training large machine learning models only makes up a tenth of energy use, with running the model making up the rest. That’s true whether it’s to analyze medical data sets or generate a goofy image for a meme. And that’s merely the energy cost of compute: Luccioni’s own research reveals that considering other carbon costs, such as manufacturing components, doubles the footprint. 

But, she notes, it’s worth knowing not all AI is necessarily gobbling up energy: it depends on the type and the use case. “A very small number of very large models – [such as] GPT-type models and other generative language models – are dominating the discourse when it comes to AI but, in reality, there’s a plethora of much smaller and more efficient models that are being used across the community, including for climate-positive applications like tracking deforestation or predicting the climate,” Luccioni says. “So it’s easy to think that all AI models are incredibly energy-intensive, but truly it’s only a small portion (that take up all the space right now).” In short, just because it’s AI, doesn’t mean it’s an energy hog. 

Of course, tech companies are keen to slash their energy use and, because of that, they’ve put significant effort into building dedicated hardware to boost performance and efficiency. In other words, these are already the optimized versions of such systems. What else could be done? Researchers have called for those building large models to publish energy usage, in the hopes of spurring an arms race not just in terms of capability but efficiency. 

The key to slashing the energy demands, and in turn the carbon cost, of AI and related technologies? “Transparency is crucial,” says Luccioni. “Organisations should report both the training costs: compute time, hardware used, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, etc, as well as inference efficiency (quantity of energy consumed per 100 queries, for instance). Otherwise, users are left in the dark regarding all of these factors and can’t use them to make informed decisions.”

The impact of driverless cars on climate change

Waymo’s automated cars are already ferrying passengers around the San Francisco Bay Area, as are the Alphabet-owned company’s main rival, GM’s Cruise. Both use similar technologies to let their vehicles see the world around them. LIDAR scanners paint a 3D picture by pinging light pulses off everything, and measuring how long it takes to return. Cameras ring the vehicles – for Waymo, there are 19 cameras on its smaller Chrysler Pacifica cars and 29 on the larger Jaguar I-PACE – as well as radar to help improve calculations of an object’s distance and speed despite weather such as rain, fog, or snow. 

All of that real-time data crunching chews through energy – though it’s difficult to know exactly how much, as that information isn’t made public and it will differ by car and by system. In 2018, researchers estimated that cars at the lower end of autonomy generate as much as 3Gb/sec of data, while cars at higher levels will have sensors spitting out as much as 40Gbit/sec of data. That figure will only have increased in the space of five years.

One challenge is understanding the growth in data processing and improvements in computing efficiency that are likely to happen before these cars become widely available, if they ever do. Academics at MIT modeled the future impact on emissions of driverless cars, finding one billion driverless cars on roads globally would lead to the same amount of emissions as all of the world’s IT data centers currently do. That’s based on the assumption that cars are used for just an hour a day, driven by a computer using 840W. 

“If we just keep the business-as-usual trends in decarbonization and the current rate of hardware efficiency improvements, it doesn’t seem like it is going to be enough to constrain the emissions from computing onboard autonomous vehicles,” said study author Soumya Sudhakar, a graduate student in aeronautics and astronautics, in a statement. “This has the potential to become an enormous problem. But if we get ahead of it, we could design more efficient autonomous vehicles that have a smaller carbon footprint from the start.” 

We should have plenty of time: the study looked at all of this happening by 2050. However, to avoid driverless cars contributing to climate change, computing hardware must double in efficiency every 1.1 years. Another option, the researchers note, is to improve the efficiency of the algorithms themselves, so they require less computing power in the first place, though the difficulty is managing this without impacting accuracy. 

The model doesn’t take into account autonomous cars being used differently than how we drive now, however. One idea often mooted is shifting car ownership to a shared, subscription model – essentially handing the keys to Alphabet et al and accessing a car via an app – which could potentially reduce the number of cars on the road in the first place, Still, if we’re all traveling via Waymo taxis, we’re going to need an awful lot of them. 

The impact of robotics on climate change

There’s more to the environmental impact of future technologies than energy use and subsequent emissions, however. For example, the rush to embed chips in everything means more mining of key materials, such as rare earth minerals. Plus, how we use such innovations matter: giving up on public transport for corporate-owned, driverless (or even flying) taxis could exacerbate urban traffic. 

Laurie Wright, a professor at Solent University, Southampton, points to the “rebound effect”: an economics observation that as we become more efficient at producing something, the price falls so we use it more. “You can play this out with AI: if we produce more stuff, more cheaply, more efficiently, that’s great – but if there’s more stuff to buy at a cheaper price, that can potentially drive up emissions,” says Wright. 

Consider robots. They can take on dirty, dangerous jobs from humans, which is good news for the people who used to suffer those roles. But as robotics become more advanced, they can go further than people ever could, opening up areas of our world – and beyond – that previously were safe from environmental degradation simply by being too hard to reach. For example, robotics could allow mining in ever more remote and dangerous regions, such as deep seas – and even in space. “Is that actually a better thing to do?” asked Wright. “It’s always a complex balancing act.”

How can the industry innovate sustainably?

Should we stop using ChatGPT write silly sonnets, grammar check our WhatsApp messages, and other low-value queries? Loïc Lannelongue, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s department of public health who runs the Green Algorithms carbon calculator, doesn’t think so – most of what we do for fun has a carbon impact. The onus shouldn’t be on those at home playing around and exploring technology to limit the carbon impact; instead, it should lie in the hands of the people building such systems. “They’re paying the energy bills, so they know what the carbon footprint is,” said Lannelongue.

He agrees with the argument that instead of an arms race for larger models, AI developers should publish the carbon footprint of training and using their models. We could then choose not the biggest, but the most efficient. “It’s just a cost-benefit analysis that we need to do beforehand,” says Lannelongue. “And the only way is to know the cost.”

Without counting the cost, there’s no reason to reduce computing use. The classic example, Lannelongue says, is tuning the hyperparameters of a machine learning model; it’s impossible to know when you’ve hit the best combination of parameters, so researchers run many different combinations to find performance improvements. “Imagine it’s 5pm, you’ve been running tests all day, and you think you’ve hit the plateau [in performance],” he says. “As financial costs are negligible, it’s tempting to just let it run overnight and do as many tests as it can, because I’m sleeping and it doesn’t matter… but the extra half percent you might get could get you published at NeurIPS.”

That’s the sort of behavior Lannelongue wants researchers developing AI to think twice about. “The whole point of the project is not to say we shouldn’t do computing anymore,” he says. “We just need to acknowledge that there is a carbon cost.” And hopefully planting that seed will remind people to only compute where necessary, to not waste energy, and to double-check their work before running complex calculations: “It’s happened to everyone that you run a massive thing and only at the end realize you forgot to write the outputs… and have nothing to show for it.”

Tracking the impact, helped by projects such as Hugging Face and Green Algorithms, can help us understand the environmental costs of future technologies, and hopefully encourage developers to build in mitigations such as energy efficiency. But in the meantime, adding generative AI to search, driverless automation to cars, and using robots for everything else might be convenient and intriguing for us, but less so for the planet. When we talk about human-centric, ethical AI, we should probably consider clean air and tolerable temperatures as key components of safe technology. 

You’d be forgiven for assuming the birthplace of the world’s first autonomous bus is somewhere across the scorching Californian vista. For years startups and tech giants alike have been investing serious money into making driverless vehicles a reality.

Instead, however, you must cast your view some 5,000 miles east to Edinburgh, Scotland, to find the world’s first autonomous bus service operating on a real schedule with actual passengers. For the price of a bus ticket, you can hop on at Edinburgh Park and ride to Queensferry, before crossing the picturesque bridge, admiring the views of the famous Forth Bridge and Inchgarvie. 

If the sensors are too subtle, perhaps “autonomous bus” plastered down its side will give away the true nature of vehicles running on the AB1 route. The five-bus fleet began operations in the middle of May, ferrying passengers via a 14-mile route at speeds up to 80kmph across the Forth Bridge Road as well as motorways, bus lanes, and private land; next year, if all goes well, the route will expand northwards to Dunfermline. It remains a trial, but it’s a trial on public roads and it can be used by anyone. 

Driverless with two drivers

The CAVForth team is careful to call it an autonomous bus, which is much better than “driverless” given there are actually two members of staff on board: a safety driver, always at the wheel as required by UK law, as well as a “captain” on board to take tickets, assist customers with boarding and answer any riders’ questions. Both are professional drivers, so will alternate their roles to avoid the monotony of driving a self-driving vehicle. 

The aim is to give a sense of what such a service will be like when the bus is entirely automated, with CAVForth making it clear there needs to always be a member of staff on board. Steven Russell, innovation manager at Stagecoach, notes it was abundantly clear from the early stages of the trial that keeping a person on board was key to ensuring people felt safe and could ask questions.

Given there are two members of staff in this trial – double the number on most buses – what’s the point? For starters, the CAVForth project hopes to reduce avoidable accidents by 90%. Beyond this, organizers believe smoother, more efficient driving will slash costs of fuel, tires, and maintenance by as much as 25%, alongside a 10% improvement in running time due to faster loading.

Whether that bears out remains to be seen, but such savings are why Jim Fleming, director of marketing at Fusion Processing, believes self-driving systems make more sense on public transport than passenger cars. “When we’ve analyzed the market, we believe this technology will happen first… in commercial vehicles like buses and trucks, and that’s because these are professional organizations chasing down fuel savings and operational efficiency."

What’s on board the world’s first autonomous bus?

The trial uses a fleet of four Alexander Dennis Enviro200AV vehicles with an extra as backup. These buses, the most common single-decker buses in the UK, feature British firm Fusion Processing’s CAVStar Automated Drive system, supported by three sets of Lidar, a suite of cameras and radar, with communications handled by satellite. “Different types of sensors have different strengths and different weaknesses, and by getting the right blend, you get the best of both worlds,” says Fleming. 

Multiple types of sensors are necessary for safety, he adds. “We have a level four system, which means that the vehicle will behave safely in the event of a fault, even if there’s no intervention from a safety driver,” he says. “If one sensor gets taken out by a rock thrown up from the road, you have to be able to know that the vehicle is still capable of doing things.”

The bus itself has been “digitized”, which is to say it uses drive-by-wire controls rather than manual. It then uses the sensor data to feed control systems, which in turn drive the bus. But note the plural, with three separate control systems in place. “There are two control systems doing the same job,” explains Fleming, as that offers redundancy in case one fails. “The third checks that yes indeed the other two have come to the same conclusion.”

Fleming describes the overall system as having three parts. First, it gathers data using the sensors (LIDAR, cameras, radar). “The second subsystem… makes sense of all that data to decide where the vehicle is and what should it do next,” he says. “And then the third subsystem is all the vehicle systems… that we communicate with to send digital requests to accelerate or steer or whatever.”

It’s worth emphasizing these systems are considered level four on the driverless scale, which means a human driver isn’t required to take the wheel if the system struggles to decide what to do; they should drive everywhere without human intervention, with a driver required by law rather than technical necessity.

Avoiding hurdles

So far, the level-four automation systems can manage 90% of the route, with the human driver handling the exit from the depot and a few other locations. The buses run seven days a week, unless the weather gets too bad. The systems should be able to handle heavy rain and snow, but the CAVForth team wants to err on the side of safety and collect data about how well the buses work in adverse conditions before sending them out in a storm. 

The aim is to slowly expand the route and cover more areas, gathering data about the journeys and how the system works as they go. Drivers give their feedback after a shift, but the system also records for five seconds before and after whenever a driver takes control to monitor the conditions that require human intervention. That also includes whenever the driver honks the horn – so if the CAVForth AB1 honks at you, know that an autonomous engineer will be looking at the data. 

The safety driver sits with their hands resting on the wheel; the idea is to actually rest, rather than grip the wheel as though they are driving, to save their energy and wrists. To take back control, it’s no different than cruise control, says Russell. “Tap the brake pedal, and it will just flip back [to manual controls].”

But there was more to setting up this trial than slapping sensors on a bus and running laps at a Stagecoach depot. To boost the chances of success, Transport Scotland has made a few tweaks to the route. This includes extra CCTV cameras to watch over the buses from a local control center, and adding connectivity to traffic lights, letting signals broadcast to the bus so it can plan its speed knowing in advance. The road has a shoulder as a safety feature and road markings have been given a new lick of paint.

Bristol Robotics Lab also stepped in to build a digital twin of the bus route, creating a simulation with what’s known as hazard injection, enabling it to be tested on rare risks without waiting for them to crop up naturally. “They’ve been supporting Fusion to challenge the system in simulation,” says Russell. “This allows them to test many different dangerous scenarios and check that the program is consistently responding as you would expect.”

Reinventing the bus

Most people are happy boarding a bus, regardless of whether AI or a person is driving, but Russell hopes the AB1 route will also draw tourists. “We’re expecting it to be popular with students, day trippers, and with the novelty factor potentially bringing in tourists.”

As part of the project, Edinburgh Napier University has run a series of surveys uncovering what people want from a self-driving bus. That revealed three broad themes: trust and safety; customer experience; and value. “People are wondering if the technology is safe,” Russell says. “And customer service, people are not quite sure what to expect from the vehicle and how to interact with it, and on value, not really understanding why we’re doing this and who benefits.

This research is one reason there will be, for the foreseeable future, a human on board, as well as why the logo is a smiley face. “Research suggests that putting a smiley face on a robot makes them more human and approachable so that’s what we’re going for," says Russell. Finally, it revealed that opinions about self-driving technologies and autonomous buses “vastly improve with exposure”.

But what’s it actually like on board? Very similar to being on a regular bus, actually. After a few minutes aboard this world-first experience, we were either looking out the window, chatting, or urging the driver to take his hands from the wheel for a momeny to make an otherwise boring video a bit more intriguing. The driver eventually complied, raising his hands and smiling for the cameras. The bus – driven by sensors and AI – carried on as before.

Sunnyvale-based automotive software firm Sonatus has raised $35 million in Series A funding to help car manufacturers build vehicles capable of updating software features more efficiently.

The latest funding round comprises automotive and technology investors, including Hyundai Motor Group’s Kia Corporation, SAIC Capital, LG Electronics, Marvell, UMC Capital, and Wanxiang Group Company. Translink Capital led the funding round.

Sonatus will use the funds to expand its roadmap of next-generation software-defined vehicle solutions and grow the company.

The company said the funding would allow it to help automakers transform vehicles into “data centers on wheels” with next-generation architectures capable of supporting the most advanced future mobility use cases.

Sonatus said its combination of employees from the IT and data center worlds and automotive OEMs and suppliers has enabled it to build scalable solutions for automakers in just a year instead of decades. In turn, this helps automakers to innovate faster, reduce complexity and costs, and become more agile, it claimed.

The software Sonatus is developing allows car manufacturers to be nimbler and more efficient in managing their vehicles and making them more innovative. Unlike other solutions, which rely solely on over-the-air software updates to modify a vehicle, Sonatus’ dynamically manageable software enables automakers to remotely add features, remedy problems, manage vehicle data, and more in real time without the cost and disruption of software updates.

Jeff Chou, Sonatus CEO and co-founder said that the way automobiles are designed must “dramatically change” to meet the escalating digital demands of mobility.

“As vehicles become more technologically complex and data driven, they must adopt software-defined technologies that originate from modern data centers to become veritable ‘data centers on wheels.’ Our software-defined and automotive expertise make us the right partner at the right time to help automakers embrace Digital Dynamics—speed, agility, and control with digital technologies—and build the vehicles of the future,” he said.

Roger Lanctot, director of global automotive practice at Strategy Analytics, said the digital transformation of the automobile has created the need for specialized software companies.

“As automakers push their organizations to transform in record time, they need partners with deep expertise in software and data center technologies. Sonatus combines this expertise with automotive experience to help OEMs accelerate their transformation and successfully navigate this transformation,” he said.

Worldwide, the maritime sector is adopting automation and sensor technology to cut costs, reduce emissions and improve productivity. Verified Market Research reports that the Global Autonomous Ships Market was valued at $6.39 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $10.02 billion by 2027 by which time, pioneering ocean-going ships could have 'virtual captains'. Smart ship technology is defined as the partial or total autonomous operation of inland vessels, such as barges, coastal vessels including ferries and ocean-going vessels including container ships, cruise liners, oil tankers and even naval vessels such as Britain's super carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.

Smart ships will be equipped with a range of automation, sensor, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, supported remotely by sensor data collected from ports and inland waterways, connected to the maritime internet of things (MIOT) networks. This will allow a vessel to manoeuvre autonomously or prompt the crew to act. In a few years, thanks to MIOT, vessels could operate autonomously without crews for much of their voyage, perhaps relying on just a skeleton crew for when the ship enters or leaves harbour. In fact, this future is almost here in Europe, where a smart cargo carrier delivers fish feed along the west coast of Norway and a smart inland cargo barge operates in Flanders, in north Belgium. Both vessels are operated by the technologies being trialled in self-driving cars.

What are the incentives?

Shipping companies DFDS, Grimaldi and Maersk, amongst others, are adopting smart ship technologies for essentially environmental and economic reasons. "These include the need by the industry to cut carbon emissions as set out in the Paris Accords, an ongoing tightening of environmental regulations by such [entities] as the European Union and the International Maritime Organisation, and our goal of being climate neutral by 2050 " explains Mads Bentzen Billesø, innovation lead at, DFDS. He also cites " the need to improve safety and productivity" as another reason for the industry's growing adoption of smart technologies.

Smart ships technology is now available for four key functions: navigation, guidance, the physical ship, and control.

The ship's electronic navigation computers continuously receive and combine data from a network of sensors, including radar and sonar, which are processed and analysed by situation awareness software, to create an image of the actual world. However, experience suggests that it remains vital for ship's officers to keep a look-out.

The ship's guidance computers use the images generated and assessed by the navigation computers to plot the vessel's course. The guidance computers must consider several issues including nearby obstacles such as rocks, sea currents, actual and predicted weather conditions along the route, as well as the status of other vessels in the area.

On board, internet of things technology helps support the software-based decision-making system using a sensor net to collect the data needed to monitor the condition of the ship and its hardware. This combination of smart technology aids is designed for "not only monitoring but managing more effectively to cut fuel consumption and resultant carbon emissions" explains Bentzen Billesø.

At the same time, the vessel's control systems mean that a ship can be steered using autonomous control systems. The control system computer processes the data provided by the path generation software, converting it into commands for the various hardware positioning systems on the ship.

Not all plain sailing

Improved productivity, operating cost reductions, greater safety and reductions in human errors are the chief benefits of smart ship technologies. Specialised software and automation technology including voyage and ship data analytics, fuel optimisation, machinery reliability, health and condition monitoring, and smart alerts and reports all contribute to smooth running and reduce vessels' downtime. Technical advances permit significant reductions in crew numbers, yielding space for more cargo. Meanwhile, automation reduces the need for crews to work in dangerous situations and environments, including rough weather and areas where there's a heightened risk of piracy. Machine learning also enhances the ability of navigation computers to plot a more cost-effective route, thereby cutting fuel costs.

Despite all this, the adoption and installation of smart ship technologies also pose a variety of operational challenges ranging from recruiting new IT specialists who are happy to spend their time at sea, to commonplace difficulties in integrating any new technology into existing IT systems. This new hardware and software also needs to be protected from hacking attacks ranging from disruption to systems to ransom demands by sophisticated cyber security systems and specialist personnel.

Integrating these new technologies with existing equipment involves multiple stakeholders. In the maritime sector, this involves IT compatibility issues on board the vessel itself, at the dockside, as well as ship-to-shore situations.

"Fortunately for companies like DFDS, on regular routes such integration is less of a challenge as both expertise and experience is learnt and shared between all partners involved in the logistics and value chains" notes Bentzen Billesø. Nonetheless, crews will need to receive additional training in technical skills to operate the vessel.

Cyber security is as much a concern for the shipping industry as any other, and companies like CMA CGM, Maersk, and Mediterranean Shipping Company have all been attacked by cyber pirates. The Wall Street Journal reports that hacking has cost companies nearly $1.3 billion in recent years. Ransomware, USB malware and worms on container booking systems and vessel IT systems are the most likely disruptors, but ships in the Black Sea have been affected by GPS spoofing. This is where the ship's GPS system is misled by criminal gangs onshore into providing an incorrect location for the vessel. George Patterson, cyber security expert at IT recruitment firm Arrowforth, says this isn't just a technical challenge, it's a business challenge too. "The key lesson the maritime sector has to learn is to develop a cyber security culture," he says.

The arrival of smart ship technologies in the coming years is an exciting development for owners and ship's operators of both short and long-distance routes. However, as with any new technology, it's important to have a clear view of what additional investments will need to be made and new challenges that could be thrown up, irrespective of what the hype says.

Oculii, a company that develops radars for autonomous systems, has secured $55 million in a funding round led by Catapult Ventures and Conductive Ventures, bringing its valuation to $75 million.

The Series B funding round also saw participation from Taiwania Capital, Susquehanna Investment Group (SIG), HELLA Ventures, PHI-Zoyi Capital, R7 Partners, VectoIQ, ACVC Partners, Mesh Ventures, SV Tech Ventures, Schox Ventures, and Signature Bank.

The new funding follows the launch of Oculii's two high-resolution radars, EAGLE and FALCON.

EAGLE and FALCON are built on Oculii’s proprietary software Virtual Aperture Imaging (VAI). Oculii’s artificial-intelligence-powered VAI platform can enhance the angular resolution of any radar by up to 100 times.

According to Oculii, the improved resolution and sensitivity “unlocks the potential of low-cost, mass-manufacturable, market-proven commercial radars, enabling all-weather perception with less than 1° joint horizontal and elevation spatial resolution up to 350 meters around a full 360° field of view.”

Hardware-independent and modular, VAI helps improve the performance of sophisticated driver assistance systems all the way to fully autonomous vehicles.

“Over the past 20 years, autonomous systems have been waiting for high resolution, weather resilient, and low-cost sensors to help enable a new level of automation,” said Darren Liccardo, managing director of Catapult Ventures.

“Finally, the industry has a scalable solution as Oculii’s Virtual Aperture Imaging (VAI) technology delivers on these metrics for both near-term ADAS features and longer-term self-driving vehicles.”

VAI from Oculii also includes support for deep sensor fusion. High-resolution point cloud data from Oculii can be fused with real-time light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and camera data at the raw detection level. This way, radar systems can employ all sensors to their best advantage, regardless of weather conditions or circumstances.

“Our vision is to make radar a vital component of any autonomy solution, leveraging its inherent strengths with unparalleled resolution, and the market is responding,” said Oculii CEO and co-founder Steven Hong.

“We are working with 14 of the top 20 Tier 1/Tier 2 suppliers and have commercial development contracts with the largest OEM and AV companies in North America, Europe, and Asia. This new round of financing will accelerate Oculii’s growth as the leading AI software radar solution on the market. Oculii will continue to execute on commercial opportunities with automotive, robotic, and AV companies while scaling its teams and customer base globally.”

German car parts maker Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen (ZF) has unveiled the next generation of its AI-based supercomputer ZF ProAI.

The new ZF ProAI, which ZF claims is “the most flexible, scalable, and powerful automotive-grade supercomputer in the world,” supports all applications from automated driving levels 2 to 5.

With up to 66% more computing power than its predecessor, ZF ProAI’s AI capabilities are optimized for deep learning processes. Small yet powerful, its high-performance board features a 360° GPU for storing sensor data, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system, cameras, and audio units. Besides saving installation space, the new supercomputer also consumes up to 70% less power (3 teraOPS per Watt, on average).

Its modular design allows it to be fitted with various manufacturers’ system-on-chip (SoC). The hardware can be operated by ZF’s proprietary software or external third-party software. Standard connectors and the ability to connect different ZF ProAI units together provide added convenience, allowing just about any vehicle to use the device.

"Several significant orders for our high-performance computing platform confirm our vanguard position to drive vehicle intelligence," said Dr. Holger Klein, ZF board member for the Asia-Pacific region, at Auto Shanghai.

"Offering high computing power, cutting-edge software solutions, intelligent sensors, and smart actuators from a single source, ZF creates new possibilities for data-based business models for next generation mobility."

Also included in the solution is a measurement data interface (MDU) that helps ProAI forward the collected sensor log files directly to a central storage system for development and testing.

In addition to being reliable and resilient in harsh conditions, the ZF ProAI series also offers advanced cyber security protections.

ZF is developing a driverless automated parking system based solely on vehicles’ sensor sets. Demonstrating its visual simultaneous localization and mapping (vSLAM) technology at the Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition 2021, ZF said its infrastructure-independent automated valet parking system will be a cost-effective solution for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide. Real-time map generation and centimeter-accurate localization are possible with vSLAM.

“The sensor set is mainly based on one front camera, one front radar, four surrounding cameras and twelve ultrasonics but scalable with more advanced sensors as well as connectivity,” comments Renee Wang, ZF China president.

German car parts supplier Continental is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop modular automotive software.

Dubbed Continental Automotive Edge (CAEdge), the new platform connects ground vehicles to the cloud. The tool also features a virtual workbench that offers many options for developing, delivering, and maintaining software-intensive system functions. Furthermore, the workbench allows drivers to download convenient and easy software updates for the functions they want.

“Software is at the forefront of innovation in cars,” said Dirk Abendroth, Continental Automotive’s CTO.

“With our CAEdge platform, we are establishing a new approach to developing vehicle architectures and software in the automotive industry. We have found a strong collaborator in AWS to help us accomplish this task and will continue to expand our leading role in the field of automotive software,” Abendroth added.

A key component of the project includes importing camera and radar data from a vehicle fleet into the CAEdge platform, which will then be used for highly automated driving simulations.

In addition to processing vast amounts of vehicular data, CAEdge supports all steps in developing highly automated and autonomous driving systems, including sensor data collection, model training, and virtual simulations.

Essentially, individual development steps that used to take several weeks now take a few hours. The computing power provided by AWS and machine learning makes this possible.

Customers will also have access to AWS data centers and an AWS network that protects personal information, identifiers, applications, and devices. Along these lines, Continental and AWS are training approximately 1,000 of Continental’s 20,000 software and IT experts in cloud technologies built on AWS, specifically machine learning.

“Continental is providing the mobility experts and its in-depth understanding of the automotive sector, while AWS – as the leading provider of cloud computing – is bringing with it access to the latest machine learning and other innovative cloud services,” commented Bill Vass, vice president of engineering at AWS.

“Backed by the expertise of Continental and its customers, we are creating a development environment that will speed up the development of highly automated and autonomous driving systems,” Vass continued.

Cognizant will acquire ESG Mobility, a digital automotive engineering R&D provider for connected, autonomous, and electric vehicles for an undisclosed sum.

The transaction, which is expected to close in Q2 2021, will expand Cognizant's automotive engineering expertise, particularly in connected vehicles.

Following the acquisition, Cognizant will employ approximately 1,000 engineering R&D specialists in its automotive innovation hubs in Germany, the US, and China. Additionally, ESG Mobility employees will contribute to Cognizant's Internet of Things (IoT) and Engineering Services Practice.

"We have built a world-class team of engineering R&D and technology consultants who deeply understand our automotive clients in Germany and around the world," said Jörg Ohlsen, chief executive officer at ESG Mobility.

