Velodyne Lidar has announced the University of California, Irvine’s (UCI) HORIBA Institute for Mobility and Connectivity² (HIMaC²) has selected its Intelligent Infrastructure Solution (IIS) to create a public road network platform.

Combining artificial intelligence (AI) and lidar sensors, Velodyne’s IIS helps predict, diagnose, and address road safety challenges under all weather and lighting conditions.

Per reports, HIMaC² will implement IIS