"By joining Cognizant, we can provide a higher quality of service, build more innovative products and support a broader range of digital initiatives for our current and future customers. We look forward to using our vast automotive industry experience to create a more connected, mobile world."

What’s more, Cognizant and ESG Mobility will work together to provide engineering services to eight of the world's top 10 automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEM).

A wholly owned subsidiary of ESG Elektroniksystem-und Logistik-GmbH, Germany-based ESG Mobility also specializes in electrical and electronic systems and connected vehicle applications.

"The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental shift, embracing new mobility concepts that rely heavily on software, connectivity and artificial intelligence," said Malcolm Frank, president of digital business and technology at Cognizant.

"Our priority is providing clients with the capabilities they need to compete as modern digital businesses, and ESG Mobility is a natural complement to our existing connected mobility offerings and global delivery model. This acquisition will empower our clients to innovate more quickly in shaping the future of transportation. We look forward to welcoming ESG Mobility's talented team to Cognizant."

In an effort to streamline the rollout of self-driving vehicles and make it more transparent to the public, federal authorities are unveiling a new effort to collect and make available all the nationwide data on autonomous vehicle testing.

The US Department of Transportation (DoT) is launching a project it calls the Automated Vehicle Transparency and Engagement for Safe Testing (AV TEST) Initiative.

The DoT announced Monday that nine companies and eight states have signed up to participate. The companies are Beep, Cruise, Fiat Chrysler, Local Motors, Navya, Nuro, Toyota, Uber and Waymo, and the states are California, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah.

“Through this initiative, the Department is creating a formal platform for federal, state and local government to coordinate and share information,” said US Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao.

Notice that nine manufacturers have signed on. Indeed, more automakers than ever are working to bring self-driving vehicles to the market someday. But it’s still far from clear when - or even if - our driverless future will ever arrive.

While manufacturers have claimed that driverless vehicles will be safer than human drivers, the push for self-driving cars has run into some setbacks, namely, some fatal accidents that made headlines.

Federal and state governments are still grappling with how to regulate self-driving vehicles. The National Highway Transportation Safety Agency, which governs the nation’s roads, has issued a 15-point checklist that makers of self-driving cars must follow to ensure safety.

This new AV TEST initiative, which makes all the testing data available, seeks to boost public awareness. The government plans to eventually launch online mapping tools to show driverless testing locations and activity data, which may include dates, frequency, vehicle counts and routes.

Argo AI has announced that Volkswagen had closed its $2.6 billion investment in the company.

VW’s planned investment in the Pittsburgh-based self-driving startup was initially announced last July. The company will now be controlled by VW and Ford Motor Company, which made an initial investment in Argo AI shortly after the company’s founding.

The deal between VW and Argo AI turns the startup into a global company with two major customers in the automotive space, and also allows the company to expand its operations to Europe.

Autonomous Intelligent Driving (AID), VW’s self-driving subsidiary that was launched in 2017, will join Argo AI’s team too. As a result, AID’s Munich offices will become Argo’s European headquarters.

"Today, with the close of Volkswagen AG’s investment, we become a global company and welcome new teammates to the Argo AI family," Argo AI shared in a blog post announcing the news.

"This news not only solidifies our well-capitalized position but differentiates us as the only self-driving technology platform company with partnerships and commercial agreements for deployment across the US and Europe,”

Argo AI is already developing the virtual driver system and high-definition maps for Ford’s self-driving vehicles. This work will now expand to VW, with Ford and VW sharing the cost of developing Argo AI’s self-driving vehicle technology.

Its partnership with VW and Ford is just the beginning for Argo AI. By its own estimation, the company’s self-driving system boasts the largest geographical deployment potential to date and has the potential to be integrated across multiple automotive brands.

“With Volkswagen and Ford integrating Argo AI’s self-driving system into their vehicles to support distinct initiatives for moving people and goods, we have a clear pathway to making a positive impact on the world,” Argo AI added.

Radar and cameras are helping the car navigate through the street in London’s Woolwich, stopping when a pedestrian approaches the kerb and slipping around corners with ease. But not all the locals in the Royal Arsenal development are pleased to have the future of driving in front of them – in particular, the white van honking behind the test vehicle, constrained to the tight local speed limit of 5mph.

The technology works, but that doesn’t mean driverless cars are ready for our roads. How, for instance, will insurance work? How can a car with no human at the wheel interact with standard vehicles? And what happens when you’re forced to stick to the agonisingly slow speed limit when all of the other vehicles around you consistently exceed it? Those are just some of the answers that TRL is trying to answer with its trial in Woolwich. Formerly the government’s Transport Research Laboratory, TRL was spun out and privatised in 1996. Now, it’s at the forefront of considering the impact of future technology on human lives. TRL Academy director Richard Cuerden tells us more.

What work are you doing on driverless technologies?

The government was offering investment via Innovate UK … It’s nearly £20 million for putting in control rooms, high-tech workshops, instrumenting 300 sensors across 24km in Greenwich and Queen Elizabeth Park so we can monitor vehicles and different systems. We’ll have a real-world test track, so you can test services, vehicles, payments and those things.

In parallel to that, we have got a trial in Woolwich that’s about learning how new automated services might operate in the future. We’re keen to understand the data the vehicle collects.

What technology are you using for the trial?

There are a lot of automated vehicles out there. We’ve chosen to use Autoware, which is an open-source platform. Autoware means you can download code and then add your code to it, and see what data it collects. The vehicle itself isn’t the most advanced system, but it allows you to get under the skin and see what decisions it makes.

This isn’t about testing driverless cars, but setting up a way to test them?

Exactly, it’s about getting the vehicle on the road in the first place – making sure what you’re doing is safe [both] as a prototype and when we have these vehicles for public use. We’re learning a lot about how to measure and certify safety credentials.

We have a number of clients who will be testing vehicles, and we have our own and we’re quite keen to be pushing that envelope. We’re not going to be the people who develop and provide you with a new vehicle or new service, but hopefully we’re allowing other people to get there.

How have local residents reacted?

We’re getting residents to have a go in it, but it’s not the world’s most exciting ride – the speed limit on the road is 5mph. We can’t go above the speed limit. We are the only vehicle on that route that keeps the speed limit, I expect. It could do 20mph, but it’s restricted by the road.

But what we’re starting to learn is how normal people have a go in it feel about it – is it something they’d be willing to use in the future? Also, what’s the business case for this? If you’re going to set up a fleet of vehicles, what would they look like, how would you offer it, how many seats would it require? Would it just add to congestion? And we really don’t want to do that, we want to be thinking about getting people out of personal cars and finding more efficient, easier ways that they can get around through automation. That’s the big learning point that we’re hoping to get from this trial. There’s a lot of work to be done from a policy side in terms of what we want our streets to look like

Autonomous cars have been a staple of science fiction for years, appearing in films like I, Robot, Demolition Man and Minority Report. Thanks to the brightest minds in Silicon Valley, however, they're rapidly becoming science fact.

Google is nearing the final stages of testing for its autonomous car programme, Tesla drivers can enjoy an 'Autopilot' feature for hassle-free motorway driving, and Pittsburgh residents can hail an Uber that drives itself.

But how do driverless cars work? Are they safe? When can we expect to try one out for ourselves? We answer all these questions, and more, below.

Latest news

6/11/2019: Uber car involved in fatal crash had software flaws

The self-driving Uber car that hit and killed a woman in 2018 had software issues, according to US safety officials.

49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was killed by an Uber test vehicle as she crossed a road in Tempe, Arizona in March 2018. The National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), which has been investigating the incident, released its findings on Tuesday.

According to the BBC, the NTSB found that "the system design did not include a consideration for jaywalking pedestrians".

Although the detailed findings raised a series of safety issues, a probable cause for the accident has not yet been determined. The safety board is expected to make that decision when it meets on 19 November.

Herzberg had been walking with a bicycle across a multi-lane road just before the collision. According to reports, the software on the Volvo XC90 test vehicle failed to correctly identify the bike as a collision hazard until just before impact.

The safety operator of the vehicle was found to have been watching TV rather than monitoring the car's progress, according to a police report, and could still face charges of vehicular manslaughter.

Uber, however, will not be facing criminal charges after prosecutors ruled that the company was not liable for the fatality.

Following Herzberg's death, authorities in Arizona suspended Uber from using the state's public roads for autonomous car tests. The NTSB report stated that from September 2016 to March 2018, Uber vehicles were involved in 37 crashes when in self-driving mode.

"We deeply value the thoroughness of the NTSB's investigation into the crash and look forward to reviewing their recommendations," Uber said in a statement.

03/05/2019: Government begins trials of autonomous vehicles in industry

Self-driving trucks are now being trialled by Highways England in East Anglia with a view to reducing the time it takes to complete roadworks.

Autonomous dump trucks which are used to transport large amounts of material such as dirt across worksites are now being used so they can work at all times of the day and night.

The shift to autonomous trucks could result in less time spent completing roadworks and a decreased risk of people involved in on-site accidents.

The autonomous trucks are currently being trialled on the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon after an initial trial in Australia where similar trucks are used to excavate mines.

"The trial we are leading with our partner CA Blackwell will enable the construction industry as a whole to be in a more informed position to make key decisions about autonomy on UK construction sites," said Julian Lamb, deputy project director on behalf of Highways England for the A14.

Once testing is complete, Highways England wants to roll out the latest technologies on sites across the UK, but it won't be commonplace on the nation's highways for around two-to-three years yet.

The news highlights the potential industry use cases for autonomous vehicles whereas the public is mainly used to seeing consumer examples - the technology going to offer more than a safe way to get you or your family from point A to point B.

The European Commission recently adopted a proposal to use a Wi-Fi-based standard for autonomous cars in the EU over the 5G-based C-VX2 standard that's been touted as the enabler for connected cars for years now.

The adoption has been met with fierce opposition from the likes of BMW, Ford and Deutsche Telekom which all claim that the standard will delay the rollout of connected cars in the bloc.

With that said, the two-to-three year estimate given by Highways England could be delayed further if the automotive and telecoms giants are to be believed.

6/02/2019: Gov plans to advance autonomous car trials

Autonomous cars could be on UK roads by the end of the year as the government plans to scrap requirements for the vehicles to have a dedicated safety driver.

This change means that the first advanced trials of self-driving cars on UK roads won't need a human behind the steering wheel, according to the Telegraph. The Department for Transport said the move will place Britain at the forefront of the technology.

"Thanks to the UK's world-class research base, this country is in the vanguard of the development of new transport technologies, including automation," said Jesse Norman, future of mobility Minister

"The government is supporting the safe, transparent trialling of this pioneering technology, which could transform the way we travel."

Previously, the government expected fully driverless vehicles to be in commercial operation on UK roads by 2021 with estimates that the technology will be worth 52 billion to the country in the next 15 years.

"Self-driving vehicles, made possible by advancements in AI, have been in development or testing for some time," said Matt Eckersall, regional director, EMEA West, SUSE.

"However, the news that fully driverless cars will be on the UK's roads by the end of the year, a result of removing the requirement for a dedicated safety driver, signifies not only the rapid progression being made in the space, but the increased investment by the UK government to ensure it is at the forefront of AI innovation."

However, this move may cause some concern, given the problems some autonomous car companies had last year. In May, a woman was hit by an autonomous Uber car which didn't identify her in time. The safety driver of the vehicle also didn't react in time and the woman was killed.

19/12/2018: 3,000 miles in a driverless car

A former Google engineer claims to be the first to use driverless car technology to cross America, riding coast-to-coast from San Fransico to New York in October.

Anthony Levandowski, who owns self-driving car startup Pronto AI, shared a video of his automated road trip in a product announcement.

The first car to be launched by Pronto, the Copilot, was used to make the 3,000-mile journey. Levandowski said that his team use a different approach to self-driving cars; rather than build technology that tells the vehicle how to drive, his team built technology that can learn how to drive the way people do.

"Our new approach has already enabled us to make great progress. We drove a vehicle coast-to-coast without any human intervention a technical milestone accomplished in October," he said announced.

Levandowski is a bit of an infamous figure within the driverless car space. He worked on Google's self-driving Waymo cars but left to start his own firm. He joined Uber not long after, but became embroiled in a lawsuit between the two companies after he was accused of taking trade secrets from Google.

"Over the past 18 months, as I've been painted into a villainous caricature, I've had lots of time for introspection," he said. "In some sense, the deeply personal hardships my family and I've had to endure have provided an important opportunity to step back and honestly reassess my past as well as plan for the future."

Pronto AI and the Copilot model are the initial fruits of that self-reflection, but Levandowski has used the launch to let off some frustration with the industry as a whole.

"Over the past 15 years, we've witnessed numerous advances in self-driving technology," he said. "I'm proud to have played a big role in it. At the same time, I've admittedly grown frustrated and at times impatient with the industry's inability to deliver on its promises.

"Instead of delivering products that could help people right now, we talk of "visions" or the "the future of mobility". Rather than democratizing the technological advances we've made for everyone's benefit, we reserve them for extremely narrow and non-representative "demonstrations" or "proofs of concept" that have scant hope of ever scaling in a commercially-viable way."

05/11/2018: Unpredictable London pedestrians to help test autonomous cars

The "risky" and unpredictable nature of London's pedestrians is being used to help teach autonomous cars to navigate through busy city streets.

A startup based at Imperial College London has developed software that scans and analyses footage of people walking down the most popular streets of the capital. The data is being used to help driveless cars predict human behaviour and gauge whether a pedestrian is about to dart across the road.

The company is called Humanising Autonomy and its co-founder Leslie Nootboom, believes the behaviour of Londoners is more "risky" and "confident" compare to other city inhabitants around Europe. This, he says, presents a complex challenge for autonomous cars.

"We are very confident that we are able to predict if someone is going to cross or not," he told the Evening Standard. "Cars need to understand the full breadth of human behaviour before they're ever going to be implemented into urban environments.

"The current technology is able to understand whether something is a pedestrian and not a lamp post, and where that pedestrian is moving, framing them as a box. We're looking inside that box to see what the person is doing, where they're looking, are they aware of the car, are they on the phone or running - does this mean they are distracted, or risky?"

What goes on 'in the box', where the subject is analysed, is far more complex than just whether its an obstruction or not. The machine has to assess whether the subject is going to attempt to cross the road from body language. In a busy city, where hoards of people walk up and down the streets and can cross at any given moment, that can be a bit of a minefield.

Busy street analysed by prediction model - courtesy of Humanising Autonomy

Nootboom's startup uses dashcam and roadside footage from popular streets such as Oxford Circus and Regent Street to train its machine learning model. Combining this human data with computer vision models is how the system can understand and predict complex human behaviours.

"We are working on both current vehicle safety systems (combining human decision making and computer vision models) and fully autonomous use cases. This means that our prediction systems are becoming more accurate with the day. Our vision is that cities can be safer, with automated vehicles that have a better reliability than human drivers," Nootboom told IT Pro.

22/10/2018: Addison Lee aim to ditch drivers by 2021

London cabbies might be out of a job as soon as 2021 as ride-hailing firm Addison Lee has entered a partnership to accelerate the implementation of driverless cars.

Following in the footsteps of rival firm Uber, the cab company has agreed on a deal with self-driving software maker Oxbotica to develop and deploy autonomous driving technology on the streets of London within three years.

"Urban transport will change beyond recognition in the next 10 years with the introduction of self-driving services and we intend to be at the very forefront of this change by acting now," said Andy Boland, CEO of Addison Lee Group.

The two companies will work together to create a detailed, digital maps of more than 250,000 miles of public roads in and around the capital. These maps will record the position of every kerb, road sign, landmark and traffic light in preparation for the deployment of autonomous cars.

Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica, said: "This represents a huge leap towards bringing autonomous vehicles into mainstream use on the streets of London and eventually in cities across the United Kingdom and beyond."

Interestingly, unlike Uber or Google, both of which plan to develop and deploy autonomous cars around the world, Addison Lee has opted for a British company to provide the AI and data mapping for London.

MPs in the UK have questioned the safety of US developed self-driving technology because the data collected and used is too contextual to the US and doesn't take into account differences in other countries.

Already in the US, a woman was killed in Tempe, Arizona after an Uber car hit and killed her. The woman crossed the road with a bike and a few shopping bags and as a result, was killed because the car's dataset didn't include that specific combination of objects.

Speaking over the weekend, MP Julian Knight, who sits on the Commons' Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said that it was an example of how Silicon Valley makes software only relevant to California. He questioned whether it could recognise more district vehicles such as a red London bus.

"This is an example here of how these new social media companies and big tech companies are so US focused," the Telegraph reported. "It means the rest of the world, which makes up 97% of the population, are not tailored to and ignored."

In a more blunt statement, the appropriately named MP Tom Brake said: "This cannot be considered a mature technology if it cannot recognise a red bus but it can spot a Chevrolet."

14/09/18: Uber driverless car development sees investment accelerate

Uber has committed to invest more than $150 million to open an engineering hub in Toronto to help accelerate and drive forward its self-driving car plans.

While Uber found itself in a difficult situation following a fatal collision between one of its driverless cars and a cyclist, the financial commitment the ride-sharing firm has made is indicative it's not turning off the highway to autonomous vehicles.

The investment, reported Reuters, will cover a five-year plan to expand Uber's engineering capabilities as well as its work on utilising artificial intelligence. And despite being based in San Francisco, Uber will carry out this engineering push in Canada with some 500 people expected to bee added to its workforce in Toronto, a city in which it chose to open a driverless cars research centre in last year.

While Uber looks to develop a driverless car fleet, Nvidia continues to push the hardware and systems needed to get such self-driving automotive technology on the road. Notably, the graphics card giant has made its Drive AGX Xavier development kit available for worldwide use, opening access to a platform that can underpin autonomous cars, trucks, shuttles and other vehicles.

Nvidia also wants to push its driverless car technology down other routes, with Project Maglev. The Project looks to push the Drive artificial intelligence-centric platform beyond self-driving cars and bring more smart automation into other industries such as robotics and healthcare, reported VentureBeat.

13/08/2018: Multiple codes open self-driving cars up for hacking

The scale of coding needed to operate self-driving cars offers an easy opportunity for hackers to potentially turn a vehicle into a "fully loaded weapon".

That's according to John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, who warned yesterday that "a car could easily be infected with viruses" allowing a criminal to hijack it, in an interview with the Telegraph.

Although mostly known for smartphones, Blackberry has recently started to develop driverless car technology, in partnership with Chinese internet company Baidu.

"I can create a car I think is 90% virus free but as soon as that car gets on the road and is being used, those conditions need to be regularly checked," he said. "Regulation and safety and security tech need to be established well before I think anyone should allow the cars on the road. The self-driving car still has a lot of human error and safety control."

Indeed, although there are no examples of the technology being involved in a crash due to software being hacked, most of the major companies have had an incident during or after testing. Recently, it was reported that Apple had a self-driving vehicle involved in an accident and both Uber and Tesla have had multiple issues in the US.

Tesla's accident proved fatal as its car hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. Highlighting Chen's point, the multiple lines of code the car used detected the woman, but because she was behind a bike with shopping bags on the handlebar, the software didn't recognise her as an obstruction.

The exploitation of code to launch cyber attacks has been demonstrated in recent attacks on TicketMaster and British Airways, the latter's website only requiring 22 lines of code to be tweaked in order for criminals to access details on 380,000 of its customers.

30/08/2018: People are the cause of most driverless car accidents

Analysis suggests autonomous vehicles are to blame for just seven of the 88 crashes that have occurred in California in the last four years - with humans at fault for the rest.

Given more than 50 companies now have permits to test these cars on California's roads, there have inevitably been a number of accidents along the way; one of which was serious enough to have resulted in a death.

But analysis by news outlet Axios shows that just 8% of accidents were caused by a fault in the vehicle - with only one of these incidents occuring while the vehicle was in 'autonomous mode' and moving.

To further the case for autonomous driving, six of the seven accidents occurred while the car was both moving, and in 'conventional mode' - i.e. when a human was at the wheel. Just one of the 57 accidents involving a moving vehicle was caused by a fault in the AI.

The remaining 31 accidents, meanwhile, occurred while a self-driving car was stopped, with three of these incidents involving a human intentionally attacking a self-driving car, for example by hitting or climbing on top of it.

Axios previously examined data on self-driving cars, provided by the State of California Department of Motor Vehicles, in August 2017 where there had just been 34 recorded incidents since 2014. In the last 12 months, this figure has risen by 54.

Writer Kia Kokalitcheva said there will be a multitude of issues and accidents with self-driving cars as the AI-driven vehicles must contend with other vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, and objects with which they share the road.

With the number of companies testing autonomous vehicles on the rise, and continuous investment flooding into research efforts, the number of accidents involving self-driving cars is also certain to heighten. But, at least according to this analysis, it'll be the people who are to blame.

28/08/2018: Uber teams with Toyota on driverless cars after fatal crash

Uber is partnering with Toyota to make driverless cars, with reports the Japanese car maker is investing $500 million in the ride-hailing company.

Technology from each company will be integrated into purpose-built Toyota vehicles that will be deployed on Uber's ride-sharing network. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the deal was the first of its kind to offer mobility as a service - or ride-hailing to the rest of us - using driverless cars.

Uber has come under heavy scrutiny on safety after one of its autonomous cars hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. Khosrowshahi was keen to highlight the safety benefits of the tieup with Toyota.

"Our goal is to deploy the world's safest self-driving cars on the Uber network and this agreement is another significant step towards making that a reality," he said. "Uber's advanced technology and Toyota's commitment to safety and its renowned manufacturing prowess make this partnership a natural fit. I look forward to seeing what our teams accomplish together."

The partnership will see Uber's self-driving tech and the car maker's automated safety system used in Toyota Sienna minivans, with pilots starting in 2021. The aim is to be able to mass produce the vehicles to offer for autonomous fleets.

"Combining efforts with Uber, one of the predominant global ride-sharing and automated driving R&D companies, could further advance future mobility," said Shigeki Tomoyama, president of Toyota Connected Company.

"This agreement and investment mark an important milestone in our transformation to a mobility company as we help provide a path for safe and secure expansion of mobility services like ride-sharing that includes Toyota vehicles and technologies," he added.

16/08/2018: Uber investors suggest it ditches driverless car unit

Some of Uber's investors have suggested the taxi-hailing firm should "divest" its autonomous car unit, on which it has spent billions of dollars.

The company has been spending between $125 million and $200 million a quarter on its driverless car unit over the past 18 months, according to The Information, reportedly responsible for between 15% and 30% of the company's quarterly losses.

Uber has spent large amounts developing autonomous vehicles, which require expensive hardware and sensors that are attached to the cars but have frustrated investors with the lack of a clear path to commercialising the technology.

There is now growing pressure on CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to make Uber more profitable with the company targeting an initial public offering in the second half of the year, according to Bloomberg. And, despite investing billions of dollars into its autonomous vehicle projects, Uber has had a number of high profile issues with its testing of the technology.

In March, one of its driverless vehicles hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Florida after its software detected her but deemed her not an obstruction. The company suspended its operations nationwide and, following a long investigation from the US National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), it culled it's self-driving car operation in Pittsburg, laying off 100 operatives.

Khosrowshahi has been in the Uber hot seat for over a year and has said the company has invested heavily into "big bets" such as Uber Eats, electric bikes and Uber Air, its flying car unit.

14/08/2018: FiveAI cars to gather data from South London streets

A driverless car startup has been given the go-ahead to unleash data-gathering vehicles on the streets of South London.

FiveAI, which has received the single largest investment into an AI company from the UK government, has 10 months to build a roadmap of contextual data by introducing information-gathering vehicles to the boroughs of Bromley and Croydon.

Five human-controlled cars will be operated by fully trained safety drivers and will collect data about the areas traffic rules and the behavioural patterns of pedestrians and other drivers.

"For our service to eventually operate in London, we have to learn about the road layout, topology and traffic flow," said Ben Peters, co-founder of FiveAI. "As with any vehicle on the road, safety is paramount and that's why all of our vehicles will be driven by fully-trained safety drivers.

"We believe that autonomous vehicles will be many times safer than human drivers, and this data gathering phase is a vitally important step towards making that a reality. By supporting London's transport objectives with a shared driverless car service, FiveAI can play a crucial role in reducing congestion, emissions, incidents and the cost and time of journeys to benefit all Londoners."

Urban areas such as cities have proved difficult to fully map out for many of the big operators, with high profile incidents dogging the progress of the likes of Uber and Tesla. According to a blog on FiveAI's website, written by the firm's software engineer Lars Mennen, mapping the terrain of a city is far more challenging than that of a highway or non-urban area.

"The complexity of the European urban sprawl throws plenty of spanners into the works," he wrote. "For GPS to function as it should, you'll ideally have a straight line from your GPS receiver to a satellite. Many buildings block satellite signals, and reflections from buildings interfere with signals also, making it impossible to get an accurate location."

To tackle this problem FiveAI cars are fitted with a featured call Vision which matches images collected with definitive references from map coordinates, blending the two data sets together to create a detailed roadmap.

"A car needs to be aware of pedestrians, cyclists, other vehicles and many, many other stimuli," Mennen said. "By looking at what you see and comparing it to what you expect, i.e. your map data, you can successfully detect these dynamic objects."

The data gathered during the trial will be solely used by FiveAI to develop autonomous vehicle technology and will be processed and stored to fully comply with UK and EU laws.

The company is targeting 2019 to launch a supervised trial of a pilot fleet of shared autonomous vehicles on London roads and hope to demonstrate how the technology can be used to build services to reduce commuting costs, cut accident rates, limit congestion and lower emissions.

26/7/2018: Waymo-re convenient grocery shopping

Google's self-driving car division, Waymo, has launched a pilot with Walmart to ferry shoppers to and from stores to collect groceries.

The trial is currently restricted to the 400-plus members of its early rider programme in Phoenix, Arizona, and indicates how the tech giant sees its technology being used after the trial stage.

"While these are Metro Phoenix-specific partnerships today, these businesses are national and what we learn from these programs will give us a network of partners when we launch in new cities down the road," Waymo said in a blog post.

The Waymo early rider programme was launched in April 2017, and the company has spent the last year collecting people's feedback on useful ways to try its driverless cars - one of them being trips to and from the supermarket, which ranked eighth.

Other popular use cases for driverless cars in Phoenix were commuting to work, going to restaurants, dropping kids off at school and visiting bars. Trips to the supermarket came behind journeys to car repair shops, retail shopping and health and spa trips.

The partnership with Walmart will offer discounts to customers that order groceries on Walmart.com. While the order is being prepared at the store, a Waymo vehicle will collect the customer and take them to the store to collect their shopping, and then drive them home again.

Waymo has also launched a pilot to ferry passengers to the local town centre to avoid the stress of parking. Dining out came second on the list of top ten trips, with visiting bars fourth and retail shopping sixth, indicating how Waymo sees future uses of its technology.

The self-driving cars will also be used in VIP experiences for visitors to the Element Hotel in Chandler, where selected guests will have access to Waymo vehicles.

Waymo is also expanding existing partnerships with AutoNation Group, who currently helps Waymo service and maintain the vehicles in Phoenix and is now making it possible for customers to ride in a loaned Waymo while they have their personal vehicles serviced.

The focus of the pilots in Phoenix is errand running and convenience, such as being able to wine and dine without worrying about where to leave your car, or driving over the limit, and indicates how the technology might be used in a future smart city environment.

A number of autonomous vehicle companies having taken up projects in the US, while driverless car projects are underway in several UK areas too, including Greenwich and Milton Keynes.

Main image and body copy image: Waymo

24/7/2018: Stagecoach to trial UK's first driverless bus

Transport operator Stagecoach has partnered with a bus manufacturer and sensor startup to trial the UK's first autonomous bus later this year.

Due to current legislation, the self-driving bus won't pick up passengers, but will operate in the firm's depot doing parking manoeuvres, practising refuelling and entering a bus wash.

Stagecoach UK bus engineering director Sam Greer said the project could have a positive short-term effect within bus depots and prove a big disrupter to the wider public transport industry.

"This is an exciting trial that will deliver the UK's first fully autonomous single deck bus, he said. "We look forward to working with our partners on this project which we believe could, in time, help improve safety and efficiency within our depots, and over the longer term, help transform bus travel in the future."

The vehicle is currently being worked on by bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis (ADL) at its site in Guildford, where it's being fitted with Fusion Processing;s CAVstar sensor system that also appeared in the UK's largest public trial of autonomous vehicles in Greenwich earlier this year.

The CAVstar system uses multiple sensor types, such as radar, laser, camera, ultrasound and satellite navigation to detect and avoid objects and obstructions. The system is said to be efficient enough to operated day and night and in all weather conditions and can plan the optimum route.

The bus is expected to be ready for operation in Stagecoach's depots by the end of the year.

Picture: Shutterstock

12/07/2018: Uber culls self-driving car operatives in Pittsburgh

Uber has laid off 100 of its self-driving car operatives in Pittsburgh as the company revises its strategy for driverless cars in the wake of a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona last March.

The San Francisco-based company held a meeting on 11 July to inform the 100 safety drivers who ride in autonomous Uber vehicles that their positions are being terminated.

Uber had suspended its self-driving tests in North America following the fatal accident, but it had kept the drivers on the payroll. But, it seems it now is scaling down operations and replacing the positions with 55 mission specialists - more technically minded developer roles. The company said that the redundant operators could apply for new vacancies.

"Our team remains committed to building safe self-driving technology, and we look forward to returning to public roads in the coming months," an Uber spokesperson said.

Uber originally halted its self-driving test in San Francisco, Toronto and Pittsburgh after one of its cars hit and killed Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a street in Tempe, Arizona.

A US National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) investigation criticised the car's software stating that it "detected but ignored" Herzberg before the crash.

Despite the damning investigation, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the firm would resume testing in the city, but stressed the company would put safety first.

Speaking at Uber's Elevate conference in May, he said: "Are we doing the right thing? Are we pushing too hard, and is it coming at the cost of safety? ...if it is then you have to take a step back. We will win because of the talent of the technical people we have in our offices."

Uber has said it remains focused on implementing the safety recommendations that came out of its internal safety review, which looked at everything from the system safety to the company's training processes for vehicle operators.

The safety aspect of driverless cars is becoming more critical in the deployment of the technology, with Uber having to cut back its operations and competitors such as Tesla also having high profile accidents with autonomous cars.

In June, the City of Boston granted nuTonomy and it's parent company Aptiv permission to operate driverless cars on public roads in Boston. It is the first and only company to operate citywide and its safety record was highlighted as the reason.

31/05/2018: MIT unveils algorithm for more 'human-like' autonomous cars

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have unveiled a new algorithm that gives "on-the-fly" analysis for autonomous cars to behave in a more human-like fashion.

The team from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) say the algorithm creates and reassesses buffer zones around a vehicle by making the best use of the limited information to then interpret different types of human behaviour behind the wheel.

"The motivation is, 'what can we do with as little information as possible?' How can we have an autonomous vehicle behave as a human driver might behave? What is the minimum amount of information the car needs to elicit that human-like behaviour?" said Alyssa Pierson, lead author of the research paper, which was presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Sensors in autonomous cars constantly monitor and assess the surrounding area of a vehicle, called buffer zones, calculating the other cars' positions and their likely future positions. The new formula goes beyond these current pre-computed buffer zone calculations and provides a more dynamic evaluation of driving situations.

The algorithm was tested in a simulation that included up to 16 autonomous cars driving in an environment with several hundred other vehicles. Each of the 16 cars had a slightly different style of driving to mimic more human-esque behaviour behind the wheel.

"The autonomous vehicles were not in direct communication but ran the proposed algorithm in parallel without conflict or collisions. Each car used a different risk threshold that produced a different driving style, allowing us to create conservative and aggressive drivers," Pierson said.

"Using the static pre-computed buffer zones would only allow for conservative driving, whereas our dynamic algorithm allows for a broader range of driving styles."

One of the biggest challenges of autonomous vehicles is how they will integrate with human drivers and recent incidents have highlighted the need to improve the technology.

A Tesla Model S electric car that crashed into a firetruck earlier this month was reported to have sped up before the collision. A police report suggested the Tesla car was following another vehicle and dropped its speed to 55mph to match the vehicle in front. That car was said to have changed lanes and the Tesla car automatically increased its speed to 60mph without noticing the stopped cars directly ahead.

18/05/2018: Intel's Mobileye tests self-driving car tech in Jerusalem

Intel's Mobileye division has started testing self-driving cars in Jerusalem, a city supposedly know for its challenging driving conditions.

While Mobileye is based in Jerusalem, so testing in its home city is sensibly convenient, the city also throws Intel's driverless car technology into the deep end.

"Jerusalem is notorious for aggressive driving. There aren't perfectly marked roads. And there are complicated merges. People don't always use crosswalks. You can't have an autonomous car traveling at an overly cautious speed, congesting traffic or potentially causing an accident. You must drive assertively and make quick decisions like a local driver," explained Professor Amnon Shashua, chief executive at Mobileye.

This testing will put Intel's camera-only sensors setup to the test, as it tries to create a driverless car system that uses 12 cameras around a car rather than tap into Lidar and GPS systems. The idea is to create a system with "true redundancy", where each sensors system is capable of piloting a car on its own, which Intel noted is a faster wait to validate a car's self-driving perception system as well as create autonomous cars capable of still operating if one sensor system fails.

Intel's driverless car tech is also set to spread further afield as Mobileye secured a deal with a European car maker to put its self-driving technology into eight million cars, reported Reuters.

While the car maker was not named, Intel's deal will see it provide Level 3 driverless car technology, whereby a car can pilot itself autonomously but needs a human driver to be behind the wheel and paying attention to the road ahead. Mobieye already works with a swathe of car makers, including General Motors, Nissan, Audi and BMW to supply them with Level 3 autonomous driving technology.

17/05/2018: Tesla confirms Autopilot crash amid mounting safety concerns

The driver of a Tesla car that crashed into a firetruck in Utah last week had enabled its Autopilot feature, the company has confirmed.

The Model S collided with a stationary vehicle in its path on 11 May after the driver turned on both the 'autosteer' and 'cruise control' features 80 seconds prior to the accident, Tesla told police.

The driver, who suffered a broken ankle in the crash, had taken her hands off the wheel to check her phone, according to Tesla, and reported on by the Guardian, and has received a traffic citation for "failure to keep [a] proper lookout", police said.

Tesla said there were more than a dozen instances where the driver had taken her hands off the wheel for more than a minute.

It added that the driver's use of Autopilot was "contrary to proper use" because she "did not pay attention to the road at all".

Tesla's manual warns its drivers that the automatic emergency braking is not a substitute for maintaining a safe distance from cars in front of them.

"Drivers are repeatedly advised Autopilot features do not make Tesla vehicles 'autonomous' and that the driver absolutely must remain vigilant with their eyes on the road, hands on the wheel and they must be prepared to take any and all action necessary to avoid hazards on the road," the company wrote.

The confirmation came out the same day that the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced it was sending a team to investigate the crash.

Earlier this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to rebuff claims from the Wall Street Journal that his company considered adding eye tracking and steering-wheel sensors to its Autopilot system but opted not to over financial reasons.

"This is false. Eyetracking rejected for being ineffective, not for cost. WSJ fails to mention that Tesla is the safest car on the road, which would make article ridiculous. Approx 4X better than avg," he tweeted.

10/04/2018: Uber to resume self-driving car tests in a few months according to CEO

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the company would resume testing its self-driving cars in a few months after suspending the tests following the fatal accident in March.

Speaking from the stage of Uber's second annual Elevate conference in Los Angeles, Khosrowshahi said the tests could resume in the next few months, but would not provide any details before the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) finish its investigation into the accident.

Elaine Herzberg was killed when she was hit by one of Uber's self-driving cars in Tempe, Arizona in March. It's reported that the accident was caused by a software issue that caused the vehicle to detect but ignore her as she crossed the road.

Khosrowshahi said that the company wouldn't tweet any information before the NTSB publish its findings and said the company would not put innovation above safety.

"Are we doing the right thing, are we pushing too hard, and is it coming at the cost of safety, and if it is then you have to take a step back. We will win because of the talent of the technical people we have in our offices," he said.

Khosrowshahi briefly spoke about the company's self-driving car tests at its annual Elevate vent where it laid out detailed plans to launch a flying taxi service by 2023.

Announcing partnerships with Nasa and the US aeronautics agency, Uber hopes to fill the skies with thousands of short-range electric aircraft and mass produce them to the extent that the cost of aerial commuting would come down to the level of its land-based carpooling service.

Eric Allison recently left air taxi startup Kitty Hawk to join Uber as head of aviation programmes and spoke at the event detailing the task the company has taken on.

"To make this happen we have to do something that is basically completely unprecedented: a real-time network of aerial vehicles that all operate together at a massive scale," he said.

Khosrowshahi was interviewed at the end of the event and spoke of the need to look at urban congestion in another way and said that taking to the skies is the best way.

"We have to solve this transportation problem in more than just two dimensions, we need this third dimension," Khosrowshahi added.

08/04/2018: Uber car 'detected but ignored' woman that it hit

The Uber self-driving car involved in the test that resulted in the death of a 49-year-old woman saw but ignored her, according to a report in The Information.

Elainze Herzberg died on 18 March after the vehicle collided with her at 40mph as she pushed her bike across the road in front of the car outside of a crossing in Tempe, Arizona.

Sensors in the modified Volvo XC90 are tuned to differentiate between large, obtrusive objects, such as other cars and people, and smaller objects labelled 'false positives' that do not require the car to stop, like plastic bags.

Although it detected Herzberg, the car's software was tuned in favour of ignoring these so-called false positives and did not stop or swerve as she crossed the road, The Information reported. A human safety driver did not react in time.

Uber has already reached its preliminary conclusion and is working with the US National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), which will publish a full report later in the year.

"We're actively cooperating with the NTSB in their investigation. Out of respect for that process and the trust we have built with NTSB, we can't comment on the specifics of the incident," an Uber spokesperson told IT Pro.

"In the meantime, we have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our self-driving vehicles programme, and we have brought on former NTSB chair Christopher Hart to advise us on our overall safety culture. Our review is looking at everything from the safety of our system to our training process for the vehicle operators, and we hope to have more to say soon."

30/04/2018: Driver banned after moving to passenger seat with Tesa on Autopilot

A 39-year-old man has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving after another driver filmed him on the M1 in the passenger seat of his Tesla S 60.

The video, taken in May 2017 by a passenger in another vehicle, shows Bhavesh Patel in the passenger seat with his arms behind his head, allowing the car to run in Autopilot mode on a busy road going at around 40mph, despite the manual warning owners to be prepared to take over at all times.

The clip went viral on social media before being reported to police, who interviewed Patel, of Alfreton Road in Nottingham, at Stevenage Police Station. There he told officers his actions were "silly" but that the car had "amazing" capabilities and he was "the unlucky one who got caught".

A Tesla engineer told police that the Autopilot mode is not designed to make the car driverless, and the car's features are only meant to assist a "fully-attentive driver" with acceleration, deceleration and steering, and should not be the sole form of navigation.

Patel was handed an 18-month driving ban, 100 hours unpaid community work, ordered to undergo 10 days "rehabilitation" and must pay 1,800 in costs to the Crown Prosecution Service.

"This case should serve as an example to all drivers who have access to autopilot controls and have thought about attempting something similar," said investigating officer PC Kirk Caldicutt. "I want to stress that they are in no way a substitute for a competent motorist in the driving seat who can react appropriately to the road ahead."

This message mirrors warnings from Tesla following several deaths in automated cars in the US. Tesla has warned that the cruise control is programmed to stay within painted lane lines and doesn't recognise stationary objects. After the first death in 2016, caused by a collision with a parked truck, Tesla reduced the time limit a driver can go without touching the wheel.

Despite cases of misuse, a US Department of Transportation study in 2017 reported that Autopilot on Tesla reduces the risk of crash by 40%.

"There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide," a Tesla spokesperson said in March of this year after the second driverless car death. "If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year."

19/04/2018: California investigates workplace safety at Tesla

California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has opened an investigation into workplace safety at Tesla's Fremont factory.

The decision to investigate the electric car manufacturer comes after claims that Tesla put speed and style over workplace safety to the extent that the company's lack of coloured warning signs were down to CEO Elon Musk hating the colour yellow.

Other claims in the article, by Reveal, suggest Tesla under-reported workplace injuries.

Tesla dismissed the report in a blog posted shortly after and called the article an "ideologically motivated attack" and referred to the website as an "extremist organization".

"In our view, what they portray as investigative journalism is in fact an ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign against Tesla."

But a spokeswoman for Cal/OSHA said it "takes seriously reports of workplace hazards and allegations of employers' underreporting recordable work-related injuries and illnesses".

It has been a bruising week for Musk, who had to go on a PR offensive to dispel wide reports that his company placed unreasonable demands on staff and caused production to halt due to over-automation of factory jobs.

It had been reported that a three to five day break in production was due to failing to produce enough cars per week, but a statement from a company spokesmen claimed that it was a planned pause.

"Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory," a spokesperson said.

"These periods are used to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates. This is not unusual and is in fact common in production ramps like this."

However, a leaked email from Musk, listing a set of demands of his employees to "burn the midnight oil" and demonstrate the ability to produce 6,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June, brought more scrutiny on Tesla.

18/04/2018: Musk emails rallying call to Tesla staff

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called on his staff to burn the midnight oil' and begin operating 24/7 at the company's Fremont assembly plant in California.

In a long and detailed email obtained by Jalopnik, Musk rallied his teams and laid out the strategy for production of the Model 3 vehicle, setting a higher bar for both his employees and parts suppliers.

On Tuesday the assembly line had been shut down, for up to five days, to begin an upgrade to the way it operates. Later that day the CEO emailed staff with exactly what that would entail.

The email is structure almost like a compliment sandwich, begin and ending with praise for his kickass team'. He starts by congratulating them for three weeks of consistently producing 2,000 cars and ends with calling their accomplishments miracles'.

The more blunt and provocative points of the message are in the middle. The Gigafactory in Nevada and the Fremont plant in California are to stop for up to five days to receive upgrades to set them up for Model 3 production targets of 3,000 per week. Fremont will begin operating 24-hours a day with 400 new jobs created for around seven weeks.

A further upgrade is planned for late May to then double production to 6,000. The high target was issued with an ultimatum: "Please note that all areas of Tesla and our suppliers will be required to demonstrate a Model 3 capacity of 6000 per week by building 850 sets of car parts in 24 hours no later than June 30th," he wrote.

"Any Tesla department or supplier that is unable to do this will need to have a very good explanation why not, along with a plan for fixing the problem and present that to me directly. We are going to find a way or make a way to get there."

Part of the reason for setting the target at 6,000 and not 5,000 is to include a margin for error, but a few paragraphs later Musk issues a warning to parts suppliers to meet his company's high standards.

"Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don't match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong," he added.

"Some parts suppliers will be unwilling or unable to achieve this level of precision. I understand that this will be considered an unreasonable request by some. That's OK, there are lots of other car companies with much lower standards. They just can't work with Tesla."

He also laid out a strategy for boosting profit by skimming away unnecessary expenditure and personally overseeing anything over $1M.

He rounded it all off with a list of productivity recommendations where he takes issue with meetings, acronyms and communication speeds and asks staff to send him a note if they feel that they have any ideas to make Tesla better.

17/04/2018: Tesla shuts down Model 3 Sedan production again

Tesla has reportedly shut down its assembly line for Model 3 cars for a second time after failing to reach manufacturing targets.

CEO Elon Musk gave CBS This Morning host Gayle King a tour of his Silicon Valley factory last week and said he was optimistic about the company's ability to speed up production of their Model 3 Sedan cars.

However, an announcement of a four-to-five day pause in production has since allegedly been issued to Tesla employees, who spoke to BuzzFeed about the issues surrounding the electric car company's production of their Model 3 vehicles.

It's the second time the line has been shut down this year, following a brief pause in production in late February.

Musk introduced the Model 3 Sedan last summer. It was billed as the company's first mid-priced, mass-produced electric car accessible to middle-class customers and not just the super wealthy.

But following issues in assembly, Musk personally took over the Model 3 production line at the beginning of April after realising it needed improving and has even said he had resorted to pulling all-nighters at the plant and, at times, even slept in his factory.

"When things get really intense, I don't have time to go home and shower and change, so I just sleep here," Musk told CBS.

Tesla's main issue has been meeting its production goals over the last six months, BuzzFeed reported. Musk had said the company would be manufacturing 2,500 cars a week by the end of the first quarter of 2018, but it was making only 2,000 per week by the start of April. Now, just two weeks later, production is once again on hold, the publication reports.

The car maker's current goal is to manufacture 5,000 cars per week by the end of the second quarter; 5,000 per week had initially been its year-end goal for 2017.

On April Fool's day, Musk posted a joke on his Twitter about the electric car company going bankrupt, following growing speculation about its future.

Tesla has struggled to reach ambitious production goals during what Musk has referred to as "production hell". He has also cited complacency with the use of technology.

"We got complacent about some of the things that we felt were our core technology....We put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once. This should have been staged," he said.

A Tesla spokesperson issued the same statement as was given during the last shutdown, saying: "Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory 1. These periods are used to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates. This is not unusual and is in fact common in production ramps like this."

09/04/2018: UK government won't create regulation for driverless cars yet

The UK government will not define how autonomous vehicles are regulated before the technology is widely available, it has confirmed.

Instead, the government plans to wait until it sees what kind of driverless technologies will come from car manufacturers, and legislate accordingly, said Parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, Baroness Sugg.

"Whilst we do know that there will be different types of automated vehicles, with varying levels of sophistication, it is not possible at this stage to state what those changes will be. With this in mind it would not be appropriate to set definitive regulations in legislation at this time," she said in a letter addressed to the House of Lords last month.

Her memo sought to address points raised in Parliamentary debates around Automated and Electric Vehicles (AEV) Bill, including how autonomous vehicles are licensed.

Sugg said the Department for Transport is working with DVLA to ensure the vehicle licensing body's definition of different types of driverless cars works for both insurers and drivers, creating a list of the autonomous cars in the UK potentially by cross-referencing them with cars stored on the DVLA's database.

She also suggested that regulation for autonomous vehicles could be defined under the Road Traffic Act 1988, adding: "Regulating for further standards now is likely to impede innovation but, as new technologies reach the point of market readiness, we will be able to set and define the standards both internationally and domestically."

The day before Sugg's letter, roads minister Jesse Norman made a statement about a review the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission will carry out over the next three years.

The review will focus on how automated vehicles will operate with current laws and whether any new regulations are necessary. Norman also stated that the commissions have to consider how to judge criminal offences in which there is no driver and possibly no steering wheel.

03/04/2018: US watchdog blasts Tesla over Model X crash probe

A US transportation watchdog has said it's "unhappy" with Tesla's handling of an investigation into a fatal crash involving a Model X Tesla, after the company suggested publicly that the driver may have been partly to blame.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is currently investigating the crash and death of driver Walter Huang, has chastised the company for releasing the information to the public during on an ongoing investigation, according to the Washington Post.

Tesla concluded in a blog post that the autopilot technology inside the Model X electric vehicle was engaged six seconds before the vehicle collided with a concrete road divider.

Internal assessments of the car's computer logs showed that the car's autonomous cruise control system, which is designed to speed up or slow down a car, was turned on moments before the incident, according to Tesla.

However, the company added that the driver's hands were off the steering wheel during that time, despite receiving repeated warnings from the vehicle.

"In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum," said Tesla, in a blog post.

"The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver's hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision."

The company added that the driver had around 5 seconds and 150 metres of unobstructed view of the road before the car hit a concrete divider, however, no action was taken to avoid the obstacle.

Tesla claims that the crash was made more severe as the divider, known as a crash attenuator, had been damaged by a previously unreported incident and was unable to absorb the shock of the crash effectively.

However, reports last week suggested that Huang had complained to Tesla about the car's autopilot feature, frequently returning his Model X to the dealer after the system veered towards the same barrier that his car ultimately collided with.

Tesla has maintained that autonomous autopilot systems have helped reduce crash rates by up to 40% in the US, and that the consequences of the public not using such systems would be "extremely severe".

"There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide. If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year. We expect the safety level of autonomous cars to be 10 times safer than non-autonomous cars," said Tesla.

The UK's Law Commission, responsible for regularly reviewing laws enacted in England and Wales, told IT Pro that automated technology like this is evolving quickly and must be scrutinised before they reach the UK.

"This technology doesn't easily fit within current legal frameworks and questions around safety and accidents, amongst others, have to be answered before they hit British roads," said a spokesperson for the independent body.

The Law Commission echoed a commitment made last month that it would be reviewing relevant laws with the potential of introducing reforms around the use of automated technology, which would also include self-driving cars.

27/03/2018: Uber has been ordered to suspend all tests of its self-driving cars on Arizona roads after one of its vehicles hit and killed a pedestrian last week.

A woman from Tempe was fatally injured by one of Uber's autonomous cars on 18 March while crossing a street, in what is considered to be the first time a pedestrian has been killed by the emerging technology.

Arizona governor Doug Ducey described the incident as an "unquestionable failure" to comply with the expectation that testing of the technology would prioritise public safety above all else, according to a letter addressed to Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi, seen by the New York Times.

In response to the accident, Uber spokesperson Matt Kallman told the NYT that it has "proactively suspended self-driving operations in all cities immediately following the tragic incident last week."

"We continue to help investigators in any way we can, and we'll keep a dialogue open with the governor's office to address any concerns they have."

Despite the self-imposed suspension, Arizona's governor said he has told the state's department of transportation to suspend all further Uber self-driving tests.

IT Pro has contacted Uber for comment.

Arizona has been lauded for its positive attitude towards self-driving cars and its reluctance to impose heavy-handed regulations, favouring instead the potential economic benefits that it could bring.

Arizona's Tempe Police Department said that video evidence suggested that neither the self-driving SUV, nor its onboard safety driver, noticed the pedestrian crossing the road, and that the vehicle failed to slow down before hitting the woman.

Both Google's Waymo and General Motors' Cruise will continue to test their fleets in the state, although it's unclear whether heavier restrictions will be imposed following Sunday's incident.

20/03/2018: Uber suspends self-driving tests as pedestrian dies

Uber has halted trials of its driverless vehicles across North America following a fatal collision between one of its cars and a pedestrian.

The incident happened on Sunday evening in Tempe, Arizona, according to the local police department (as reported by BBC News), when a woman, named as Elaine Herzberg, stepped out into the road in front of the specially equipped Volvo, which was in autonomous mode but also had a human behind the wheel. Herzberg wasn't using a pedestrian crossing at the time.

Tempe police chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle Uber is likely not at fault, however. "The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them," she said. "His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision."

The incident was caught on video by the car, which had at least two operational cameras at the time - one facing forward in front of the car and one facing the driver. Of the recordings, Moir said: "It's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway."

"I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident," she added.

This is the second accident involving a self-driving Uber car in Tempe, with one of its vehicles being flipped on its side in a collision last year. However, this is the first reported instance of any autonomous vehicle being involved in a fatal collision.

Consumer Watchdog, a citizen safety lobby group, said on Twitter: "This is a tragedy we have been fighting years to prevent. We hope our calls for real regulation of driverless cars will be taken seriously going forward by Silicon Valley and the Trump Administration."

Tempe mayor Mark Mitchell called Uber "responsible" for pausing driverless car tests, but said he still supports the technology. "Testing must occur safely," he said in a statement. "All indications we have had in the past show that traffic laws are being obeyed by the companies testing here. Our city leadership and Tempe Police will pursue any and all answers to what happened in order to ensure safety moving forward.

"I support the step that Uber has taken to temporarily suspend testing in Tempe until this event is fully examined and understood. That is a responsible step to take at this time."

20/03/2018: Gatwick will implement Oxbotica's driverless vehicles to ferry its staff around the airport, saving money and reducing emissions.

The airport's 300 airside vehicle spend 90% of their time stationary as their drivers tend to passengers and aircraft around the airfield and in terminal buildings.

The pilot study will be the first step in a much bigger project that may mean other vehicles, such as the buses to take passengers between terminal buildings, aircraft push back tugs, passenger aircraft bridges and luggage trucks are automated in future.

It will attempt to prove driverless vehicles are safe for use on live airfields and could lead to an Uber-like car ordering and staff delivery system around worldwide airports.

"Airports offer an incredibly interesting domain for our autonomous driving software," Dr. Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica said.

"There is a huge diversity of vehicles, each with a very specific mission. The challenge of choreographing all of the activity around an individual plane, or in support of airport operations is immense and we look forward to working closely with Gatwick on this initial pilot that will demonstrate our self-driving technology carrying staff around the airfield."

Gatwick's trial will start this summer, although they won't include passengers or aircraft yet, as the airport trials the vehicles on airside roads between its North and south terminals.

The project will collect a large amount of data from a range of different vehicle types, all powered by Oxobotica's driverless car technology.

This information will be provided to the Department of Transport, Civil Aviation Authority and others transportation agencies around the world to assess whether they could be used in other markets on a commercial basis.

"If this trial proves successful then in the future we could have an Uber-like service operating across the airfield which staff can hail as and when they need to travel," said Cathal Corcoran Gatwick Airport's CIO.

"This trial is just the start and much more research will be needed, but ultimately this could be the start of widespread use of autonomous vehicles on airfields across the world. The new technology is a more efficient way to manage vehicles and could lead to a reduction in the number of vehicles required, their associated costs and harmful emissions."

06/03/2018: Stanford University researchers have come up with new technology that could enable self-driving cars to 'see' around corners and view hidden objects.

Called "Confocal non-line-of-sight imaging", the researchers described the technique in a research paper published in Nature. Scientists used lasers that bounce off walls and onto an object hidden from view, then reflect back from the object, back off the wall and onto a light-detecting sensor.

Normally such scans can take hours to develop, so the team had to come up with an extremely efficient and effective algorithm to process the final image.

"A substantial challenge in non-line-of-sight imaging is figuring out an efficient way to recover the 3D structure of the hidden object from the noisy measurements," said David Lindell, a graduate student in the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and co-author of the paper. "I think the big impact of this method is how computationally efficient it is."

The new algorithms mean that data from the scans could be processed in less than a second and also run on a regular laptop. Now, the scientists are further developing the system to cope with many more different situations and finish the scan quicker. Work is needed to refine the system to work better when there is a lot of ambient light, though.

The researchers said that if the technology were used on a car today, it could easily detect road signs, safety vests or road markers, although it might have problems with a person wearing non-reflective clothing.

"We believe the computation algorithm is already ready for LIDAR systems," said Matthew O'Toole, a postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and co-lead author of the paper. "The key question is if the current hardware of LIDAR systems supports this type of imaging."

01/02/2018: UK to test self-driving car on 200 miles of country roads

A self-driving car project will attempt to navigate over 200 miles of UK country roads and roundabouts in what is considered a major step towards a full rollout of autonomous vehicles by 2021.

The HumanDrive initiative, a collaborative effort between leading car manufacturers and educational groups, will run a series of initial simulations and machine learning tests in order to train the vehicle how to manoeuvre on complex roads, before a live journey in December 2019.

The project aims to take advantage of a raft of changes introduced by chancellor Philip Hammond in November's budget speech, allowing self-driving car trials to start as early as 2019.

Although a handful of live tests have been carried out on UK roads by companies such as Oxbotica, the HumanDrive project is thought to be the first to trial a self-driving car without a human onboard.

The UK hopes to have self-driving cars on roads by 2021, yet progress still lags far behind the likes of the US. However, business and energy secretary Greg Clark told the BBC that "trailblazing projects" like these "will play a vital role helping us deliver on that ambition".

"Low-carbon and self-driving vehicles are the future and they are going to drive forward a global revolution in mobility," added Clark.

The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has pledged its support to the collaboration, alongside Leeds and Cranfield Universities, Highways England and the Transport Systems Catapult.

Initial stages of the project involve using human drivers performing intricate tasks inside a simulator at Leeds University. The data from these tests will be fed into machine learning algorithms, where it will be analysed in order to train the system to drive like a real person.

Mark Westwood, chief technology officer of the Transport Systems Catapult, said UK roads offer unique challenges for autonomous driving systems.

"They are different from American roads with roundabouts and demanding country lanes," said Westwood. "These are really testing environments. This project is about advancing the state of the art and trying to do something more demanding. The control system will learn to drive like a human."

25/01/2018: Crashes call into question autonomous vehicle safety

The safety of self-driving cars is once again up for discussion, following two crashes in California involving cars that had been put into self-drive mode.

The first accident involved a Chevrolet Bolt, which collided with a motorbike on a San Francisco highway.

According to the motorbike rider, Oscar Nilsson, the car which was in self-driving mode but also had a human driver behind the wheel started to change lanes to the left, but as he rode forward the Bolt swerved back into its original lane and knocked him to the ground.

Local paper Mercury News reports that the motorcyclist is now suing General Motors, which owns and manufactures Chevrolets and other brands, but the car maker contends Nilsson was at fault.

The other incident, which occurred earlier this week, is slightly less complex in terms of the mechanics of the incident. Rather than involving two moving vehicles, the crash in Culver City was between a stationary fire engine and a Tesla car.

According to Culver City Firefighters, the Model S ploughed straight into the back of one of their fire engines, which was attending a separate incident, at 65mph on a freeway.

The car's autopilot mode which allows for semi-autonomous driving, but also requires the driver to be attentive (e.g. holding the wheel and being prepared to intervene if necessary) was apparently engaged at the time.

There is little other information about the circumstances of the crash, currently. When approached for comment by IT Pro, Tesla didn't comment on this case in particular, but said: "Autopilot is intended for use only with a fully attentive driver."

16/01/2018: BlackBerry launches security software designed for self-driving cars

Ailing smartphone firm BlackBerry has had its sights set beyond the mobile industry for some time now since ceding the production of its devices to a third party in 2016.

Focusing instead on its expertise in security software, BlackBerry is now bringing that speciality beyond the smartphone and to driverless cars.

Named Blackberry Jarvis - possibly a nod to the AI system in the Iron Man films - the cybersecurity software aims to identify vulnerabilities in programs used in autonomous vehicles. BlackBerry is promoting it on a pay-as-you-go basis - but, according to Reuters, it could also be used within the healthcare and industrial automation industries.

BlackBerry said that once the software has been bought, car firms will have online access to the Jarvis software, which will give them the ability to scan files at every stage of their software development.

05/01/2017: Roborace and Nvidia jump on level 5 autonomy

Roborace and Nvidia have announced they're working towards introducing level 5 autonomy to Robocars via an upgrade to Nvidia's Drive Pegasus AI autonomous car platform.

The platform was first revealed in October 2017 and is capable of performing 320 trillion operations per second - the computational power equivalent to a 100-server data centre. What's more impressive is the power operates from a device the size of a single licence plate.

"Roborace will enable motorsport to play an increasingly significant role in the development of technologies which will improve driver performance and ultimately save lives on our roads," said Bryn Balcombe, chief strategy officer at Roborace.

"Cognitive power will soon rival horsepower as an automotive performance measure and the Nvidia Drive Pegasus sets a new benchmark which will enable Roborace to extend competitions well beyond the confines of traditional circuit racing."

Nvidia's Drive PX platform has already been showcased alongside Roborace's development cars when the two took part in a race around Hong Kong's Formula E street circuit last month.

"Roborace is pushing the limits of AI technology and delivering autonomous driving experiences that have never been achieved before," said Danny Shapiro, senior director of Automotive at Nvidia.

"The advances made with Nvidia technology in motorsport will accelerate adoption of autonomous vehicles on public roads, making daily travel safer and more enjoyable."

Although Robocars have been developed with racing in mind, the company hopes to apply much of the technology to street cars too.

22/12/2017: Cruise automated car crashes into a motorcyclist in San Francisco

An automated car operated by General Motors-owned Cruise hit a motorcyclist earlier this year, although it's only just been revealed to the public.

According to a filing with the Californian Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the motorcyclist was at fault and although injured in the collision, he was only treated for murder injuries in hospital.

The report explained the Cruise car was travelling in the middle lane of a three-legged road in San Francisco's Lower Haight area. It began moving into a space in the left lane, but as the traffic ahead slowed, it raliser the gap was too small and so returned to the centre lane.

However, in that time, a motorcycle was travelling between the right and centre lanes. It began moving towards the centre lane, hit the autonomous car and fell of his bike.

"We test our self-driving cars in challenging and unpredictable environments precisely because, by doing so, we will get better, safer AV technology on the roads sooner," Cruise said in a statement. "In this case, the motorcyclist merged into our lane before it was safe to do so."

The car's speed was logged at 12mph, while the motorcyclist was travelling at 17mph.

California's DMV posts all automated car incidents, including collisions, on its website. This year alone, Cruise has been involved in 14 accidents around San Francisco, including one incident when another vehicle hit the back of a Cruise car.

Although 14 incidents does seem a lot compared to the average non-automated car, this isn't directly comparable to other automated car manufacturers because Cruise's biggest competitors - Uber and Waymo - test their cars in Phoenix and Arizona doesn't post its data publicly.

17/11/2017: Jaguar Land Rover's first autonomous vehicle hits the streets

Jaguar Land Rover tested its first driverless vehicle on British streets it announced today.

The tests are taking place in Coventry, where the company is headquartered. They are part of the 20m UK Autodrive project which is a government-backed competiton to trial autonomous vehicle technology.

The company is using a Range Rover Sport which can operate autonomously through a city and is a step closer to level 4 autonomy, one of the highest grades of self-driving a car can reach. It wants to make the autonomous vehicle work in on and off-road driving environments and all kinds of weather.

"Testing this self-driving project on public roads is so exciting, as the complexity of the environment allows us to find robust ways to increase road safety in the future. By using inputs from multiple sensors, and finding intelligent ways to process this data, we are gaining accurate technical insight to pioneer the automotive application of these technologies," said Nick Rogers, executive director of product engineering at Jaguar Land Rover.

In June, Tony Harper, director of engineering research at the company said: "The automotive landscape is changing faster today than ever before. As a technology company, our innovation is continuous and our cars of the future will become more capable, cleaner, more connected, more desirable and smarter. Our Autonomous Urban Drive research is Jaguar Land Rover's next step in our development of both fully and semi-autonomous vehicle technologies."

With the launch of the trials, Coventry joins 12 other cities which are carrying out self-driving vehicle tests on public roads globally.

In Arizona, Google's Waymo has already launched driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans. The driverless vehicles previously had human drivers and offered free rides to residents; now there will be no driver. However, one of Waymo's staff will be present in the vehicle until the novelty wears off.

Image Source: Jaguar Land Rover

09/11/2017: Autonomous shuttle involved in accident on its first day

A self-driving shuttle was involved in a crash on it's launch day in Las Vegas yesterday.

The shuttle, launched by the American Automobile Association (AAA) in partnership with Keolis and manufactured by NAVYA, had begun its first day of a 12-month pilot scheme

The City of Las Vegas stated that the shuttle was "grazed" by a delivery truck in downtown Las Vegas.

"The shuttle did what it was supposed to do, in that it's sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident.

"Unfortunately the delivery truck did not stop and grazed the front fender of the shuttle. Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has the accident would have been avoided," the City wrote.

It added that the shuttle will continue with its 12-month pilot scheme but remained out of service for the rest of the day yesterday.

The driver of the truck was issued a ticket by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police.

Mike Blasky, PR at AAA, wrote on Twitter: "Truck making delivery backed into shuttle, which was stopped. Human error causes most traffic collisions and this was no different. Driver of truck was cited. No one hurt except a bruised bumper!"

The shuttle aims to provide a quarter of a million visitors and residents of Las Vegas with the chance to ride a self driving vehicle. The pilot also wants to survey riders to see if they are wary of driverless technology and whether taking part in the scheme changes their mind. The AAA wants to explore how other people on the street react to the autonomous vehicle too.

The shuttle has LiDAR technology, GPS, cameras and can seat up to 8 passengers with seatbelts. It covers a 0.6 mile loop in the Fremont East district and can be boarded at any of its three stops.

Image source: NAVYA

08/11/2017: Waymo launches fully-autonomous cars

The race to deploy truly driverless cars has hotted up, with Waymo announcing that its fleet of autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona will now operate with no 'safety driver'.

Waymo, the self-driving car arm of Google's parent company Alphabet, has had a number of Chrysler Pacifica minivans operating in the Phoenix area since April 2017, offering free rides to residents. Until now, however, they have had a human driver behind the wheel who can take action in case of emergency a stipulation in most locations where autonomous vehicles are being tested on public roads.

At Web Summit in Lisbon, however, John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, revealed that these vehicles will now start operating without a driver.

"What you're seeing now marks the start of a new phase for Waymo and the history of this technology, Krafcik said, according to USA Today.

"Our ultimate goal is to bring our fully self-driving technology to more cities in the US and around the world," he added.

Waymo's testing had largely taken place in California until recently, but it ran into several regulatory barriers and subsequently moved to Arizona, where there's no need for a special permit in order to operate an autonomous vehicle on public roads.

The state offers other benefits too, notably its steady, warm climate; it's easier for driverless cars to operate in reliably dry conditions than in rain, snow, high winds and so on. It also doesn't have the high variability of daylight hours that states and, indeed, countries further north do.

Arizonan passengers who successfully applied to a programme to use one of Waymo's fully-autonomous vehicles won't be totally alone at first, with a member of Waymo's staff present in the vehicle until the novelty wears off. After that time, however, there will be no human intermediary between the car and those who choose to be taken for a spin.

08/09/2017: Former Android developer Cyanogen leaps into driverless cars

Remember Cyanogen, the open-source Android developer? After renaming itself Cyngn though it's presumably pronounced the same way the company looks set to pivot into driverless car development.

Cyngn has received a permit to test driverless cars in California, according to a report by Axios, and job listings suggest its on the lookout for staff to develop hardware and software for autonomous cars. The report claims it's hired dozens of employees with such skills recently.

The company imploded last year following layoffs and the departure of CEO Kirt McMaster, who was replaced by former COO Lior Tal. It then stopped updating its CyanogenMod version of Android, which let users fiddle with settings and personalise the mobile operating system, offering an alternative to running the wholly Google linked OS.

An alternative version of autonomous car software could be seen as a useful counter to the driverless systems under development by Silicon Valley giants, but there's plenty of rivals for Cyngn to have to see off for its as yet unannounced version to win the business of car makers.

08/09/2017: UK launches new autonomous vehicle initiative

The government has announced the launch of its MERIDIAN programme, which will help those developing driverless vehicles co-ordinate their testing and is a place to store information regarding all autonomous vehicle testing in the UK.

Part of the initiative will involve developing a "cluster of excellence" along the M40 corridor, where the majority of driverless car testing will occur. The government hopes that by building a hotspot for autonomous vehicle testing, it will attract investment from businesses both at home and abroad, helping to build the UK's reputation as a leader in connected car testing.

"At the heart of our Industrial Strategy is a commitment to delivering world class science, research and innovation," climate change and industry minister Claire Perry said. "The MERIDIAN co-ordination hub embodies this ambition, creating a globally recognisable brand that will bring the automotive sector, academia and Government together behind a common set of strategic goals."

The project has been part-funded by the government's 100 million CAV investment programme and the rest of the funding has been provided by the tech industry, which recognises the importance of building a hub to continue the effective development of autonomous vehicle testing.

"These technologies are coming and will profoundly change our understanding of mobility," Ford director of global vehicle evaluation and verification and chair of the Auto Council Technology Group, Graham Hoare said. "The UK has long-standing capabilities across many of the sectors supporting new vehicle technologies and an approach that is more open and collaborative than other markets."

How do self-driving cars work?

Self-driving cars use a battery of sensors to detect their surroundings, including radar, lasers and camera arrays. The vehicle's onboard computer then uses specialised software to react to this input in real-time, adjusting the car's steering and acceleration to suit the situation.

While some vehicles, such as the Google prototypes which have popularised the idea, are totally autonomous, other cars only automate certain aspects of driving. Tesla's Autopilot feature, for example, features adaptive cruise control, which maintains a safe speed and distance from other vehicles when driving on the motorway.

It also features basic automated steering to ensure you don't accidentally drift into the wrong lane, and although it can perform basic steering maneuvers automatically, it is not intended to replace a human driver altogether.

Are self-driving cars safe?

There is still much debate over whether or not fully autonomous cars should be made widely available. Some say that their safety record is impeccable, while others argue that automobiles are simply too dangerous to be operated by an algorithm.

This debate has been reignited by a number of high-profile Tesla crashes, one of which has been blamed on an Autopilot malfunction. The incidents have raised questions over whether or not self-driving technology is ready for implementation.

On the other hand, Google has emphasised how safe its fleet of self-driving cars are. As part of the testing programme for its autonomous vehicles, the company has posted regular safety logs detailing any crashes the vehicles are involved in, with the vast majority being caused by human drivers in other cars.

Experts remain divided, however, and if self-driving cars are ever likely to be widely commercially available, they will doubtless be heavily regulated, monitored and tested.

When will self-driving cars hit the road?

In many cases, they already have. Some high-end luxury vehicles already feature 'assisted driving' elements that are close to fully autonomous driving, with Tesla being the obvious example.

Elsewhere, testing of various driverless car projects is underway in the US, with California, Texas, Seattle and more all hosting autonomous vehicle test runs. The UK government has also given the green light for similar trials in Britain, so UK commuters may soon be sharing the roads with autonomous shuttles.

As for when driverless cars will become commercially available, however, that is yet to be seen. As the technology is young and comparatively untested, it is likely that substantial tests will have to be conducted in partnership with government and regulatory bodies before the vehicles are available for public purchase.

There is also a question as to whether or not the average driver will be able to purchase one at all. Even if fully autonomous cars are allowed to be sold, the price of each vehicle is likely to be prohibitively expensive due to the large amount of sophisticated technology that goes into them.

As such, it's likely to be at least a few years before autonomous cars are approved for general road use, and most likely another few years after that before they become a commonplace sight.

Are driverless cars legal?

As no fully autonomous cars have yet made it to the mass-production phase, no legislation currently exists to govern their public use. However, transport authorities both in the UK and in the US are currently in the process of drawing up new laws or amending old ones to account for driverless vehicles.

In the UK, for example, companies need no permits or authorisation to test autonomous vehicles on public roads. "Real-world testing of automated technologies is possible in the UK today," the government's Pathway to Driverless Cars report reads, "providing a test driver is present and takes responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle; and that the vehicle can be used compatibly with road traffic law."

The UK also plans to amend the Highway Code to allow vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems to change lanes on the motorway and be parked via remote control. Changes to car insurance would extend it to cover product liabilities for automated vehicles. Insurers would pay out to victims, then reclaim the money from the manufacturers.

The US has also granted testing permits for driverless cars in four states, as well as publishing a 15-point safety checklist for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles in order to better regulate the emerging industry.

Published by the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency, the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy also marks the agency's move to the SAE scale, which measures a vehicle's level of autonomy. The scale runs from zero, where the driver has total control of the vehicles, all the way to five - a totally autonomous car requiring no human input.

Vehicles that measure two or three on the SAE scale - such as the Tesla and other semi-autonomous vehicles - are already road-legal both here and in the US, as the human driver is considered to be in control for the majority of the time.

While many countries have committed to fostering a supportive environment for the development of autonomous cars, concrete legislation governing their use is still likely to be some years away, as the technology itself has not yet been fully finished.

Who manufactures self-driving cars?

The most well-known companies exploring self-driving cars are Google and Tesla, but there are very few companies connected to the automotive industry that aren't exploring the technology.

Ride-hailing company Uber, for example, is currently testing its own fleet of autonomous taxis in Pittsburgh. Apple has also long been rumoured to be exploring the self-driving car field in some form, and has been linked to multiple different auto manufacturers, including McLaren.

In addition to tech companies, however, regular car makers are also getting in on the act. Audi, Ford, BWM, Honda, Daimler, Volvo and more have all been dabbling in some form of autonomous driving project. Luxury passenger vehicles have also been experimenting with using the tech in industrial vehicles such as heavy goods lorries.

Previous news

06/09/2017: FiveAI raises 26.8 million in funding to develop autonomous vehicles

British driverless car startup FiveAI has raised 26.8 million in funding, which it will use to develop its own self-driving cars - to be trialled in 2019.

The money was raised through a 14 million Series A financing round led by Lakestar Capital and the startup's existing investors, such as Amadeus Capital Partners. The rest of the money came from a 12.8 million grant from the UK government given to the StreetWise consortium, led by FiveAI.

FiveAI will use the funding to develop autonomous SAE level 4 self-driving technology, vehicles which are classified as having a high level of automation, as outlined on SAE's scale. It wants to provide a personal mobility service for individuals currently driving some or all of their daily commute.

The Streetwise consortium aims to deliver a safe driverless car service in London towards the end of 2019. The consortium is composed of companies such as the Direct Line Group and McLaren Applied Technologies. It aims to show how autonomous vehicles can reduce commuting costs, recover commuting time, cut accident rates, reduce congestion and lower emissions. The project is also partnering with Transport for London to tailor the service to public transportation needs.

FiveAI co-founder and CEO Stan Bolan said: "Cycling, walking, buses and trains offer a great service for most commuters, but some journeys are still being served by personal or individual transport. Initially we'll target these journeys with our shared mobility solution which will also pave the way for potential large-scale autonomous public transport in the future.

"In the short term, from day one of service launch the StreetWise project will increase public transport usage, reduce congestion and emissions, and make our urban areas more liveable for all."

Greg Clark, business and energy secretary, said: "Low carbon and self-driving vehicles are the future and the UK has a great opportunity to lead this technology revolution. The government is determined to ensure the UK becomes the go-to place for the development of the next generation of vehicles as part of our Industrial Strategy.

The Department for Transport revealed in August that it had set up a 8.1 million fund to go towards trialling driverless lorries on UK roads. The tests will involve linking up three HGVs through wireless technology and turn them into a convoy. The braking and acceleration will be controlled by the lead vehicle and researchers hope to understand how autonomous lorries can be better controlled.

01/09/2017: Samsung gets permit to test self-driving systems on Californian highways

Samsung has entered the self-driving car race, securing a permit to test autonomous vehicles on Californian roads.

The South Korean firm received the permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which has been revealed in an update of the department's list of companies approved for testing autonomous vehicles in the state.

There's currently very little information on what Samsung has planned for its work on driverless cars, for example whether it will make its own autonomous vehicles or provide technology to support the development and running of self-driving cars from other manufacturers. Nor is there any information on whether Samsung plans to create driverless car technology for consumer or commercial use.

Samsung has already created some test hardware with fellow South Korean firm Hyundai, however, adding AI modules and sensors to some of its cars, so there's a strong chance the tech firm could be planning to create an autonomous car platform which could be integrated into existing vehicles.

If Samsung does indeed start testing on Californian highways, there's a good chance its cars could metaphorically rub shoulders with other self-driving cars from the likes of Google, Nvidia and other companies testing autonomous driving systems.

29/08/2017: Domino's teams with Ford for driverless pizza delivery

Order a pizza from Domino's in Michigan and it could come via a driverless car - and you'll have to walk out of your house to the street to get your dinner.

The pizza maker and Ford have teamed up "to understand the role that self-driving vehicles can play in pizza delivery."

As part of that, for the next several weeks, customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan could get their pepperoni pizza order delivered via a Ford Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Research Vehicle, but only if those customers agree to take part.

Customers that do will be able to track their dinner via GPS and receive text messages when the Ford approaches necessary as they'll have to go out to the car to fetch their pizza, a potential downside to driverless car deliveries, though the research vehicles will have a human at the wheel in case of problems.

"We're interested to learn what people think about this type of delivery," said Russell Weiner, president of Domino's USA. "The majority of our questions are about the last 50 feet of the delivery experience. For instance, how will customers react to coming outside to get their food? We need to make sure the interface is clear and simple. We need to understand if a customer's experience is different if the car is parked in the driveway versus next to the curb. All of our testing research is focused on our goal to someday make deliveries with self-driving vehicles as seamless and customer-friendly as possible."

Ford has long been working on self-driving cars, promising a fully autonomous model by 2021, and this isn't Dominos first foray into human-free delivery techniques, either. It's built its own food delivery robot and also teamed up with Starship Technologies for its delivery drones on wheels only two years after a 2015 prank for April Fool's that it was rolling out driverless delivery vehicles called "Domi-no-driver".

24/08/2017: Semi-autonomous lorries coming to UK motorways

The Department for Transport (DfT) has revealed an 8.1 million fund to improve the functionality of driverless lorries through trials on the UK's roads.

The trials will involve hooking three HGVs (heavy goods vehicles) up together with wireless technology, travelling as a convoy. All braking and acceleration will be controlled by the lead vehicle in the hope it will help researchers understand how autonomous lorries can be better controlled. A human driver will be onboard to take over the controls at any time.

"We are investing in technology that will improve people's lives," Transport Minister Paul Maynard said. "Advances such as lorry platooning could benefit businesses through cheaper fuel bills and other road users thanks to lower emissions and less congestion.

"But first we must make sure the technology is safe and works well on our roads, and that's why we are investing in these trials."

The trials will be run by Transport Research Laboratory, following a successful feasibility study that recommended a more in depth study was conducted to see whether it would be possible for platooning technology to be used in the future.

The three-stage trials on the UK's roads will begin in 2018. The first stage will concentrate on whether it would be possible for platooning to happen on a commercial basis on the UK's roads in the future.

"The trial has the potential to demonstrate how greater automation of vehicles, in this instance, HGVs, can deliver improvements in safety, better journeys for road users and reduction in vehicle emissions," said Jim O'Sullivan, Highways England Chief Executive.

"Investing in this research shows we care about those using our roads, the economy and the environment, and safety will be integral as we take forward this work with TRL."

23/08/2017: Apple changes up its plans for a self-driving car

Apple is developing a self-driving shuttle bus to take Apple employees from one building to another on its new Cupertino campus, it is reported.

The shuttle is likely to be a commercial vehicle which Apple will utilise to test its self-driving car technology, according to The New York Times, which spoke to five anonymous sources. The test vehicle project is called PAIL, which stands for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, which are the addresses of its main office in Cupertino, close to Palo Alto in California.

Apple's Titan project began in 2014 and the company took on employees who knew how to build cars, as well as long-standing Apple employees, the sources told the publication. These employees looked to redesign a whole car, creating everything from motorised doors to ensuring the car could do without a steering wheel or pedals.

Apple also worked on inventing new lidar technology as well as potentially using spherical wheels on the car, instead of round ones, potentially giving the car better movement.

Despite this, the project faced problems, as there wasn't a clear vision of what Apple wanted in a vehicle, the NYT said. Team members complained of "shifting priorities and arbitrary or unrealistic deadlines".

There was also a disagreement between Apple executive Steve Zadesky and Apple's chief designer Jonathan Ive. Zadesky wanted to design a semi-autonomous car, whereas Ive wanted to make it fully autonomous. There was even disagreement within the team on whether the car's OS, called CarOS, should be programmed with Swift, Apple's programming language, or C++.

Apple shifted the direction of its Titan project last year, the NYT said, and appointed another executive, Bob Mansfield, to oversee it. Mansfield decided to throw out the plans for developing a car and instead moved the focus of the project to self-driving technology.

He also laid off some hardware staff and decided to recruit people with knowledge in autonomous systems, instead of car production.

CEO Tim Cook said in June that Apple was building driverless technology, something which he viewed as very important. He then hinted that the autonomous tech is not limited to vehicle software, and is possible that it could expand into various different areas.

17/08/2017: Fiat Chrysler joins Intel and BMW in self-driving vehicle quest

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has joined Intel, BMW Group and Mobileye to develop a platform for self-driving cars.

The project has the ambitious aim of "developing a world-leading, state-of-the-art autonomous driving platform for global deployment".

Intel, which last week completed its acquisition of sensor-creator Mobileye, announced the memorandom of understanding between the companies, which they say will use each company's individual strengths and resources to achieve their goal. This will include bringing together engineers in Germany, and other unspecified locations, as well as using Fiat Chrysler's long-standing knowledge of the North American automotive industry.

Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler, said: "In order to advance autonomous driving technology, it is vital to form partnerships among automakers, technology providers and suppliers.

"Joining this cooperation will enable [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles] to directly benefit from the synergies and economies of scale that are possible when companies come together with a common vision and objective."

Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, added: "The future of transportation relies on auto and tech industry leaders working together to develop a scalable architecture that automakers around the globe can adopt and customise.

"We're thrilled to welcome [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles'] contribution, bringing us a step closer to delivering the world's safest autonomous vehicles."

09/08/2017: The next public trial of government and industry-backed driverless pods is set to start in autumn and take place in the Greenwich Peninsula.

The Gateway project's autonomous pods are set to provide first and last mile transportation by connecting transport hubs with a number of different business, leisure and residential locations, as reported by Fleet News.

Fusion Processing, a company which specialises in creating radar and sensor technology, will provide the sensing and control equipment in the new pods. The pods themselves will be built by Westfield Sportscars, a car manufacturer that builds two-seater sports cars.

The vehicles will be based on the Heathrow Airport pod design but will be updated to be used in this new environment, according to the publication, and will be based at the UK Smart Mobility Living Lab in Greenwich.

Simon Tong, principal research scientist at TRL, told Fleet News: "With Fusion joining the team, Gateway is in a unique position to let the public interact with three very different autonomous control systems during our urban trials. Each of our autonomy providers - Fusion Processing, Oxbotica and Gobotix - are great British success stories, and together with Westfield, they represent the diversity of driverless expertise in the UK."

He added: "With Fusion, we look to build on all we have learned for our fleet of new driverless pods so that Gateway can conclude with a trial that will engage as many people as possible and hopefully amaze them at the same time."

The Gateway project has conducted a number of automated vehicle tests, including a project which tested last-mile automated deliveries. Later in 2017 it hopes to test autonomous valet parking.

The project provided autonomous pods in April so that members of the public could try riding in the first prototype, which were developed by Oxbotica. These were based around Greenwich too, carrying four passengers at a time through routes near the O2 arena and Greenwich.

Dr Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica, said it was an amazing opportunity to take part in the Gateway Project. He said: "We wish Westfield and Fusion well as they take their product closer to a production phase."

Tong finished: "This is a really exciting time for the project. We're very grateful to Oxbotica for all they have contributed in helping us learn more about the complexities of operating a driverless pod in an urban environment.

07/08/2017: Government draws up cyber security proposals

The UK government published tougher cyber security guidance for car manufacturers yesterday to ensure internet-connected vehicles will be better protected from hackers.

The proposals state that manufacturers should create and adhere to a security programme tied to their "broader mission and objectives", with the Department for Transport (DfT) worried that the cars will be targeted by hackers to access personal data, steal cars that use keyless entry, or even try to take over control of the cars.

Eight basic principles will form the basis of new legislation to be put before Parliament, the DfT said. Firstly organisational security must be a board-level priority, with the boardroom taking responsibility for it. Engineers must also be aware of current threats and work with third-parties to mitigate them as they build smart vehicles, the proposals state.

Manufacturers must also offer product aftercare and incident response to ensure systems are secure over their lifetime, not just upon their release, as well as designing the systems using a defence-in-depth approach, which means that cloud servers to which any vehicle data is sent are independently protected, as well as there are no single points of failure.

Firms must also work with their sub-contractors, suppliers and wider supply chain to co-ordinate on security, to agree standards and data requirements so that their security systems work together. Lastly, the systems themselves should be made resilient to cyber attacks like sensor jamming, and are fail-safe in the event of a successful hack.

Transport minister Lord Callanan said: "Our cars are becoming smarter and self-driving technology will revolutionise the way in which we travel. Risks of people hacking into the technology might be low, but we must make sure the public is protected."

He added: "Whether we're turning vehicles into wifi connected hotspots or equipping them with millions of lines of code to become fully automated, it is important that they are protected against cyber attacks."

Mike Hawes, the CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, welcomed the measures, saying it's vital to champion cyber security and share best practice. He added: "These vehicles will transform our roads and society, dramatically reducing accidents and saving thousands of lives."

Driverless car technology has been the focus of many companies and there is plenty of competition, from Uber to Baidu.

The government is also looking at creating a new framework to insure self-driving cars, announced in this year's Queen's speech under the Autonomous and Electric Vehicles Bill.

02/08/2017: Tim Cook says Apple AI is applicable to more than just cars

Apple's research into autonomous car technology might be applicable to sectors other than the automotive industry, according to CEO Tim Cook.

The tech giant finally acknowledged the truth in rumours that it was building driverless technology in June, when Cook told Bloomberg that it was "a core technology that we view as very important".

But he declined to give a steer on how the tech would manifest itself in Apple products. Yesterday he painted a clearer picture of its potential on a conference call following the company's quarterly results.

"Autonomy is the mother of all AI projects," he said, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. "And the autonomous systems can be used in a variety of ways and a vehicle is only one. But there are many different areas of it and I don't want to go any further with that."

While Cook is keeping quiet on Apple's plans for autonomous tech, it's clear that it is not limited to vehicle software. If it's the "mother of all AI", it's possible that its applications could expand into various different areas.

Apple already has a smart voice assistant in Siri, and its rivals haven't been slow to deploy AI in chatbots, home speakers, and much more. Ocado is using artificial intelligence to automate warehouses, for instance, while CIOs believe AI could help them automate plenty of routine business functions.

28/06/2017: Self-driving cars are failing to cope with the sight of a kangaroo in front of them.

According to a report by ABC News in Australia, the means by which the marsupials move bamboozles autonomous cars.

This was noticed by Volvo Australia's technical manager David Pickett, who said that when a kangaroo is in mid-flight it looks further away, and then when it lands it looks closer. As self-driving cars use the ground as a reference point, a bounding kangaroo confuses the car and thus cannot determine its distance.

But Pickett told ABC News that it gets even more complicated; the car needs to identify a kangaroo.

"We identify what a human looks like by how a human walks, because it's not only the one type of human you've got short people, tall people, people wearing coats. The same applies to a roo," he told reporters.

While Volvo has tested its large animal detection software in moose in Sweden, solving the kangaroo problem is no nearer to a solution. The country's National Roads and Motorists' Association said that 80% of animal collisions in the country involve kangaroos.

While this wouldn't delay the rollout of driverless cars in Australia, the problem still needed to be sorted out before introduction.

Kangaroos aren't the only issue for self-driving cars in the Lucky Country. The continent also features unsealed roads, unmarked highways and massive road trains. But generally, the feeling is that although while road infrastructure and technical issues need sorting out, Australia will still be on course to have cars on the road before many other places.

"The maturity is much further along than maybe is publicly aware," said Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative executive director Rita Excell.

27/06/2017: Nvidia signs AI deal

Nvidia has announced partnerships with several car makers and automotive suppliers to boost artificial intelligence in driverless cars.

Volkswagen will cooperate with Nvidia to expand its research on deep learning. At the carmaker's Data Lab, researchers are working with Nvidia on developing new procedures for optimising traffic flow in cities.

The firms have established a startup support programme at Volkswagen's Data Lab to provide technical and financial support for international startups developing machine learning and deep learning applications for the automotive industry. The pair will accept five startups to the support programme from this autumn.

There will also be a "Summer of Code" camp where high-performing students with qualifications in IT, mathematics or physics will have an opportunity to develop deep learning methods in teams and to implement them in a robotics environment.

Nvidia will also work with Volvo and Autoliv to develop advanced systems and software for AI self-driving cars. The three companies will work together along with Zenuity, a newly formed automotive software development joint venture equally owned by Volvo Cars and Autoliv, to develop next-generation self-driving car technologies.

Production vehicles built on the Nvidia Drive PX car computing platform are planned for sale by 2021.

Volvo Cars, Autoliv and Zenuity will use Nvidia's AI car computing platform as the foundation for their own advanced software development. The platform uses cameras and GPS to plan a safe route and adjust to changing circumstances.

Zenuity will also provide Volvo with self-driving software. Autoliv will sell this software to third-party OEMs using its established and broad sales, marketing and distribution network.

Nvidia has partnered with automotive supplier ZF and camera perception software supplier Hella to deploy AI technology on the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) safety certification for the mass deployment of self-driving vehicles.

ZF and Hella will provide customers with a self-driving system that integrates front camera units, as well as supporting software functions and radar systems.

The firms will use Nvidia's Drive AI platform to develop software for scalable modern driver assistance systems that connect their advanced imaging and radar sensor technologies to autonomous driving functionality.

13/06/2017: Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed that Apple is developing self-driving technology.

In a Bloomberg interview, he said: "We're focusing on autonomous systems ... It's a core technology that we view as very important."

Cook explained: "We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects, it's probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on. And so autonomy is something that is incredibly exciting for us. But we'll see where it takes us, we are not really saying from a product point of view what will we do, but we are being straightforward that it's a core technology that we view as very important."

This new industry is seen to be as very appealing, especially as it was predicted that it will be worth $7 billion by 2050 and $800 billion by 2035. A total 43% of total revenues are expected to come from business use of self-driving cars such as in transportation, freight delivery and sales and service fleets. Yesterday, Jaguar announced that it was investing 20 million in Lyft, Uber's arch-rival, in order to help its research on self-driving cars

There have been plenty of rumours that Apple was developing a car under the codename Project Titan. In December it was reported that Apple had plans to develop a self-driving car because of a letter the company wrote to US transport regulators. However, in April last year, the Ford CEO also claimed that Apple was building a car although there was no clear evidence available.

12/06/2017: A new study by Intel predicts steep exponential growth in the self-driving car industry, which is expected to reach $800 billion in market value by 2035 and a massive $7 trillion by 2050.

The industry's predicted mid-century market cap is more than the projected 2017 GDPs of Japan and Brazil combined, Intel's report, Accelerating the Future: The Economic Impact of the Emerging Passenger Economy, found.

Business use of self-driving cars, such as in industries like transportation, freight delivery and sales and service fleets, will account for 43% of total revenues, generating $3 trillion in revenues, the chip giant said.

Driverless technology could save 585,000 lives between 2035 to 2045, slightly higher than the population of Sheffield, according to Intel, which took the global number of deaths resulting from traffic incidents every year, estimating that self-driving tech could save 5% of these lives. Correspondingly, public safety costs related to traffic incidents could fall by more than $234 billion.

The current truck driver shortage around the world may increase pressure on businesses to introduce self-driving vehicles, for example in the UK it was estimated that there was a shortage of nearly 100,000 drivers and in the US there was a shortage of over 200,000. The study highlights that there are also driver shortages in Brazil, South Africa and India too.

Intel also hypothesised that businesses will increase their IT spending, including cloud services, in order to provide efficient and effective dispatch, transport and CRM to support this. Businesses will have a greater focus on data, too, which will be fundamental to the delivery and use of services.

Organisations' labour requirements will fall as the new technology will replace not only drivers but also the back end of the process, where it will become an IT workflow.

The study concluded that the emergence of this new economy "marks the greatest transition in human mobility since humans left their horses for a new relationship with the horseless carriage".

01/06/2017: Uber's head of finance Gautam Gapta is set to leave the ride-hailing company in July. At the same time, the company's first-quarter losses have narrowed substantially to $708 million.

Uber has confirmed with IT Pro that Gapta will leave in July. Gapta is set to join another startup in San Francisco, leaving Uber to suffer another executive departure. Uber has experienced a number of high-profile departures in the last few months and now the company will be looking for a new official CFO as well as a COO to partner with CEO Travis Kalanick.

Reuters reported that Uber's first-quarter losses narrowed substantially from the previous quarter. Uber declared a net loss of $708 million, excluding employee stock compensation and other items, in Q1 2017, down from $991 million in Q4 2016. Furthermore, Uber's first-quarter revenue rose 18% to $3.4 billion.

An Uber spokesperson said to Reuters: "The narrowing of our losses in the first quarter puts us on a good trajectory towards profitability".

Since Uber is a private company, it does not report its financial results publicly but does confirm figures reported in the media.

Yesterday, it came to light that Uber had fired Anthony Levandowski amid the legal battle with Waymo. Levandowski had refused to cooperate with the investigation in which Waymo claimed that the engineer had stolen thousands of documents from the company relating to self-driving vehicle technology.

31/05/2017: Uber has fired Anthony Levandowski after the engineer failed to cooperate in the ongoing lawsuit with Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Uber general counsel Salle Yoo outlined in Levandowski's termination letter, dated 26 May, that his failure to comply with a court order is the reason for his firing. In the letter, Yoo also wrote that "your failure impeded Uber's internal investigation and defense of the lawsuit".

A federal judge in the ongoing court case between Uber and Alphabet's self-driving car firm, Waymo, granted a preliminary injunction against Uber on 12 May that led the ride-hailing firm to remove Levandowski from any work on Lidar, and to return any stolen documents to Waymo.

Levandowski is accused of downloading 14,000 confidential files before leaving Google's self-driving division in 2016. He went on to start his own self-driving truck company called Otto, which Uber bought in August 2016, six months after he had left his previous employer.

Yoo goes on to underline that Uber required the engineer to have "destroyed all property and confidential information belonging to any prior employer" and by not complying with the court order it's a potential breach and warranty in the employment agreement and an "additional ground for termination".

Levandowski invoked the fifth amendment in order to not to incriminate himself and refused to hand over documents or answer questions during a deposition.

Uber has insisted its technology is different to Waymo's and there is no evidence it has the stolen files on its servers, although it did not check Lewandowski's computer in its search.

Since driverless cars first started appearing in physical form, rather than as an abstract concept and longtime sci-fi staple, there have been concerns over their safety. Would they go out of control? Could they be hacked, and what would happen if they were? Are they better than a human driver?

In the end, all the incidents so far have (largely) been fender benders low speed crashes in which there were no injuries or fairly minor ones. What's intriguing, though, is that in virtually all cases, the tech companies that own and operate the self-driving car have blamed human error.

To quote Mandy Rice-Davies: "Well they would say that, wouldn't they?" But that doesn't mean it's not true. The most recent case, where a driverless shuttle in Las Vegas collided with a reversing truck, is still under investigation, but apparently the autonomous vehicle performed as it was programmed to it saw the approaching lorry and stopped. The human-operated vehicle, on the other hand, didn't, and continued to reverse until it crashed.

It's hard to say what a human driver would have done in the situation, although I suspect some creative thinking like beeping their horn or reversing themselves in order to actively avoid the collision would have been likely. The shuttle, however, wasn't programmed to do that so despite obeying its programming, the collision still happened.

And this is part of the problem with driverless cars when they share the road with human drivers; they don't have the ability to think in the abstract ways that humans do. While their reaction times may be faster, they can't problem solve in the way a person can when an unexpected situation occurs.

Does this mean we should abandon autonomous vehicles completely? Not at all. Even I, an arch sceptic on a lot of things, have come round to the idea of self-driving cars and trucks. For one, it could help counter the kinds of terrorist attacks that we've seen in London, Barcelona, Berlin, Nice and Charlottesville, where vehicles have been deliberately driven into crowds.

But while we still have human-operated vehicles, I don't think there's any way for these two vastly different driving styles to safely share the same roads at the same time. Humans are too unpredictable, they don't always obey the rules. They're not robots.

While human-driven cars still comprise the vast majority of traffic, and perhaps even when they don't, we need to determine a safe way for driverless vehicles to use the road. Though this is really a question for urban planners, separate lanes that are physically divided from the mainstream traffic (so that those unpredictable humans don't decide to just break the rules and use it), seems like an obvious solution - although standardisation is also needed.

Will that require us to rethink how our cities are laid out? Yes, but with the push for smart cities, we're going to have to do that anyway.

Driverless cars are the (eventual) future, but if we want to get there anytime soon, we need to make sure it's done smoothly and safely.

An Australian report suggests that drink-driving laws should not apply to people if they use self-driving cars, when the technology comes of age.

With autonomous cars already being tested in Australia, the The National Transport Commission (NTC) has been looking at what legislative changes will be necessary when self-driving cars become common. In fact, the NCT believes that current laws could potentially be a "barrier" to the use of these cars, which are expected in commercial rollouts by 2020.

The NTC recently published a report which looks into many different aspects of the laws that would need changing, such as whether the responsibility lies with the person in the car or the autonomous driving system.

It also suggested that drivers who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol should not be subject to drunk driving laws if using an autonomous car, stating that getting into a self-driving car drunk is similar to getting into a taxi.

The report states: "Enabling people to use an automated vehicle to drive them home despite having consumed alcohol has the potential to improve road-safety outcomes by reducing the incidence of drink-driving."

The report does, however, note that this exemption should not apply to drivers under the influence who are in vehicles that can switch to manual driving.

While the technology may still be a while away from full autonomous cars, the NTC thinks they "will have overall safety benefits for the road network by reducing the risk of human error".

News has come out today about Domino's Pizza collaborating with Ford to create self-driving pizza delivery vehicles.

I have a fundamental problem with this proposition and it's not one of my normal hobby horses. No, my issue is that were this to become the standard method of delivery I would never receive another pizza again, which is sad because pizza is my favourite food.

This probably sounds a bit dramatic, but it's true for one simple fact: my house isn't easily accessible by car.

Also, even human deliverers, who have the advantage of being able to get out of their car and walk to the door, find delivering pizza to me difficult as applications like Google Maps simply aren't capable of directing people to my house. I can always tell when a newbie has joined the Domino's team because I'll get a slightly panicked phone call from someone driving up and down the very short adjoining street looking for this phantom house of mine.

I also have better things to do than staring at a GPS tracker while I wait for my food to arrive (as is required by this service).

When it comes to finding problems with stories like this, I often hark back to my rural roots and I'm certain it will be a problem there (for reasons that go beyond the issue of Sat Nav), but I'm now an urbanite and can't imagine I'm the only one in this scenario either.

Aside from the problem solving and access aspects outlined above, which an autonomous car simply wouldn't be able to solve, this idea overlooks a number of (in my opinion) obvious problems.

People have to go to the car to pick up their meal: How do they know which is theirs? How can you ensure they only take what they ordered? If the answer is that each vehicle only carries one order at a time, isn't that wasteful, particularly at peak times? And what about people with limited mobility or who would find it hard to otherwise leave the house? (This does seem to have occurred to the president of Domino's USA as well, at least in part).

An unmanned car is also surely more vulnerable to vandalism, too. And that's before I get onto my usual "what about the workers?" quest.

This isn't to say I rubbish the idea of autonomous vehicles all together, or at least not any more the recent spate of terrorist attacks that use vehicular homicide as the method of choice changed that. But gimmicks like this (and I'm sorry, it's a gimmick) won't do much to help further the idea of driverless vehicles being useful and worthwhile in the eyes of the public.

For the past few years, automotive companies have looked for ways to make cars crashes more survivable for pedestrians, and an idea by Google's Waymo company might be the most inventive yet. First spotted by Quartz, a patent from Waymo describes bodywork that can become softer just before contact with a pedestrian.

The patent described "tension members" that might be cables or rods, which can then tighten or loosen to reduce the rigidity of the car. If these loose body panels hit a pedestrian, the extra movement they allow could absorb some of the energy involved, giving the human a better chance of survival.

"If it is determined that a bicyclist is about to strike the hood and front bumper of the vehicle, the tension may be reduced for the tension members associated with the hood and front bumper, so as to reduce the rigidity of those surfaces," the patent reads.

Interesting, the patent also adds that this system will be able to differentiate between pedestrians and cars. That way, it will only be triggered before crashing into a soft human, and not an equally tough metal car.

While the technology could work in pretty much any car, Waymo filed the patent specifically for autonomous cars, and there's a good reason for that. Driverless cars will be connected, which means they'll be great at avoiding each other - but without a driver, they might be less good at avoiding pedestrians.

It's easy for humans to predict the driving of other humans, but it might be harder for pedestrians to predict the driving of AI-controlled cars. That's what these new safety features are designed to counteract.

It's been said that the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed and that's true of self-driving cars.

For most of us in the UK, the only driverless vehicle we're likely to get a ride from anytime soon is East London's DLR, but head to Greenwich, Milton Keynes and Bristol if you want a sneak peak at the future of automated automotives in action. There are three main government-backed, British-led projects across the UK: GATEway in Greenwich; UK Autodrive in Milton Keynes and Coventry; and Venturer in Bristol.

Greenwich

Head to Greenwich on the right day and you could be forgiven for thinking you've stepped a few years into the future. The London borough is home to a variety of driverless projects, including take-away delivery robots, shuttle buses, and Ocado delivery trucks.

Under the GATEway programme, the first driverless cars to hit London's roads were developed by Oxbotica, a spin-out from the University of Oxford. Described as "pods" or "shuttles", they're essentially small buses without a driver. They travel up to 10mph carrying four passengers, guided by LIDAR and cameras through routes near the O2 Arena in Greenwich.

Credit: the GATEway project

Dr Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica, said at the time that the shuttle "represents an enormous step forward on our journey of implementing real world mobility-as-a-service capability in an operational fleet which can ultimately run without human intervention".

Head further east to Woolwich and as part of the GATEway project, grocery delivery service Ocado has been trialling tiny lorries, also developed by Oxbotica and using its Selenium software. The CargoPod lorries shuttle eight boxes of groceries over a 3km route through a local estate, dodging gates, street furniture and cyclists. During the ten-day trial, the CargoPod also carried two humans in the front seats.

Credit: Oxbotica

"The GATEway project is unique in that it considers the effect of automated vehicles on the movement of goods as well as the movement of people," Simon Tong, principal research scientist at transport firm Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and technical lead for the GATEway project, said in a statement. "This trial with Ocado Technology provides an ideal platform to help us understand how and where these vehicles could best operate and whether people would accept, trust and like them as an automated delivery service in the city. We envisage that cities could benefit massively if deliveries could be made by quiet, zero emission, automated vehicles when congestion is minimal."

Cars, rather than pods, are also being trialled elsewhere in London, as part of private firms' efforts to develop driverless technologies. Nissan tested its automated Leaf electric car on a course around the Excel Centre in East London. Nissan's ProPilot tech is designed to let drivers have a break and take their hands off the wheel from time to time, rather than be entirely automated, with the car maker saying it plans to offer models that can handle most driving by 2020, with drivers only required to take the wheel in an emergency. Volvo aims to run similar trials on roads in West London later this year, using its Intellisafe Autopilot system.

Milton Keynes, Nuneaton and Coventry

The city of Coventry has become a driverless hub, with demos and trials of automated vehicles already shuttling locals between the train station and other destinations. The first project was the LUTZ Pathfinder, designed in part by Oxbotica. Those pods are two-seater, 15mph vehicles that operate on pavements rather than roads, watching for obstacles via lasers and cameras.

Some of the members of that project have joined the UK Autodrive programme, which alongside rolling out a fleet of 40 of the pavement pods is looking to trial more standard cars with automated skills later this year.

The UK Autodrive consortium which includes Ford, Jaguar Land Rover and Tata isn't only looking into fully driverless cars but connected ones, with vehicles able to communicate and share information.

In a demonstration at a private track in Nuneaton in June, the cars were shown warning drivers that an emergency vehicle was approaching from a certain direction and sent traffic information from road-side units, including warnings on speed limit changes or temporary lane closures. Plus, the connected cars knew when other vehicles were approaching a junction and could warn drivers that a collision was likely. Future versions of the connected cars will alert drivers when a car in front brakes, time driving speed to hit more green lights than red, and assign priority to a car when two approach an intersection without lights or signs.

The UK Autodrive project also showed off driverless technology at the Nuneaton track, with a Range Rover Sport autonomously steering through junctions and roundabouts, and dodging obstacles.

Those technologies are soon set for public road trials. Later this year, they'll head to Milton Keynes and Coventry on segregated bits of road, before fully open trials in 2018. "The successful completion of the proving ground trials marks a significant milestone for the project team, and we are now looking forward to demonstrating the benefits of these exciting new technologies in the real-world settings of Milton Keynes and Coventry," said Tim Armitage, Arup's UK Autodrive project director, in a statement.

Bristol

A third British autonomous project is working out of Bristol. Called Venturer, this project is focusing less on driverless cars and more on how we interact with them and how they interact with each other.

The research is based out of the University of the West of England, with the trials happening across the private roads on the campus using a BAE Systems Wildcat. The first tranche of research has now been published, looking at how people handover driving to the car and vice versa.

The research found that people took 1.77 seconds to respond to a handover request the car telling the human driver to take the wheel and a further one second to resume active driving. That means the total handover time was close to three seconds. After a handover, drivers tended to keep below recommended speed limits.

"The findings from the driving simulator study, supported by similar experimental conditions used in the road study, suggest that designers of AV technology with handover functionality need to proceed with caution," the study said. "The experiments highlight the need to consider human performance under multiple driving conditions and scenarios in order to plot accurate takeover and handover time safety curves."

The next rounds of research will look at how autonomous vehicles interact with other road users at junctions how computer-driven cars can understand interactions such as when people indicate to each other with a nod of the head or waving each other through and also examine at interactions between buses, pedestrians and cyclists.

As part of the work, Venturer will not only stay on campus, but use a driverless pod on public roads later this year.

Where next?

Oxbotica and its partners will get on the motorways between Oxford and London in 2019, with the DRIVEN consortium set to test autonomous cars as part of a 8.6 million project. Those cars will require level four automation meaning they can handle the road and all safety-critical functions without any human interaction and use Oxbotica's Selenium software.

The DRIVEN consortium includes Oxbotica, Telefonica O2, Transport Research Laboratory, Transport for London, and more including insurance firm XL Catlin, as figuring out how to insure automated vehicles presents a challenge. Oxbotica's Dr Smith, said: "We are seeking to address some of the most fundamental challenges preventing the future commercial deployment of fully autonomous vehicles."

Main image credit: Oxbotica

Volkswagen has invested $180 million in Chinese AI startup Mobvoi, while Delphi Automotive has invested in three companies to help boost its efforts in the autonomous car arena.

Volkswagen's $180 million will ensure the company is one of the first vehicle manufacturers to take advantage of Mobvoi's voice-recognition and natural language processing technology in its driverless cars. Its voice commands can be used alongside a smart rear view mirror that displays navigation services, messaging and other information in an easy-to-see place.

Mobvoi has received funding from a number of other huge entities, including Google in its last funding round. Alphabet, Google's parent company, helped the business boost its value to $300 million and it became the first Chinese company to benefit from Google money.

In a similar deal, Mobvoi became an official partner of the Google Android Wear platform, which now uses the voice recognition software.

Leading on from Volkswagen's driverless car investment, Delphi Automotive has invested in connected car services company Otonomo and chip maker Valens. It's also partnered with ethernet connector business Rosenberger, hoping to use all three solutions in the car parts it distributes to manufacturers.

Otonomo in particular will help car manufacturers realise the potential of data when developing new autonomous car innovations. Its platform collects the data from driverless cars, anonymises it and then sells in in a third party marketplace so car manufacturers can then come up with ideas that will improve the customer experience.

"They're a data broker, they're providing enabling technologies allowing the (automaker) to market their data across a wide array of services and vendors," Delphi's CTO, Glen DeVos, said.

He added that the company's investments and partnerships will help it open up its business to new market sectors, including retailers, fleet transport services and vehicle repair services.

Members of the public have the opportunity to test out a new driverless shuttle in Greenwich.

Those invited to be part of the research - 5,000 people reportedly applied - will be able to ride the shuttle, named 'Harry' in honour of navigation visionary John Harrison, on a selected two-mile course in Greenwich over the next three weeks.

The shuttle can take up to four people and has a trained person on board who can stop the shuttle if necessary, complying with the UK's code of practice on automated vehicle testing.

Oxbotica, the firm behind the shuttle, has fitted its machine out with software called Selenium, which enables real-time navigation, planning, and perception in dynamic environments.

Dr Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica, said that the shuttle "represents an enormous step forward on our journey of implementing real world mobility-as-a-service capability in an operational fleet which can ultimately run without human intervention".

He added: "Greenwich is an ideal focus for these trials in urban pedestrianised environments and we hope to learn tremendously from how autonomous vehicles interact with pedestrians and cyclists in real-world settings."

Harry has no steering wheel or pedals and it can detect up to 100 metres ahead of it and come to a steady stop. Over an eight-hour period of operation, a single GATEway shuttle will collect four terabytes of data - equivalent to 2,000 hours of film or 1.2 million photographs.

The focus of this study is not the technology, but how it functions alongside people in a natural environment. This first trial will explore people's preconceptions of driverless vehicles and barriers to acceptance through detailed interviews with participants before and after they ride in the shuttle.

The shuttle is part of an 8 million research project called GATEway (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) "to develop and investigate the use, perception and acceptance of fully automated vehicles in the UK" led by the UK's Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and funded by government and industry.

Oxbotica, spun out from Oxford University's Mobile Robotics group, said its Harry project is one of a number of trials taking place as part of the GATEway Project to help understand the use, perception and acceptance of automated vehicles in the UK.

London joins other cities in the world which are offering rides on autonomous shuttles to the public. Lyon became the first city to operate a daily driverless bus service, which run along a 10-minute route in the Confluence area.

In Australia, shuttles are going to be used in a trial at Adelaide Airport to transfer travellers between the main terminal and long term car park. In the US shuttles were used to transport workers in a complex of office parks and are expected to be trialled in public streets surrounding the parks later this year.

Picture credit: Oxbotica

Investment in 5G, robotics and expanding fibre networks underpinned the government's technology promises in yesterday's Spring Budget 2017 as it tries to prepare the UK for a post-Brexit landscape.

Chancellor Philip Hammond outlined a 270 million investment spread across driverless cars, robotics and biotech, as well as a 16 million 5G fund and 200 million for councils to try out projects to roll out full-fibre broadband networks.

One central aim of the budget was to "invest in cutting-edge technology and innovation, so Britain continues to be at the forefront of the global technology revolution", according to the government, as it seeks to stabilise Britain's finances ahead of a potentially rocky exit from the EU.

Charlotte Holloway, policy director at trade industry body techUK, said: "Today's Budget shows a consistent approach from the Chancellor, laying solid foundations for what will be an uncertain period ahead. The digital sector is the fastest-growing part of the UK economy and today's Budget will provide tech companies with reassurance that the Chancellor understands that their success is critical for a truly Global Britain."

Welcoming the investments in 5G, driverless cars, robotics and broadband, she also lauded a 40 million budget for the Department for Education to try different approaches to retrain people throughout their working lives, after a Parliamentary committee called on Whitehall to upskill those who face losing their jobs to AI in the future.

A 300 million pot to support 1,000 new STEM PhD places and fellowships will also be created, while T-Levels will be introduced from 2019-2020 for 16-19-year-olds to enter technical training.

The cash for much of the technology investment comes from the 23 billion National Productivity Investment Fund created in last year's Autumn Statement.

5G

Ofcom wants 5G technology to arrive in the UK by 2020, but there are still no firm plans for what spectrum it will utilise and trials won't take place until 2018 at the earliest.

Nevertheless, the government plans to fund a National 5G Innovation Network that can trial and demonstrate 5G applications and establish a "centre of 5G expertise" within government to oversee this with private sector partners.

O2 COO Derek McManus welcomed the 5G investment, but said a spectrum cap of 35% is necessary to keep 5G networks competitive. "The 5G strategy sets out a clear plan which will help secure the UK's status as a leading digital economy, but a competitive framework must be in place to ensure the 5G network is up to scratch," he said. "A competitive auction will allow the mobile industry to successfully evolve towards 5G, laying the foundation for a prosperous digital future for UK consumers and businesses."

Broadband

With 200 million funding, the government hopes to group demand from schools, hospitals and other public bodies to make it more attractive for telcos to invest in rural broadband roll outs.

The cash will support a 400 million Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund that will be matched by private sector investmen, which will be launched in spring 2017.

Rufus Grig, chief technology and strategy officer at telecoms firm Maintel, argued that the investment doesn't go far enough, saying it's crucial small businesses get better connections as they rely on data more and more.

"Philip Hammond's proposed investment in rural broadband is a huge step forward for all small businesses," he said. "However, it cannot stop there. More must be done to manage networking services for British companies if they are to compete on the global stage and drive our economy forward.

"Real-time traffic on enterprise networks will continue to increase, through voice or video calls, screen-sharing, instant messaging or video casts. These business critical real-time applications, with low tolerance to delays or errors put networks under enormous strain."

Marc Agnew, VP of ViaSat Europe, also said the investment was too small in scope.

"Fibre alone, while offering hyper-fast speeds in the right circumstances, will never reach every household without being prohibitively expensive," Agnew said.

"The UK is at serious risk of ending up with a two-tier internet; where those areas with fast services reap the benefits in terms of education, opportunity and investment, while those without broadband are left further behind," he added.

Automation and skills

As the UK pushes more investment into cutting-edge technologies like driverless cars and robotics, several observers noted that a focus on skills is necessary to ensure humans keep up with a changing technological landscape.

Chris Francis, SAP's UK director of government relations, said: "We can only continue to drive innovation if we have the skills fit for the digital economy. The Chancellor's budget rightly places digital skills training at the centre of the commitment to securing the UK's economic future. We support efforts to reinvigorate technical education within our schools and universities as well as its plans to collaborate with businesses like SAP on digital skills training initiatives.

"However it's equally important to support the contribution of business to the wider digital and business skills agenda and lifelong learning, ensuring we have flexibility to meet our employees', partners' and the community's needs, not a one size fits all approach."

He also welcomed yesterday's insight into what the 23 billion National Productivity Investment Fund will be spent on transport networks, better digital infrastructure, 250 million on STEM PhD fellowships and building a talent pipeline from abroad.

That funding is in addition to last week's Digital Strategy, which set out a variety of private sector-led initiatives to improve people's digital skills.

Francis added: "We also welcome the government's commitment to supporting disruptive technologies such as biotech, robotics and automation through its 270m investment, but it's essential the ambition to harness innovation is matched by outcome-orientated action.

"We'd like to see more from the government, especially using public procurement and other industry-government touch points, on stimulating demand side digital investment across all sectors of the economy to help address our productivity challenge in the short and medium term whilst we await the results of the longer term investments."

James Smith, MD of tech recruiter Networkers, said: "The skills gap in the technology sector is well documented, and the industry and government desperately need to address this to ensure UK businesses are fit for the future."

Networkers' head of data science and AI, Chris Rosebert, added: "Without doubt AI and robotics are providing the biggest technology leap that we have seen in a very long time and will affect every business and individual.The fight for skilled professionals is intense and tech hubs like Berlin and Barcelona are becoming increasingly attractive to UK-based candidates."

We all know this year is going to be an interesting one for tech. While there will be new and exciting innovations, as well as a likely explosion in virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence (AI) use cases, one thing that has been waiting for its moment in the sun for a long time is the autonomous car.

As far-fetched as it is inevitable that we will one day see driverless vehicles occupying our roads, the race to get that point has so far been fraught with failures, security risks and slow progress.

One thing's agreed - autonomous vehicle technology, or similar AI-infused systems in our cars and public transport, has the potential to change how the world gets around in ways we might not even be able to comprehend yet. How we get there depends on who leads us into that potentially bright new future.

Changing the world

Karl Iagnemma, CEO of NuTonomy - a startup based in Singapore - told IT Pro: "We believe self-driving cars are the future of transportation, including both public transport and privately owned transportation. Autonomous vehicles will fundamentally change the driving industry as well as public transportation by offering lower costs to operate, increased safety and enhanced efficiency."

Late last year, NuTonomy announced it would be testing self-driving taxis on roads in the US city of Boston after successfully trialling the vehicles on roads in Singapore.

It's true the potential of autonomous vehicles for certain parts of the population is huge, allowing people with disabilities to get around more easily, reducing pollution through ride-sharing and, once the kinks have been worked out, increasing safety for passengers and pedestrians alike.

Iagnemma continued: "Autonomous vehicles promise to dramatically reduce fatalities and injuries, and to bring freedom to people living with physical challenges that prevent them from driving."

In December, Google re-stated its intent to be a big part of the driverless car race by spinning-off its dedicated business into a new one under the Alphabet umbrella - Waymo. This came after rumours that Google would be backing away from developing its own self-driving car.

Uber and Lyft are also becoming big players in the space, with Lyft founder John Zimmer promising autonomous vehicles would be the majority within five years and that, by 2025, private car ownership would all-but end in major US cities.

Uber, meanwhile, has launched a driverless car service with Volvo, after two years of training on Pittsburgh roads. The move has been celebrated as a breakthrough, beating NuTonomy in the complexity and size of the area its cars will be able to cover.

Not quite-driverless cars

As Nicholas Taylor, professor of computer science at Heriot-Watt University and deputy director of Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, argues, we may see a period of 'mixed autonomy' before we give up our steering wheels for good.

"The development of 'connected cars' that communicate with one another and drive with total autonomy is an area that is going to define the evolution of automated vehicles," he said. "Vehicles that can communicate with one another will reduce congestion, improve safety, and maximise the fuel efficiency of journeys.

"However, these cars won't be able to communicate with cars that aren't connected, which means we may enter a transitional period of 'mixed autonomy'. As autonomous vehicles won't be able to understand the nuances that distinguish human communications when driving, such as flashing or the different uses for hazard lights, serious accidents may well occur as a result of knowledge gaps or misunderstandings."

Up until this point, while companies such as Ford have invested in developing fully-autonomous cars, others have placed their focus on the possibility of introducing autonomous features into otherwise ordinary vehicles. This could see more tech companies and manufacturers partner their efforts.

This of course includes Tesla Autopilot, which is widely used by drivers already. We are also seeing more of experimental technology such as Audi's 'vehicle-to-infrastructure' tech, which allow cars to communicate with street furniture such as traffic lights via the cloud.

Meanwhile, Ford has doubled its investment in driverless car research and announced plans to mass-produce driverless cars in 2021, saying these vehicles would act much like taxis.

In early 2016, Google, Ford, Volvo, Uber and Lyft formed the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which aims to help form the regulations around driverless car use on US roads.

Cyber-security and legal issues

Despite much of the intention behind driverless cars being to increase safety, it has, of course, introduced its own problems. One of these is cyber-security and the potential for a vehicle's systems to be hacked and used for purposes outside of the occupant's control.

"Cybersecurity is recognised as a critical aspect of autonomous vehicle deployment," said NuTonomy's Iagnemma. "A significant number of companies have emerged in the cyber-security space to address the issues related to security in autonomous vehicles. NuTonomy relies on both in-house expertise and partnerships with outside companies to ensure that our vehicles are safe and secure."

One high-profile example of the consequences of vehicle AI not performing as it should is that of a Tesla Model S that, while in Autopilot mode, crashed into a lorry, killing the driver.

This wasn't due to hacking, though. Rather, it's thought the tech that enables the Model S to be semi-autonomous failed to distinguish between the side of the white lorry and the sky, meaning the car didn't slow down or take evasive action.

The rise of autonomous vehicles could also pose unique problems on a legal front, as Emma Wright, commercial technology partner at Kemp Little, told IT Pro.

"Self-driving cars are like many other emerging technologies the law develops after the technology," she said. "This has an impact on how the technology is perceived and dealt with when an accident happens.

"Legislators are faced with the conundrum of potentially over-regulating an infant market and stifling its growth and adoption, or not sufficiently protecting the consumer, a tricky balance which can lead to suboptimal safety standards or even a considerable risk to human life. The indications seem to be that governments are looking for the car manufacturers to attempt to self-regulate at least to some degree and adopt high standards for vehicle safety."

When will we see autonomous cars?

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While so-called 'smart cities' such as Singapore seem slightly more equipped to one day soon introduce autonomous driving as the norm on public roads, in the UK and US it will be much more challenging.

In July 2016, however, the UK government announced it would be paving the way for driverless cars to hit the roads, redrawing the Highway Code and other regulations to cater to their arrival.

It was also announced in March 2016 that autonomous vehicles would start to be trialled on UK motorways for the first time in 2017, after testing in Bristol, Coventry, Milton Keynes and Greenwich over summer that year. In November, Chancellor Philip Hammond allocated 390 million in funding to the development of low emission and autonomous vehicles.

Professor Nicholas Taylor said: "We are entering a phase of substantial, ever accelerating progress that will establish significant technological, and potentially social, change in the next five to 10 years. The UK is fortunate to have a rich supply of world-leading scientists, engineers, and academic experts who specialise in the area, and we are now a global leader in intelligent vehicle design and development."

While there are many exciting things to come in the next 5-10 years, overcoming barriers in cyber-security, driver safety and consumer anxiety will be big hurdles in making autonomous vehicles commonplace. But, with more and more companies partnering to accelerate the progress of the technology, that reality could come sooner than we think.

Main image credit: Bigstock

Other image credits: NuTonomy, Bigstock, Bigstock

Carmakers Ford and Toyota have partnered to provide free tools to developers wanting to create smartphone apps for automobiles, taking on the likes of Google and Apple.

The SmartDeviceLink (SDL) Consortium, a non-profit organisation jointly run by the car manufacturers, aims to give greater choice to consumers wishing to integrate their smartphones and use apps while driving.

The SDL has hosted its code on open source website GitHub, allowing developers to create SDL compatible smartphone apps on Android and iOS, which in turn will be able to run in any vehicle manufactured by companies signing up to the venture.

Alongside Ford and Toyota, Mazda, Peugeot Citroen, Suzuki and Subaru have all agreed to join the consortium so far, as automakers attempt to create an open standard for app integration.

"Encouraging innovation is at the centre of Ford's decision to create SmartDeviceLink, and this consortium is a major step toward that goal," said Doug VanDagens, global director of Ford Connected Vehicle and Services. "Consumers will win with new, innovative app experiences from increased collaboration and developer engagement."

Developers will be able to make use of current technology already built into SDL vehicles for controlling apps, including display screens, steering wheel controls and voice recognition.

The SDL framework builds on Ford's already existing AppLink software released to the open source community in 2013, which serves more than five million vehicles globally for apps including Spotify and AccuWeather.

"Connectivity between smartphones and the vehicle interface is one of the most important connected services," said Shigeki Tomoyama, president of Toyota's Connected Company. "Using SmartDeviceLink we can provide this service to our customers in a safe and secure manner."

However, while developers will be able to create apps built on SDL code, manufacturers will have the final say on what the user experience will look like, and how it will be integrated into a vehicle, according to VanDagens, speaking to TechCrunch.

Software company Livio, acquired by Ford in 2013, has also been drafted in to manage the project, providing guidance to the SDL consortium and its members.

The consortium represents a move by automakers to become less reliant on Silicon Valley for creating in-car app integration.

While Ford currently uses apps such as Android Auto and Apple's CarPlay in its vehicles, supporting open source creation will allow manufacturers to "deliver user experiences that meet their individual standards while retaining control over how much access apps have to vehicle data".

BlackBerry today similarly unveiled its own push towards in-car app development with the launch of its QNX Software Development Platform 7.0, a 64-bit operating system for use in both connected and automated vehicles.

Demonstrated today at CES 2017, the OS promises to provide "high performance and enhanced kernel-level security", including file encryption, anomaly detection and multi-level access controls to apps and features.

While the SDL platform is considered "stable", the consortium have stated that it is looking to the developer community to create new features and help identify bugs or areas for improvement.

Chancellor Philip Hammond today outlined measures meant to ensure the UK stands at the forefront of 5G, while stopping UK startups being "snapped up" by larger rivals.

Delivering the Autumn Statement to the House of Commons, Hammond said he would invest more than 1 billion in developing a 5G infrastructure, invest 390 million in connected cars and other car initiatives, and 110 million for a "tech corridor" between Oxford and Cambridge.

The investment was announced against a backdrop of a forecast 122 billion drop in the UK's finances up to 2021 as compared to a forecast back in March, as a result of Brexit.

5G

While the government doesn't expect 5G to arrive much earlier than 2025 in the UK, it is preparing for it now in order to underpin the proliferation of Internet of Things devices expected to grow over the next few years.

"My ambition is for the UK to be a world leader in 5G," the chancellor said. "That means a full fibre network [and] a step change in speed, security, reliability. We will invest over 1 billion in our digital infrastructure to catalyse private investment in fibre networks and to support 5G trials."

Around 740 million is expected to be spent on 5G, including trials around the UK, such as at the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey, though local authorities will be able to bid for allocations of the cash.

CCS Insight analyst and CEO, Shaun Collins, said: "Any investment in the UK digital backbone is welcome and the commitment to 5G is admirable. However, realistically 5G services are unlikely to be available before 2020 in the UK. This investment only offers a small step in that direction."

Fintech firm WorldRemit's director of mobile partnerships, Alix Murphy, said the government should ensure people have basic 3G access first. "The government should prioritise spending this money where it matters most, on those 35% of Brits who are not even covered by basic 3G mobile broadband and struggle to get reasonable speeds," said Murphy.

Business fibre networks

Hammond also introduced a 100% business rates relief that will stretch over five years to cover to support a further roll-out of superfast broadband fibre to homes and businesses.

However, Ewan Taylor-Gibson, broadband expert at uSwitch.com, said parts of the UK are falling behind in terms of access to basic broadband speeds.

"Superfast fibre broadband is available to 90% of the UK, yet 20 of the UK's 42 biggest cities are registering actual average speeds of below 24Mbps. And three in 10 broadband users register actual speeds of less than 5Mbps, while just 10% log speeds of above 50Mbps," he said.

"These figures suggest barriers to the take-up of fibre must be brought down whilst infrastructure is improved - barriers that include the awareness of the availability of fibre and pricing. It is critical the government ensures that, with ultrafast broadband in its sights, those already struggling with poor speeds or no access to broadband at all are not left behind."

Turning startups into scale-ups

The government also wants to address the UK's startup industry's issue with not being able to scale, with a 400 million investment into venture capital funds through the British Business Bank that intends to unlock 1 billion of new finance for startups ready to scale.

Hammond said: "I am taking a first step to tackle the longstanding problem of our fastest growing technology firms being snapped up by bigger companies, rather than growing to scale.

This is intended to mitigate fears over a loss of money from the European Investment Fund (EIF) post-Brexit, said techUK's policy director, Charlotte Holloway.

"Government has rightly taken action to mediate uncertainty arising on the European Investment Fund for start-ups and venture capital, by allocating 400 million into British Business Bank specifically for UK scaling tech companies," she said.

The EIF supported 144 UK private equity funds at the end of 2015, according to its own statistics, having invested 2.3 billion to trigger overall investment of 13.8 billion between 2011 and 2015.

Driverless cars, tech corridor, and R&D

TechUK hailed a 100 million commitment to developing an infrastructure for autonomous cars as helping to build on the UK's reputation as a tech leader.

Another 110 million will go towards building an Oxford to Cambridge expressway, which will function as a "tech corridor" that Hammond hopes will see the two universities share research.

Hammond confirmed an investment of up to 2 billion a year in science and technology R&D starting from next year until 2021, which was earlier announced by the Prime Minister.

He said: "As the pace of technology advances and competition from the rest of the world increases, we must build on our strengths in science and tech innovation to ensure the next generation of discoveries is made, developed and produced in Britain."

Mark van der Linden, UK country manager at Dropbox, said: "Research continues to be a global and collaborative process, so we hope today's 2 billion investment will help businesses and educational institutes increase the pace of innovation at home and abroad."

National Productivity Investment Fund

The government also outlined a 23 billion fund to address the UK's productivity gap - Whitehall's own statistics show the UK lagging behind the US and Germany by 20%.

TechUK's Holloway said: ""Investment in innovation is absolutely critical for driving tech-led growth and productivity, and it's great to see the 2bn extra investment in R&D for new technologies by 2021 and a 23 billion National Productivity Investment Fund to give a focal point to the level of the UK's national ambition."

Where was the skills investment?

Hammond didn't announce anything to close the huge gap between the number of skilled tech workers and the large number of vacancies for job roles like data scientists in the UK, which could increase further if the UK stops free movement with the EU after Brexit.

Analytics firm SAS's VP for northern Europe, Mark Wilkinson, said: "a lack of data skills is still holding back our workforce. The next generation requires a solid foundation in STEM skills that are crucial to developing a pool of analytically minded talent."

And Holloway added: "There was a real gap when it came to additional support for boosting the UK's digital skills."

Digital devolution

While Hammond touched on devolution, critics said the role of digital in developing local economies outside of London was left unexplored by the chancellor.

"There was a missed opportunity to ensure that the benefits of digital are at the heart of the government's devolution ambitions," said Holloway. "We will be looking to the government to reconsider these areas in the next budget."

Katie Gallagher, MD of independent trade association for digital businesses in the north west, Manchester Digital, added: "We will be working hard to ensure Manchester plays a part in these [5G] trials. The size of our city and the diversity of its neighbourhoods and the mix of businesses here makes us a perfect test bed for new technologies."

"We are in agreement with Hammond that for too long investment has been focused on London. We look forwards to hearing more detail on what this will mean for the North and specifically Manchester."

A group of Conservative MPs believe the UK must lead on AI and driverless car technologies in order to thrive following Brexit.

The the UK must promote technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to flourish in a post-Brexit landscape, according to the Free Enterprise Group, which presented a report written by member and Havant MP Alan Mak on Monday.

Addressing the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution', Mak said Britain's new industrial strategy must lead on emerging innovations like driverless cars and 3D printing.

"The message to the new Prime Minister [Theresa May] is we need to make the best of Brexit, we need to meet the challenges this country faces and cease the opportunities," Mak said.

Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Greg Clark, added that the emergence of these technologies "invites us to consider how we can best equip ourselves to meet the challenges of the future, given the rising pace of technological change".

He highlighted the need for long-term strategies to harness the "transformational" power of technologies such as AI, which are still in their infancy.

The government should encourage co-operation between different fields of expertise to accelerate innovation, by providing funds for new technologies and initiatives, the group stated.

Clark said: "The process of forming an industrial strategy should allow people to contribute with their knowledge, experience, expertise and insight." He pointed to the "exciting" example of bringing together automative expertise and energy innovation, "to anticipate a future in which all of important manufacturers see that zero emission in vehicles, and electric vehicles are their future".

The group's report outlines 20 recommendations for the government's industrial strategy that fall under three key areas: post-Brexit opportunities within the fields of science and technology; the need to invest in scientists and entrepreneurs residing in the UK; and the need to re-skill workers.

One of the concerns related to automation has been the idea that AIs could take over certain jobs, particularly lower and middle-skilled jobs, including roles involving routine manual or data processing tasks, which AI is getting increasingly better at.

This notion was reiterated in a recent report published by the Government Office for Science, and by scientists and governments worldwide.

Mak said Britain's industrial strategy should aim at "making sure that people have the necessary skills to cover the fourth industrial revolution jobs, so that none [are] left behind".

These new opportunities should also be readily available to those living outside London, particularly in parts of the UK that currently feel left behind.

"Now is the right time to think about this, as the fourth industrial revolution has begun. Things like driverless cars, AI, 3D printing, all of the aspects of the digital revolution are not just science fiction but changing the way that we live and work," Mak added.

Last month, the Science and Technology Committee urged the UK government to start re-skilling the population in light of automation.

Clark said on Monday: "It's very important to have a framework to allow and encourage challenge to ensure that we are all masters of the revolution."

Mak hopes that in future UK-based companies such as ASOS and Just Eat will acquire other British startups, which are often being acquired by foreign or international firms.

Immigration post-Brexit was also discussed during the debate. Mak said that the government should ensure that Britain retains highly skilled workers, but loses lower-skilled immigration, which he claimed Leave voters dislike.

GPU company Nvidia has partnered with satnav specialist TomTom to create a cloud-to-car mapping system for driverless cars.

Announced by Nvidia CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, at firm's GTC Europe conference in Amsertdam today, the deal will combine TomTom's HD map coverage, which already spans more than 120,000 km of highways and freeways, with Nvidia's Drive PX2 computing platform to accelerate support for real-time in-vehicle localisation and mapping for driving on the highway.

"Together we will create a cloud and car platform for the western market," said Huang. "TomTom has mapped a very large part of the world as you know, they are one of the world's greatest mapping companies, their services are used by almost everyone."

He explained that as TomTom maps the world the company is collecting video which is being processed internally and turned into a high definition map.

"That processing is enormous; it is the grand challenge of supercomputing, to literally record the world and turn it into an HD map," said Huang.

"It is a computational challenge of extraordinary conventions, recognising length, structures, objects, cars, and turn the whole thing into a 3D map and has to be accurate within a few centimetres."

He added: "All of that processing is done in their product, and we're teaming with them to accelllerate that processing so it can be superfast and we can continuously crunch that data in the future and turn it into 3D maps."

Together, the companies will develop a cloud-to-car platform comprising of HD map in the cloud, AI algorithms, localisation algorithms and an AI super computer for the car.

"This collaboration is an important step for TomTom," added TomTom's Willem Strijbosch, head of autonomous driving.

"Combining our highly accurate HD maps with NVIDIA's self-driving car platform will enable us to propose new features to automakers faster, and therefore to make autonomous driving a commercial reality sooner."

As part of the announcement, Nvidia said its DriveWorks software development kit now integrates support for TomTom's HD mapping environment, and the open solution is available for all automakers and tier 1 suppliers developing autonomous vehicles.

McLaren has vigorously denied that it is about to be bought by Apple, after reports suggested the tech giant was in talks to swallow up the luxury car manufacturer.

Negotiations between Apple and the Formula One team owner have been going on for several months, according to a Financial Times report.

McLaren has quashed this claim, however, stating to Sky Sports News that "we can confirm that McLaren is not in discussion with Apple in respect of any potential investment".

"As you would expect, the nature of our brand means we regularly have confidential conversations with a wide range of parties," a spokesman continued, "but we keep them confidential."

Apple issued its usual statement in response to stories of this nature, indicating that it "does not comment on rumours or speculation".

Initial reports indicated that Apple could be after the auto manufacturer - allegedly valued at around 1 billion - in order to accelerate its widely-rumoured entry into the self-driving car market, supposedly called 'Project Titan'.

Similar rumours suggested that the company was also investigating some form of investment in Tesla, Elon Musk's self-driving supercar.

Autonomous vehicles are getting closer and closer to widespread availability. Alongside Tesla, virtually every other major automaker is working on self-driving cars, with Uber currently testing a fleet of self-piloting taxis in Pittsburgh.

21/09/2016: Report: Apple considering buying McLaren

Have too much money burning a hole in your wallet? Buy a fancy car.

That's what Apple's apparently been trying to do, with the Financial Times reporting that the iPhone maker is in talks to buy - or at least partner with - luxury car manufacturer McLaren.

The talks have been underway for several months, according to the FT report, with the aim of using McLaren's expertise in on-board computers to boost Apple's own car project, which the company has never confirmed actually exists.

The deal may not happen, the report stressed - and it's not the first Apple car deal that's been rumoured, with investors and pundits alike repeatedly musing whether the iPhone maker would buy Elon Musk's Tesla.

Plus, McLaren is valued at more than 1bn, but Apple isn't wary of big deals, paying $3bn for Beats.

The Apple car efforts are believed to be called Project Titan, and the company has seen a swathe of motoring engineers leave the company in the past few months - but also new replacements, including former BlackBerry exec Dan Dodge, in an apparent switch from hardware to the software that runs driverless cars.

Any deal with McLaren suggests Apple does indeed wish to be involved in building cars, taking on the likes of tech firms such as Google and Uber as well as more traditional car makers such as Ford and GM, which are also eyeing the self-driving car market.

Given the competition's focus on self-driving cars and the wider connected car market, it'd be surprising if Apple didn't make a play for autonomous vehicles, though picking up a luxury brand best known for its Formula One team may not be as obvious a solution is merely buying Tesla.

Neither firm has yet commented on the report.

Most Lyft cars will be autonomous within five years, says ride-share founder John Zimmer - and that means we can have bar cars and more space in cities.

The president and co-founder of the Uber rival laid out his vision for the next decade of cars in a post on Medium, calling it the "third transportation revolution".

That will include Lyft evolving from offering taxi-style rides into an "on-demand network of autonomous vehicles," he noted, a plan similar to rival Uber, which is also already trialling driverless cars in the US.

"If you live in San Francisco or Phoenix, you may have seen these cars on the road, and within five years a fully autonomous fleet of cars will provide the majority of Lyft rides across the country," Zimmer said.

Disagreeing with Tesla founder Elon Musk's prediction that people will share their privately owned cars with strangers, Zimmer instead believes private ownership of cars will "all but end" in major US cities by 2025, comparing it to music, when people stopped buying CDs in favour of using streaming services such as Spotify.

Zimmer imagined what self-driving cars will look like. "Will they have couches and TV screens?" he asked. "Will happy hour take place with friends on the ride back from work?" In other words, Zimmer just invented the bar car.

All of this will change what our cities look like. Zimmer's argument is cars take up too much space. "Next time you walk outside, pay really close attention to the space around you," he wrote. "Look at how much land is devoted to carsand nothing else. How much space parked cars take up lining both sides of the street, and how much of our cities go unused covered by parking lots."

Much of that is a waste, he said, claiming the average car spends 96% of its time parked. "In 2011, researchers estimated that there are at least 700 million parking spaces in the US," he said. "That means our country has more than 6,000 square miles of parkingbigger than my home state of Connecticut."

All of this will take just 10 years, he predicted, with a hybrid system of some driverless cars and more traditional cars on the roads until then.

Ford has said it will produce driverless cars that have no steering wheel by 2021.

The plan was outlined by Ford's president Mark Fields at an event in Palo Alto, California. He said the automaker would double its research investment as well as make a number of investments in the field of driverless cars.

He said that cars without steering wheels or pedals would be on the road by 2021. The fleet of cars would act as taxis. Customers would be able to hail them like taxis, which would mean taking on the likes of Uber as well as the cab industry.

"The next decade will be defined by automation of the automobile, and we see autonomous vehicles as having as significant an impact on society as Ford's moving assembly line did 100 years ago," said Mark Fields, Ford president and CEO. "We're dedicated to putting on the road an autonomous vehicle that can improve safety and solve social and environmental challenges for millions of people not just those who can afford luxury vehicles."

The firm is also looking to triple its fleet of autonomous vehicles in a bid to be the largest test fleet of any car manufacturer.

Ford has also made a number of investments in the field. Among them are: Velodyne, the Silicon Valley-based company involving light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors; Israel-based computer vision and machine learning company Saips; Nirenberg Neuroscience, a machine vision company; and Civil Maps, developer of scalable, 3D mapping technique.

The carmaker is also expanding its Silicon Valley operations, including a campus in Palo Alto.

"Our presence in Silicon Valley has been integral to accelerating our learning and deliverables driving Ford Smart Mobility," said Ken Washington, Ford's vice president of research and advanced engineering. "Our goal was to become a member of the community. Today, we are actively working with more than 40 startups, and have developed a strong collaboration with many incubators, allowing us to accelerate development of technologies and services."

The news comes as Audi said it would introduce a technology that would enable its cars to talk to traffic lights. Known as "vehicle-to-infrastructure" or "V-to-I", the technology, the technology will see an exchange of data between the car and road infrastructure through the cloud.

It will appear in A4 cars built after 1 June and will be added to some Q7 models next year. It is hoped the tech will prevent some crashes and decrease traffic congestion.

Pom Malhotra, the general manager of Audi's connected vehicles division, told Reuters: "This is designed not as a safety feature, but a comfort and convenience feature."

The system was developed by Traffic Technology Services and will be introduced into Europe when the infrastructure is ready, according to Audi.

A Tesla Model X drove its owner more than 20 miles to hospital after he suffered a pulmonary embolism, it has been revealed.

Joshua Neally, 37, claimed that the car's Autopilot feature saved his life, in contrast with recent reports of crashes that have painted the feature as potentially unsafe.

Neally was driving home through highway traffic in late July when the incident occurred, reports Slate. He reportedly started experiencing pains that felt like "a steel pole through [his] chest", and decided that letting the Tesla navigate to the hospital would be faster than calling an ambulance.

Although the car handled most of the journey autonomously, Neally admits that he did take over for the final leg, pulling the car off the highway and steering to the hospital. While he admits that it may have been wiser to wait for an ambulance, he also suggested that were it not for Autopilot, he may have lost control of the car due to his injuries.

Neally's ailment, which results from the arteries in a person's lungs becoming blocked, kills around 70 per cent of its 50,000 annual victims in under an hour.

The Autopilot feature was implicated in a Model S crash earlier this year, when the driver and the Autopilot system failed to distinguish between an oncoming tractor trailer and the white sky.

In a further blow, a key supplier for the system has jumped ship in the wake of the two collisions. Israeli firm Mobileye - which provides the EyeQ SoC - cited 'reputational concerns', although Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the split was "inevitable".

Apple has hired another specialist to work on its autonomous car project - former BlackBerry executive, Dan Dodge - as it plans to switch from driverless car hardware to focus on the software.

Dodge joined the Project Titan team earlier this year, according toBloomberg, after leaving BlackBerry in December 2015.

Dodge joined BlackBerry in 2010 when it acquired his own company, QNX Software, which provided software for air traffic control, nuclear power plants and automatives, and he headed up this division until he left the phone maker.

Apple has long been rumoured to be building a self-driving car to take on the likes of Google, and allegedly had hundreds of engineers working to design the vehicle.

It is now reported that Project Titan, as the initiative is known, has become a software-focused project to create an autonomous driving system, rather than a hardware-focused one to build an actual car, however.

This has been caused partly by the departure of many of the engineers and partly as the result of a strategic decision to leave the door open to partnering with or acquiring an existing manufacturer, according toBloomberg.

IT Procontacted Apple for comment on the rumours, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Although the Cupertino-based company has always refused to confirm or deny the existence of Project Titan, the rumour is strong. Tesla CEO Elon Musk in January said that it is an "open secret" in Silicon Valley that Apple is working on a self-driving car project. Ford's CEO has also said it is a "working assumption" at his company that Apple is working on a self-driving car.

Before anyone gets too excited, though, it is unlikely an Apple Car - or related project - will make an appearance at this year's September Special Event alongside the rumoured iPhone 7 and Apple Watch 2, as the company is apparently working towards a 2020 launch date.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued its first preliminary report into the fatal crash of a Tesla Model S last May.

The organisation found that the car - whose driver was killed in the incident - was travelling nine miles over the speed limit at the time of impact.

"Tesla system performance data downloaded from the car indicated that vehicle speed just prior to impact was 74 mph," the report read, adding that the car's Autopilot function was active at the time of the crash.

"The car was also equipped with automatic emergency braking that is designed to automatically apply the brakes to reduce the severity of or assist in avoiding frontal collisions."

The car collided with an articulated lorry as it pulled out onto the highway. The first photos of the crash have been included with the report, and show that the Tesla almost passed under the truck, before impacting the underside of the trailer and almost taking the whole roof off.

The NTSB has not given a probable cause for the crash, and has said that "all aspects of the crash remain under investigation". Tesla has not yet responded to the new report, but previously explained why the automatic brakes failed to activate.

"Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky," the company stated in an official blog post, "so the brake was not applied."

27/07/2016:Elon Musk confirms Autopilot not active in Pennsylvania Tesla crash

The Autopilot feature was turned off in a Tesla Model X that crashed in Pennsylvania on 1 July, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said on Twittertoday.

With information from the vehicle's logs, the company has been able to determine that the feature was not enabled when the accident occurred, and that it "would not have occurred" if it had been on at the time, reports CNN. The driver survived.

A Tesla spokeswoman told IT Pro: "There was a crash and as we do with all crash events we reached out to the customer to make sure they were okay and we were unable to contact him, but we have since been able to reach him, which is why Elon released a statement on Twitter."

The crash is separate to another involving a Model X near Montana, which the driver survived, and which occurred after the driver did not respond to alerts telling him to put his hands on the wheel.

Speaking about the Montana accident this week, a Tesla spokeswoman said: "The data suggests that the driver's hands were not on the steering wheel, as no force was detected on the steering wheel for over two minutes after autosteer was engaged."

The company has been widely criticised in light of the crash and related incidents, such as another accident involving a Tesla Model S that resulted in the death of the driver.

Joshua D. Brown, 40, from Canton, Ohiowas killed on 7 May when the Autopilot feature on his Model S did not distinguish between an oncoming vehicle and the sky.

In response to the crashes, Musk said: "We don't mind taking the heat for customer safety. It is the right thing to do."

13/07/2016:Tesla admits Autopilot was active in Model X crash

Tesla has admitted its Autopilot feature was engaged when one of its cars crashed in Montana on the weekend.

But the car manufacturer added that the driver did not respond to alerts telling him to put his hands on the wheel.

While the driver survived, a separate Tesla Model S crash in Florida resulted in the driver dying, when the Autopilot did not distinguish between an oncoming vehicle and the sky.

Speaking about the Model X accident, a Tesla spokeswoman told IT Pro: "The data suggests that the driver's hands were not on the steering wheel, as no force was detected on the steering wheel for over 2 minutes after autosteer was engaged (even a very small amount of force, such as one hand resting on the wheel, will be detected).

"This is contrary to the terms of use that are agreed to when enabling the feature and the notification presented in the instrument cluster each time it is activated."

She continued: "As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel. He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway."

A spokesman had previously said that there was no reason to assume that the autopilot feature had anything to do with the crash.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has said there are no plans to disable the autopilot feature. He did, however, tell theWall Street Journalabout plans for a blog post highlighting how drivers should use the technology in future.

In a tweet, Musk said: "We don't mind taking the heat for customer safety. It is the right thing to do."

The spokeswoman added: "Autosteer, which is enabled via the Driver Assistance tab under Settings, is best suited either for highways with a center divider. We specifically advise against its use at high speeds on undivided roads.

"That said, provided the driver remains alert, it will still be safer than a person driving unaided, as people are sometimes distracted or may become unable to operate the vehicle, due to falling sleep, fainting or experiencing a medical emergency. After either high lateral acceleration from a sharp corner is detected or there is no force on the steering wheel, the vehicle gradually reduces speed, stops and turns on the emergency lights."

Following the incidents, Tesla's use of the autopilot function in its cars is being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is also investigating why Tesla took 54 days to publicly report that there had been a fatality in the Model S crash.

11/07/2016:Elon Musk teases "Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, Part 2"

Elon Musk has hinted that he will be unveiling the second part of his "Top Secret Tesla Masterplan" later this week.

The eccentric tech billionaire has had a difficult couple of weeks, after the Tesla range's self-driving 'autopilot' mode was linked to at least one fatal crash.

On 7 May, the driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in Florida while the car was in Autopilot mode, an incident that is currently being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

A Tesla Model X crash in Pennsylvania is also being investigated by the NHTSA, although the collision was not fatal, and it is not currently known whether Autopilot was engaged.

"Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident," the company said in a statement to news organisations.

Exactly what Musk's "masterplan" consists of is yet to be revealed, but some suggest it relates to Tesla's proposed acquisition of renewable energy company SolarCity, of which Musk is chairman and principal shareholder.

Musk appeared to lend considerable weight to these rumours, when he tweeted that "a seamlessly integrated Tesla battery & solar power product that looks beautiful" is the reason he is pushing for a merger.

In addition to producing cars, Tesla is also working on standalone battery technology, which could be used to capture and store excess solar power that otherwise goes to waste while homeowners are at school or work.

08/07/2016:Second autonomous Tesla crash investigated by US authorities

A second road traffic incident involving a Tesla self-driving car is being investigated by police, after it appears the vehicle's Autopilot feature failed.

Although the crash was not as serious as a fatal collision in May that was revealed last week, it has still raised questions about whether the feature is safe or not.

According to news sources, the Tesla Model X hit a guard rail and bounced into a concrete barrier, flipping onto its roof in the process.

Authorities have said that although the Autopilot feature is not necessarily to blame, it will be looked at during the course of their investigation.

The driver of the car and his passenger were both hospitalised for their injuries, but it no third party is thought to have been hurt and it was the only vehicle involved.

Tesla said in a statement: "Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident."

The company received information following the road traffic incident saying the air bags had deployed, but the logs did not reveal whether controls had been taken over, giving them little insight into whether Autopilot had been activated or not.

Tesla's Autopilot feature allows the car to change lanes automatically and react to changes in traffic ahead, such as slowing to avoid obstacles.

01/07/2016: Driver dies in Tesla autonomous car accident

A man using Tesla Motors' semi-autonomous vehicle has been killed in a crash, after cameras inside the Tesla Model S failed to distinguish between a turning lorry and the sky.

Joshua D. Brown, 40, from Canton, Ohio died in the accident on May 7 when the brakes of the semi-autonomous car he was driving did not automatically activate. Brown did not manually activate the brakes either, said Tesla.

The company said in a blog post: "We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S.

"What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied."

It added: "The customer who died in this crash had a loving family and we are beyond saddened by their loss. He was a friend to Tesla and the broader EV community, a person who spent his life focused on innovation and the promise of technology and who believed strongly in Tesla's mission. We would like to extend our deepest sympathies to his family and friends."

The car passed under the second vehicle, which impacted the Model S' windshield. Tesla said in the statement that, had the Tesla hit the rear of the trailer, even at high speed, the crash safety system would have activated to prevent serious injury.

"As more real-world miles accumulate and the software logic accounts for increasingly rare events, the probability of injury will keep decreasing. Autopilot is getting better all the time, but it is not perfect and still requires the driver to remain alert. Nonetheless, when used in conjunction with driver oversight, the data is unequivocal that Autopilot reduces driver workload and results in a statistically significant improvement in safety when compared to purely manual driving."

The UK government announced in March that it was aiming to have autonomous vehicles cleared for roads by 2020, with trials beginning from 2017. Uber began testing driverless cars in Pittsburgh, US in May.

Google recently patented 'sticky cars' in order to minimise accidents by gluing people they hit to the car bonnet, and engineers are working on training the vehicles when to honk at other drivers.

Driverless cars could be insured to drive on UK roads under measures outlined in a fresh consultation the government launched today.

The Highway Code and other driving regulations would also be redrawn to accommodate self-driving vehicles, the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed.

Under the Pathway to Driverless Cars proposals,vehicles with advanced driver assistance systemswould be allowed to change lanes on the motorway and be parked via remote control.

Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: "Driverless car technology will revolutionise the way we travel and deliver better journeys. Britain is leading the way but I want everyone to have the chance to have a say on how we embrace and use these technologies.

"Our roads are already some of the safest in the world and increasing[ly] advanced driver assist and driverless technologies have the potential to help cut the number of accidents further."

The new consultation comes shortly after two semi-autonomous Tesla cars were involved in accidents, one of which killed the driver.

The crash in May occurred after the Tesla Model S's onboard camera failed to distinguish a lorry from the sky, and the driver failed to apply the brakes. The second crash, involving a Tesla Model X, is under investigation.

The UK has previously stated its intention to become a leader in autonomous cars, and the government believes advanced driving technology will be on sale in the UK in the next two to four years.

However, fully autonomous cars are not expected on Britain's road until the mid-2020s.

Despite the Tesla accidents, and a collision between a Google test car and another vehiclelast summer, today's consultation launch insists that self-driving vehicles will "deliver safer, smoother and smarter road journeys".

The proposed changes to the Highway Code and insurance legislation would form part of the government's Modern Transport Bill, and insurance would extend to cover product liabilities for automated vehicles. Insurers would pay out to victims, then reclaim the money from the manufacturers.

James Dalton, director of general insurance policy at the Association of British Insurers (ABI), said the organisation has been speaking with the DfT about the proposals for some months.

He added: "The development of automated driving will revolutionise motoring, potentially as important a road safety innovation as the seatbelt. Insurers strongly support the government's ambition of making the UK a world leader in this technology and believe the insurance industry has a key role in helping give consumers confidence in using these vehicles when they become more widely available."

Today's consultation continues for nine weeks, and signals the start of a "rolling programme of reform" to introduce driverless cars to UK roads, the government said, after previously stating an aim to complete a full review of legislation by the summer of 2017.

The government invested 20 million in autnomous car projects in February, and 19 million in 2015.Today it announced a new 30 million pot being made available from its Intelligent Mobility Fund for further research projects.

Business secretary Sajid Javid said: "Britain's auto industry has always been at the forefront of innovation and research. This additional 30 million of funding for reseach and development is a further sign of our commitment to making sure we're creating opportunities for UK businesses to thrive and attract global investment in world-class technology."

IBM has teamed up with an electric vehicle company to put its Watson artificial intelligence into a driverless electric bus.

Dubbed Olli, the autonomous vehicle will be used to take passengers around Washington DC, and is the brainchild of Local Motors, the Arizona-based automaker. It said its bus is the first vehicle to use IBM Watson's car-focused cognitive learning platform, Watson Internet of Things (IoT) for Automotive.

Local Motors unveiled the bus at its new facility in National Harbor, Maryland, 12 miles from the US capital. The bus itself is 3D-printed and can carry up to 12 people and is powered by an electric motor. There are more than 30 sensors integrated into the vehicle to help it get around town.

Using the Local Motors open vehicle development process, sensors will be added and adjusted continuously as passenger needs and local preferences are identified. The bus uses four Watson developer APIs - Speech to Text, Natural Language Classifier, Entity Extraction and Text to Speech - to enable interactions between the vehicle and passengers.

Passengers will be able to talk to the bus, discussing topics about how the vehicle works, where they are going, and why Olli is making specific driving decisions.

The Watson technology will enable Olli to understand and respond to passengers' questions as they enter the vehicle, including about destinations ("Olli, can you take me downtown?") or specific vehicle functions ("how does this feature work?" or even "are we there yet?").

Passengers can also ask for recommendations on local destinations such as popular restaurants or historical sites based on analysis of personal preferences.

Local Motors CEO and co-founder John Rogers said that Olli offered a "smart, safe and sustainable transportation solution that is long overdue".

"Olli with Watson acts as our entry into the world of self-driving vehicles, something we've been quietly working on with our co-creative community for the past year. We are now ready to accelerate the adoption of this technology and apply it to nearly every vehicle in our current portfolio and those in the very near future," he said.

Olli will be available for rides by the public over the summer and Miami-Dade County is said to be exploring a pilot programme in which several autonomous vehicles would be used to transport people around Miami.

Picture courtesy of IBM on Flickr

The man behind Linux

Who is it?

Linus Torvalds, the founder of computer operating system Linux

What's it about?

Torvalds touts the benefits of open source software, describing how opening up his project to thousands of other people led to improvements he had not imagined.

Key quote

"It didn't even start by people contributing code, it was more that people started contributing ideas."

Watch the talk

How a driverless car sees the road

Who is it?

Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car programme

What's it about?

Urmson espouses the benefits of driverless cars, and how to get around the problem that as cars get smarter, drivers get more irresponsible.

Key quote

"My oldest son is 11, and that means in four and a half years, he's going to be able to get his driver's license. My team and I are committed to making sure that doesn't happen."

Watch the talk

The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn

Who is it?

Jeremy Howard, data scientist and founder of machine learning company Enlitic

What's it about?

The consequences, both good and bad, of teaching computers to learn for themselves

Key quote

"We now know that computers can learn, and computers can learn to do things that we actually sometimes don't know how to do ourselves, or maybe can do them better than us."

Watch the talk

How we'll find life on other planets

Who is it?

Aomawa Shields, astronomer and astrobiologist

What's it about?

Examining distant planets' atmospheres helps us identify the signs of habitable planets

Key quote

"Trying to measure the atmospheric composition of an exoplanet passing in front of its host star is hard. It's like trying to see a fruit fly passing in front of a car's headlight."

Watch the talk

Why do ambitious women have flat heads?

Who is it?

Dame Stephanie Shirley, IT pioneer and businesswoman

What's it about?

How Dame Stephaniefought sexism in the 1960s by recruiting women for her tech start-up, and by introducing herself in business letters as 'Steve'. She also speaks plainly about the sacrifices necessary for success, and why it's so important to love what you do

Key quote

"You can always tell ambitious women by the shape of our heads: They're flat on top for being patted patronisingly."

Watch the talk

How to upgrade democracy for the Internet era

Who is it?

Pia Mancini, co-founder of DemocracyOS

What's it about?

How technology can help citizens decide the way politicians vote on every issue

Key quote

"We are 21st-century citizens, doing our very, very best to interact with 19th century-designed institutions that are based on an information technology of the 15th century."

Watch the talk

A delightful way to teach kids about computers

Who is it?

Linda Liukas, coder and children's writer

What's it about?

Children need to learn the new universal language - computer code. Liukas talks about how we can encourage kids to see computers not as boring, functional machines, but as a gateway to creating a new world

Key quote

"The kids of today, they tap, swipe and pinch their way through the world. But unless we give them tools to build with computers, we are raising only consumers instead of creators."

Watch the talk

The Earth is full

Paul Gilding, writer and activist

What's it about?

Gilding argues we've used up the Earth's resources and available space - then tells us what happens next

Key quote

"When we think about the future I paint, of course we should feel a bit of fear. But fear can be paralysing or motivating. We need to accept the fear and then we need to act."

Watch the talk

Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

Who is it?

Juan Enriquez, futurist specialising in genomics

What's it about?

The alarmingly permanent personal histories we are accidentally creating online

Key quote

"What happens if Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, cell phones, GPS, Foursquare, Yelp, Travel Advisor, all these things you deal with every day, turn out to be electronic tattoos? And what if they provide as much information about who and what you are as any tattoo ever would?"

Watch the talk

Behind the Great Firewall of China

Who is it?

Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao), a key figure in Chinese journalism

What's it about?

China censors criticism, but produces its own versions of Western social networks to wield freedom of speech like a weapon

Key quote

"This technology is very new, but technically is very old. It was made famous by Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong, because he mobilised millions of Chinese people in the Cultural Revolution to destroy every local government. It's very simple, because Chinese central government doesn't need to even lead the public opinion. They just give them a target window to not censor people. Not censoring in China has become a political tool."

Watch the talk

Your kids might live on Mars. Here's how they'll survive

Who is it?

Stephen Petranek, journalist and technology forecaster

What's it about?

Within 20 years, Petranek believes we will live on Mars. The question, he believes, is how

Key quote

"Governments and robots no longer control this game. Private companies are leaping into space and they will be happy to take you to Mars."

Watch the talk

Main picture courtesy of Steve Jurvetson

NuTonomy, a start-up spun off from MIT and Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) in 2013, wants to bring a fleet of driverless cars to act as public transport vehicles on the roads of Singapore.

Currently testing its first autonomous vehicle in an area of Singapore known as One North, the company is also working on a second car to add to its future fleet. The hope is that the cars can act as public taxis that help Singapore citizens to travel around the city, but without the cost of employing individual drivers. NuTonomy's vehicles are also electric cars, meaning they produce far lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Many companies have been working on autonomous vehicles, such as Google, Uber and Tesla. Google, Ford, Uber and Lyft recently formed a partnership aiming to speed up the delivery of driverless cars on public roads, and driverless shuttle 'pods' are being tested by Heathrow on London roads.

Doug Parker, COO of nuTonomy, said: "I think there have been a lot of articles about Google and other plays in the space a lot of people have built great offerings for highways, but we think the real challenge is urban driving.

It's incredibly hard to navigate in an uncontrolled area where there's people walking down the streets, cars going in both directions, or construction.

"One of the things we're going to be testing is 'car passing' - one of the hardest things for driverless cars to do is actually decide when to go around another car. This is the thing that all of the autonomous players need to solve."

It was announced in January that nuTonomy had completed a $3.6 million seed funding round and would continue to work in the US as well as Singapore. In both countries, government and industry have been working together in the hopes of bringing the cars to roads in the next few years.

IT Pro was able to experience what a short journey in a nuTonomy vehicle might be like, which you can view in the video here.

Google is expanding its self-driving car trials to Phoenix, Arizona, to test how well its vehicles perform in extreme heat.

"Arizona is known as a place where research and development is welcome, innovation can thrive, and companies can set up roots," Jennifer Haroon, head of business operations for the Google Self-Driving Car project, told Reuters.

"The Phoenix area has distinct desert conditions, which will help us better understand how our sensors and cars handle extreme temperatures and dust in the air."

Google has been driving four Lexus RX450h vehicles around the Phoenix area to create detailed maps of the roadways, traffic signals and pavement heights.

Phoenix is the fourth major US location that the tech giant will conduct tests of its autonomous vehicles.

Google has spent six years running trials of its fleet of self-driving cars in Mountain View, California, its home base.

It expanded those trials to Austin, Texas, last summer, and earlier this year began running experiments in Kirkland, Washington, which has significantly rainier weather.

The tech company has been enthusiastic about getting its autonomous vehicles approved for full road use, but US federal laws have so far stopped it, and other makers of autonomous vehicles, from being able to realise their full ambitions.

In related news, a convey of 12 self-driving trucks have successfully completed a round trip of Europe.

This was the first time a feat of this kind has been completed on public roads anywhere in the world, according to the EU's Truck Platooning Challenge.

The platoon of 12 connected trucks, from six different brands, travelled 1,300 miles from their manufacturers depots all the way to Rotterdam.

A convoy of this kind differs from Google's autonomous vehicles, which are programmed to deal with a vast number of situations. In this particular case the trucks were following each other on highways and remaining a safe distance apart.

The UK government is planning self-driving truck trials of its on UK motorways later this year.

Image: Google/PR

Autonomous cars will be trialled on UK motorways for the first time starting from 2017, the government is set to announce.

Chancellor George Osborne will share plans on Wednesday to test driverless vehicles on motorways and say the government will advance proposals to remove regulatory barriers to the technology, the Treasury told Reuters.

The announcement will be yet another step to towards autonomous vehicles receiving full regulatory clearance, with a new goal of the machines being fully cleared by 2020.

"Naturally we need to ensure safety, and that's what the trials we are introducing will test," Osborne said in a statement.

"If successful, we could see driverless cars available for sale and on Britain's roads, boosting UK jobs and productivity."

Autonomous lorries were mooted to be the among the first autonomous vehicles to be tested on UK motorways two weeks ago.

Driverless car trials will take place in four areas of the UK this summer: Bristol, Coventry, Milton Keynes and the London borough of Greenwich. A set of converted Heathrow pods will take part in the Greenwich trial.

Driverless car tests will be restricted to vehicles with a human driver present and able to take control should the need arise, the Department for Transport has said.

UK government has also awarded eight UK-led projects with 20 million to conduct research and development on autonomous cars and the future of roadway infrastructures.

Meanwhile, the US's highways safety agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said there are still significant legal obstacles to be cleared before self-driving cars without steering wheels and gas pedals could be sold in the States underlining comments it previously made in a letter to Google about its self-driving AI system.

Autonomous technology is about to receive a boost from an unlikely source: George Osborne. According to a report from The Times, a new trial of driverless lorries will be announced in a speech by the chancellor next week, and it should happen before the end of the year.

The trial should see groups of up to ten computer-controlled lorries travelling in tight formations on a quiet stretch of the M6 near Carlisle, and it's all part of a plan to speed up deliveries and cut congestion on UK roads.

A Department for Transport spokesman told the BBC: "New technology has the potential to bring major improvements to journeys and the UK is in a unique position to lead the way for the testing of connected and driverless vehicles.

"We are planning trials of HGV platoons - which enable vehicles to move in a group so they use less fuel - and will be in a position to say more in due course."

Driverless trucks - the real face of autonomous driving?

Although we're all waiting for autonomous cars, it's likely autonomous lorries will be on our roads first - and they're actually the ideal vehicle for autonomous driving. They're on the motorway for large amounts of time, and their drivers can also suffer from concentration fatigue as a result. Driverless trucks were trialled by Daimler on German roads in October last year, and there are already plans to test similar tracks in Nevada. However, it's not yet known which lorry manufacturer the UK trial will use.

Google and other driverless car makers are in a race to get their machines certified for road use, but a project at Stanford University has already put an autonomous car on a racetrack at high speed in a bid to create safer automatic braking systems.

Professor Christian Gerdes and his mechanical engineering students have been testing their autonomous driving algorithms with Shelley, a custom-rigged Audi TTS, on the three-mile track at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, California.

The car is capable of hitting speeds of 120 mph, though has predominantly been manoeuvring between 50 to 75 mph. Following iterations on the software, the car is nearly as quick around the track as an expert racer.

These speeds are closest to which most car collisions occur, according to Gerdes. He and his students want to understand how the autonomous car adjusts its throttle, brakes and makes use of all the friction of its tires in different situations to inform the development of automatic collision avoidance software.

"A race car driver can use all of a car's functionality to drive fast," said Gerdes. "We want to access that same functionality to make driving safer."

Gerdes is a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, a university with a storied history of producing graduates who have gone on to create world-changing inventions in technology, politics and the arts.

Several graduates from Gerdes' lab have landed careers in the automotive industry. The professor prioritises student-inspired research on track days and grants his students autonomy to manage their research.

"The students organise themselves like a race team for our test days. They figure out tasks and schedule the time allotted for different tests together," Gerdes said. "But once you get to the track, things can go differently than you expect. So it's an excellent lesson of advanced planning, but also how to come together as a team and deal with changing priorities."

Stanford's effort is the latest in a number of autonomous car projects from private industry and government-backed. The US government's Department of Transport told Google that its autonomous driving system could be considered as the driver' last month, bringing the cars another step closers to hitting public streets.

Photo: Stanford/Bjorn Carey/Kurt Hickman/Aaron Kehoe

New job postings indicate that Google could be significantly stepping up production plans for its self-driving car project.

The tech conglomerate is advertising for 36 roles across various sectors, including vehicle subsystems, user interface and motion control.

Naturally, many roles are focused on the internal software that powers the vehicles' autonomous navigation, with one listing advising applicants that they "will be tasked with understanding and evaluating the self-driving platform as a 'system of systems'."

However, manufacturing jobs are also strongly represented. There are advertisements for a manufacturing process engineer, manufacturing supplier quality engineer and mechanical global supply chain manager, among others.

While Google has reaffirmed time and again that it will not be producing its own first-party vehicles, these postings indicate that it will be making some form of hardware.

It's possible that the company will provide plug-and-play 'computer brains' -- self-contained boxes that can be quickly and easily integrated into third-party vehicles.

It's currently unknown which automaker(s) Google plans to partner with for its first vehicles, but the CEO of Mercedes parent company Daimler recently met with both Apple and Google on a visit to California.

10/02/2016: Google's autonomous cars could soon be considered drivers

The computers controlling Google's self-driving cars could be considered the "driver", according to US government's vehicle safety regulator.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a branch of the US government's Department of Transport, posted a letter to Google on its website this week that read: "NHTSA will interpret driver' in the context of Googles described motor vehicle design as referring to the (self-driving system), and not to any of the vehicle occupants."

Its decision was a reply to Google's argument in November last year that its autonomous vehicles have "no need for a human driver" because the vehicles are controlled by "an artificial-intelligence driver" that "controls all aspects of driving by perceiving its environment and responding to it".

In response to Google, NHTSA chief counsel Paul Hemmersbaugh said: "We agree with Google its (self-driving car) will not have a driver' in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years."

Supportive legislation has been the biggest stumbling block for technology firms and automobile manufacturers working on driverless cars.

If Google's autonomous piloting system is cleared by NHTSA, which governs US federal traffic law, it would open the gates for Google and other carmakers to begin submitting their self-driving cars for approval under the same provisions.

Ben Gardner, a lawyer at Pinsent Masons, said: "This is an interesting response from the NHTSA, which could have a significant impact on the legal position when it comes to liability. The more autonomous the car, the less liability is likely to rest with who we currently consider to be the driver.

"If the NHTSA is willing to interpret a self-driving system as the driver' then those sitting in it are unlikely, in the majority of cases, to be held liable for an accident and we could see liability shifting to the manufacturer in the first instance. However, of course, if driverless cars fulfil their promise of safer driving then that shift in liability could be seen as one manufacturers are willing to take on."

The NHTSA's response also detailed many of the legal barriers stopping self-driving cars, including a US law requirement for the inclusion of a steering wheel and brake pedals, as well as the need for cars to display visual breakdowns to the driver, which the NHTSA noted may still need to be displayed to vehicle occupants.

In its letter, the traffic body acknowledged that Google "expresses concern that providing human occupants of the vehicle with mechanisms to control things like steering, acceleration, braking... could be detrimental to safety because the human occupants could attempt to override the (self-driving system's) decisions."

NHTSA said: "If Google is able to provide sufficient additional information and evidence, it may be possible to resolve open issues through interpretations."

In order to get around this, federal laws would have to be formally written.

NHTSA added it may waive certain vehicle safety rules to allow more driverless cars to run on US roads as part of a wider initiative to bring self-driving vehicles into service across the nation.

In January, the US government unveiled a $4 billion plan to create nationwide regulations for self-driving cars. Transportation secretary Anthony Foxx said this would mean greater consistency between states.

04/02/2016: Google expands self-driving car tests to Washington

Google is expanding its self-driving car programme to Washington state, in order to test how the vehicles cope with rain and hills.

The company announced on Wednesday that it would begin testing one of its modified Lexus SUVs in Kirkland, near Seattle, with some of the company's smaller first-party vehicles potentially to follow.

Trials are already underway in Mountain View, California and Austin, Texas. In contrast to these predominantly dry, flat areas, however, Washington state is known for regular rainfall and varied terrain.

These conditions are important for testing autonomous vehicles in particular, as rain can impair the car's onboard sensors, limiting their range and efficacy.

Hills also introduce a potential problem, as the sensors' fixed mountings mean they are less effective when climbing or descending particularly steep inclines.

In addition to more rigorous testing conditions, Washington also provides a more favourable political environment for Google's project.

The state lacks California's restrictions on autonomous vehicles and requires no special permits or data collection. It is also considering giving the company a designated testing ground inside an 85,000-acre US military base.

This centre would be exempt from all driving laws, and would even allow the company to operate the vehicles without a human driver on board.

State governor Jay Inslee voiced his approval for the programme, saying: "We're looking forward to seeing the cars on the road and understanding more about how self-driving cars might someday improve safety and provide traffic relief".

Kirkland is the first east coast city that Google has expanded its testing operation to, but it may not be the last. FCC filings indicate that the company has been permitted to use the vehicles sensors in three other US cities.

A recent job advertisement for a product manager in Google's autonomous vehicle division in Ann Arbor, Michigan, implies that this is city likely to be one of them.

Ann Arbor is also where the first major run of Google's first-party prototypes will be manufactured.

Transport ministers have been in "active discussions" with Google to encourage the company to trial its driverless cars in London.

Google is one of the firms leading the way in autonomous vehicle technology, but so far it has only trialled its driverless cars in the US.

Convincing the company to trial its cars in the UK would be a coup for the Department for Transport (DfT), which has spoken to Google "at least half a dozen times" in the last three years, according to a report by Sky News.

"It's going to have to work in big cities so why don't we start trialling it now?" deputy mayor for transport Isabel Dedring told Sky News.

"We met them a few weeks ago to see whether they would do trials here.It is still very early days but we would be keen for trials to happen in London whenever Google are ready to move them into other countries."

Google's driverless cars use sensors and cameras to "observe" their surroundings, and machine learning to perform the manoeuvres required to get them from A to B.

The company has retrofitted existing cars with its autonomous technology, such as Lexus SUVs, and is also experimenting with custom-made cars of its own.

It recently said it willexpand its trials to the state of Washington, in addition to trials that are already underway in Mountain View, California and Austin, Texas.

The DfT's interest in Google's self-driving car project comes after the UK government awarded 20 million in funding to eight new autonomous car projects.

The government said it wants the UK to become a "global centre for the fast-growing intelligent mobility market", which it estimated will be worth 900 billion a year globally by 2025.

Jaguar Land Rover is involved in the MOVE-UK project, which aims to accelerate the development, market readiness and deployment of automated driving systems.

Driverless cars are being trialled in four areas of the UK this year: Bristol, Coventry and Milton Keynes, and Greenwich. Converted Heathrow shuttles are to be among the first to be trialled in Greenwich this July.

Evangelists for autonomous cars in the UK have also been keen to highlight what the significant of these new projects could means for the British engineering and technology industries.

Commenting on the government's 20 million investment in automonous cars, business secretary Sajid Javid said: "Britain is a world-leader in research and development in such innovative technologies which improve lives and create opportunity for all. That is why this government has protected the 6 billion science budget and is providing up to 20 million for these projects."

Jaguar Land Rover plans to carry out research into what is required to make driverless vehicles behave more like humans rather than robots.

Employees of the London Borough of Greenwich will drive a fleet of autonomous Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles to see how other drivers react to real-world driving situations such as slow-moving traffic, roadworks and busy junctions. Other partners involved in the research include Bosch and Direct Line Group.

"To successfully introduce autonomous cars, we actually need to focus more on the driver than ever before," said Dr Wolfgang Epple, director of research and technology at Jaguar Land Rover.

"Understanding how drivers react to a range of very dynamic and random situations in the real world is essential if we want drivers to embrace autonomous cars in the future."

The research is part of a 5.5 million project led by Bosch that will use the data provided by Jaguar Land Rover's tests to help develop specialist insurance for autonomous cars. The MOVE-UK initiative was announced yesterday by Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, alongside a 2.75 million grant from Innovate UK to help fund the research.

Councillor Denise Hyland, Leader of Royal Borough of Greenwich, said: "The Royal Borough of Greenwich is delighted to be part of this ground breaking project and to be working alongside such innovative and prestigious UK companies... We look forward to gaining valuable insights into the operations of connected cars in the future, how they can help address the problems modern cities face and also how we can help accelerate their deployment capturing the benefits for the UK, London and Greenwich."

The research and project as a whole will help people become more comfortable with the idea of automated vehicles on the road, making them more likely to purchase such cars in future, according to Epple. "By understanding and measuring positive driving behaviours we can ensure that an autonomous Jaguar or Land Rover of the future will not simply perform a robotic function," he said.

He added: "If drivers have confidence in the automation they will seamlessly flick from one mode to the other. Autonomous mode will help with any challenging, or less stimulating activities on the journey, like parking or driving in heavy traffic. If this automated experience feels natural and safe, the driver will be able to genuinely relax and will be happy to let the car take control."

Image credit: TRL's MOVE_UK video, published on YouTube (see above) on 1st February 2016

The first driverless vehicles are to be publicly tested on London streets this summer, thanks to a project to convert airport transport pods into automated shuttles.

The automated shuttles will take part in public trials for driverless vehicles, which are being held in Greenwich this summer.

Three British engineering and software companies Westfield Sportscars, Heathrow Enterprises and Oxbotica have joined the Greenwich Automated Transport Environment (or GATEway) project to convert existing transport pods, known as Ultra Pods - currently in service at Heathrow Airport - into road-ready automatous vehicles.

The current pods have been in operation, running on tracks, at Heathrow's Terminal 5 for nearly five years. They have carried 1.5 million passengers and journeyed completed three million kilometres of fully automated operation. Powered by electricity, the pods have also reduced bus journeys numbers in surrounding roads by 70,000 a year, according to Steve Chambers, Heathrow director of engineering and asset management.

The Greenwich shuttle trial, which takes place at Greenwich Peninsula, where the O2 Arena is based, will evaluate public acceptance of automated shuttle vehicles within the urban environment. It is one of three automated vehicle tests being run by the GATEway project. Other trials due to take place include autonomous valet parking and automated deliveries.

Julian Turner, CEO at Westfield Sportscars, whose firm is leading the conversion effort, said: "We're really pleased to be a part of the GATEway consortium.

"As well as a 100 per cent British supply chain, we can bring a number of benefits to the GATEway project, including knowledge of type approval processes and advanced pure electric race and road car technology that will not only ensure the shuttle trials are a success, but help put Greenwich and the UK at the forefront of automated mobility."

The 8 million project is jointly funded by government agency Innovate UK and industry. GATEway is a consortium, led by the UK's Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), and also includes the Royal Borough of Greenwich, the Royal College of Art and the University of Greenwich, as well as telecoms and energy firms.

Greenwich is one of four locations in the UK where driverless pods and public reaction to them are being trialled. Other tests are also being held in Bristol, Coventry and Milton Keynes.

The UK government green lit trials for driverless vehicles in February 2015, and expects to deliver a review of current legislation, based on its findings, by summer 2017.

Commenting last year on another driverless car project that's under development by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, transport minister Andrew Jones, said: "Driverless cars will bring great benefits to our society and economy and I want the UK to lead the way in developing this exciting technology."

25/01/2016: Daimler, the German automaker, met with Apple and Google for "concrete talks" in California, it has been revealed.

Dieter Zetche, CEO of Daimler, confirmed that his company had talked to both tech firms, as well as a host of other companies and start-ups, on a recent visit.

"Our impression was that these companies can do more and know more than we had previously assumed," he said to German publication Welt Am Sonntag (reported in English by Reuters). "At the same time they have more respect for our achievements than we thought."

Daimler, which also manufactures Mercedes-Benz vehicles, has previously made its position on autonomous vehicles clear.

At last year's Frankfurt International Motor Show, Zetche stated that "what is important for us is that the brain of the car, the operating system, is not iOS or Android or someone else but it's our brain".

However, during the recent trip, Zetche said, "there were concrete talks". According to the CEO, they were centred around "the innovative spirit in the valley".

"We wanted to see what drives it, and all the things that can be created from it," he told Welt am Sonntag.

13/01/2016: Apple Car an "open secret" says Elon Musk

Apple is developing an electric car to rival Tesla, according to Elon Musk.

Speaking to BBC News, Musk said it was an "open secret" in the Silicon Valley community that Apple is looking to make its own electric vehicle, saying: "It's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over 1,000 engineers to do it."

The Tesla CEO said that Apple will make "a compelling electric car", but does not feel threatened by this prospect as "it will expand the industry".

"Tesla will still aspire to make the most compelling electric vehicles, and that would be our goal, while at the same time helping other companies to make electric cars as well," added Musk.

Rumours that Apple is working on a car under the codename Project Titan have been swirling for years.

Documents were uncovered in August 2015 showing an Apple engineer had approached GoMentum Station, a secure test location in San Francisco, to "get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how [Apple] would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it]".

Apple also met with the Californial Department of Motor Vehicles to discuss state regulations for self-driving cars that same month.

Even before this evidence emerged, Reuters reported Apple was talking to "experts at carmakers and automotive suppliers" with a view to making an autonomous electric car, and in September the Wall Street Journal wrote that the "ship date" would happen in 2019.

Apple has always refused to comment on rumours about upcoming products, from the Apple Watch to the iPad Pro, and Project Titan is no exception so, for now, would-be Apple Car owners will have to continue to dream.

Image credit: lpy974 on Flickr

Nvidia has announced the latest step in its plan to supercharge self-driving cars at CES 2016.

Though mostly known for powering the cutting edge of PC gaming graphics, Nvidia is also aiming to use its GPU technology to provide the brains behind the coming revolution in automated driving.

Self-driving cars like the ones currently being tested by Google essentially work by covering the vehicle in sensors, then using sophisticated software to interpret and respond to the data from those sensors, according to traffic laws.

Early reports appear to show that this system is often better and safer than human pilots. For example, Google reports that in the six years since its autonomous car project began, its cars have driven over two million miles with only 17 minor accidents none of which, it claims, was the car's fault.

However, one of the major concerns leveled at driverless cars is the inflexibility of an automated system compared to a human driver. A vehicle needs to be able to dynamically react to split-second changes on-the-fly, such as a child running out into the road, or a vehicle rapidly swerving.

Nvidia is leveraging its considerable computational prowess to solve this problem, however. Its new Drive PX 2, successor to last year's Drive PX, is an in-car supercomputer', designed to react almost instantaneously to changes in road conditions.

The PX 2, according to Nvidia, can take inputs from radar and lidar, ultrasonic sensors and up to 12 video cameras. It then stitches this data together to accurately identify where the car is, what's around it, and the best path to take for optimum safety all on a moment-by-moment basis.

In order to handle this vast number of processes and calculations on-the-fly, some seriously hefty hardware is required. As such, the PX2 has 12 CPU cores, powering eight teraflops worth of operations. Supposedly, it can even reach eight trillion general purpose floating point operations per second.

In fact, Nvidia claims that the PX 2 has the same amount of processing power as 150 MacBook Pros, and it's roughly equivalent to six of the company's whopping Titan X video cards.

Drive PX 2 also incorporates Nvidia's pre-existing experience with machine learning. The more experience autonomous cars build up through reacting to unexpected incidents, the better they will become at anticipating and reacting to other incidents in the future.

Volvo has announced that it will be the first major manufacturer to begin trialing the Drive PX 2 system, using it to power its Drive Me program. 100 Volvo XC90s, complete with inbuilt PX 2s, will be tested in fully autonomous mode on the roads around Gothenburg in Sweden, with semi-autonomous tests in other locations.

"Our vision is that no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by the year 2020," said Marcus Rothoff, director of the Autonomous Driving Program at Volvo Cars.

"NVIDIA's high-performance and responsive automotive platform is an important step towards our vision and perfect for our autonomous drive program and the Drive Me project."

As a developer platform, the PX 2 is designed to vastly speed up the process of training SDCs for manufacturers. As part of this effort, Nvidia has developed a software package, called DriveWorks, to enable the testing and integration of autonomous systems.

"DriveWorks enables sensor calibration, acquisition of surround data, synchronisation, recording and then processing streams of sensor data through a complex pipeline of algorithms," the company said.

"Software modules are included for every aspect of the autonomous driving pipeline, from object detection, classification and segmentation to map localization and path planning."

Nvidia's Digits is a similar system for training and deploying the deep neural networks' that power artificial intelligence. Essentially, it allows car makers to funnel vast datasets into their SDC algorithms very quickly, and has already met with industry approval.

"Using Nvidia's Digits deep learning platform, in less than four hours we achieved over 96 percent accuracy using Ruhr University Bochum's traffic sign database", said Audi's director of architecture driver assistance systems, Matthias Rudolph.

"While others invested years of development to achieve similar levels of perception with classical computer vision algorithms, we have been able to do it at the speed of light."

The technology is also being used by Daimler, BMW and Ford. BMW stated that it was "achieving excellent results", while Ford says using Digits "has allowed for a 30X enhancement in training pedestrian detection algorithms".

Not only that, but with Digits, any self-driving car using the platform automatically shares its data and experience with the cloud, meaning that every other Digits-enabled SDC also learns from it. If an autonomous car sees' a sudden crash on a road, for example, any self-driving cars that are approaching it will be alerted, and can reprogram their routes accordingly.

"Drivers deal with an infinitely complex world," said Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's co-founder and CEO. "Modern artificial intelligence and GPU breakthroughs enable us to finally tackle the daunting challenges of self-driving cars".

"Autonomous cars will bring increased safety, new convenient mobility services and even beautiful urban designs - providing a powerful force for a better future."

The Drive PX 2 system will be available to certain priority partners in Q2 2016, with general developer availability coming in Q4 2016.

Toyota has confirmed it is testing driverless cars in Japan, announcing it used a modified version of its premium-brand Lexus GS on Tokyo's Shuto Expressway.

The car carried out a number of manoeuvres, including changing lanes successfully and keeping its distance from other cars on the road.

The Lexus GS prototype integrates a number of external sensors to recognise any hazards nearby or in its line of sight and then reacts appropriately by adjusting the steering, accelerator and brakes in a natural way.

It also automatically selects which would be the best lane to use and how to get to its destination using the data fed back from the sensors, the location and final destination.

However, the current Lexus GS prototype can only be used on main roads because it's not as sophisticated as it would need to be in order to make operating independently, without a driver, safe.

Toyota is hoping to have launched other related projects into the mainstream by the time is hosts the Olympic Games in 2020.

The company joins a number of other car manufacturers and tech businesses currently testing driverless cars, including Google in the US and Ford and Jaguar Landrover, which jointly launched a four-city trial in the UK.

In July, the UK government launched a driverless vehicle research project to help boost the country's position in such technologies. The 20m initiative is being led by the Department for Transport and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which have jointly created the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (C-CAV).

Business secretary Sajid Javid said at the launch of the programme: "To boost productivity, Britain will need to capitalise on new technologies like driverless vehicles, securing high skilled jobs for those who want to work hard and get on, and contributing to a more prosperous future for the whole of the country."

Google's first recorded injuries in a self-driving car have been chalked up to human error, with three employees treated for whiplash in hospital following the incident.

The collision occurred on 1 July at an intersection in Mountain View, California, and involved one of the company's Lexus models and another motorist.

Head of the tech giant's driverless car project, Chris Urmson, detailed the incident in a blog post this week, saying that in order to avoid getting stuck in the middle of the busy junction, the Google car stopped at the lights.

"After we'd stopped, a car slammed into the back of us at 17 mphand it hadn't braked at all," he added.

The three staff treated from minor whiplash were otherwise unhurt, and Urmson confirmed that "thankfully, everyone in both vehicles was okay".

He placed the blame on the other driver, and released a video illustrating the Google car's normal and natural driving.

The other car apparently did not slow down when approaching Google's vehicle, and Urmson said: "This certainly seems like the driver was distracted and not watching the road ahead."

Google has been quick to point out the programme's comparatively low number of crashes compared to regular cars just 14 since the project began in 2009.

Urmson has previously written about these statistics, claiming that in every recorded collision, the self-driving car was not the party at fault.

As in this instance, the majority of crashes were fender benders' at intersections, when human motorists rear-ended an autonomous vehicle.

According to Google, this is proof that it's on the right track. "The clear theme is human error and inattention. We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers."

Google's purpose-built driverless cars will be tested on public roads surrounding the search giant's US headquarters this summer.

This is the first time the vehicles have been tested on public roads, with them previously designed to test tracks without contact with traffic.

A select few prototypes will be tested on ordinary roads with the assistance of Google's safety drivers, as per the company's announcement.

In a video posted on Google's blog, systems engineer for the project, Jaime Waydo, said: "Every moment has been building towards putting these cars on the roads where we can start learning even more from them.

"Getting these cars out in to the public and allowing people to react to them, allowing us to see them out there, that's a huge deal and most importantly it's a necessary step to getting them to drive themselves," project head Chris Urmson added.

The vehicles have already been through extensive reliability and durability testing before reaching this point, with nearly a million autonomous miles logged since Google started the project. In terms of safety, each of the cars' speed will be capped at 25mph.

Business correspondent Thea Leggett told the BBC: "The company has shown that autonomous cars can run reliably on well-mapped and predictable routes, but they are a long way from being able to cope with the unprogrammed chaos of a city centre at rush hour.

"So the transition to driverless technology is likely to be a gradual process, with the role of the human at the wheel becoming less important over time."

Recently, it was revealed that a fleet of 20 self-driving Google cars have been involved in 11 accidents, though the company was quick to attribute them to human error, pointing out that, with an average of 10,000 miles driven every week, the ratio of accidents to miles is not that high.

Urmson said that one of the advantages offered by self-driving car technology is reducing accidents.

"Vehicles that can take anyone from A to B at the push of a button could transform mobility for millions of people, whether by reducing the 94 per cent of accidents caused by human error, reclaiming the billions of hours wasted in traffic, or bringing everyday destinations and new opportunities within reach of those who might otherwise be excluded by their inability to drive a car," he said.

He added: "We're looking forward to learning how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle - e.g., where it should stop if it can't stop at its exact destination due to construction or congestion.

"In the coming years, we'd like to run small pilot programmes with our prototypes to learn what people would like to do with vehicles like this."

Google's fleet of more than 20 self-driving cars have been involved in 11 accidents, the search giant has revealed.

The data, released by the project's director Chris Urmson in a blog post on Backchannel, describing them as "minor" incidents with "light damage" and "no injuries".

He also noted that "not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident" in any of the collisions, which occurred over 1.7 million miles driven by the autonomous vehicles - a million when no-one but the car was in control.

The majority of these collisions were caused by other drivers hitting the cars from behind, and Urmson highlighted intersections as "scary places" where many serious accidents occur.

Google claims that its safety record is a result of advanced sensors, which can "keep track of other vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians out to a distance of nearly two football fields".

The cars have also been programmed to account for human error in other road users. They will pause briefly after a traffic light turns green as "that's often when someone will barrel impatiently or distractedly through the intersection".

Google has been test-driving its fleet rigorously: Urmson claims that they're now averaging around 10,000 self-driven miles a week.

Compared with the fact that that's almost as much as the average US motorist drives in a year, a record of just 11 crashes seems pretty remarkable.

Following instructions from the USA's Department of Motor Vehicles, Google was last year forced to add brake pedals and a steering wheel to its cars in order to make them safe for driving on California's roads.

Guest editor's view

TechUK CEO Julian David says: A total 1.7 million miles and only 11 accidents - that certainly puts me to shame! And the fact that none of them was the fault of the digital car does show that technology can solve the challenges of modern living. It also provides some new justification for the traditional cry from IT professionals facing system problems - it's the users who are to blame!'

Uber is bidding to buy Nokia's mapping service for $3 billion, it is reported.

The taxi ride firm operates via a smartphone app that allows people to book cabs in their vicinity, but relies on Google Maps to power its service.

It's now looking to acquire Nokia's Here technology to end this reliance, according to the New York Times, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

While Google Maps is by far the most popular mapping tool, Nokia's Here dominates the automobile space.

And, with Google developing its own self-driving cars, it's possible Uber wants to move off its technology sooner rather than later.

Forrester Research analyst Julie Ask added that the consequences of such an acquisition may go further than simply replacing one mapping technology with another, saying Uber will want to own their customers' data.

"Uber understands that owning the customer today is about owning consumer time and data on mobile devices," she said.

"The Nokia Here technology is one if not the most sophisticated mapping solution. It was built by a company that understands mobile phones and how consumers use them.

"It's tragic that its rise as a platform coincided with Nokia's fall as a global smartphone leader - but for Uber, the opportunity to own its customers' mobile moments is huge."

A successful bid from Uber, whose taxi drivers outnumber New York's iconic yellow cabs, could see it power its own self-driving car technology.

It's already announced a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to begin research into the driverless vehicle phenomenon at Uber Advanced Technologies Center.

However, it's competing with rival bids from a German consortium of BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz, along with one from a private equity firm, according to the NYT.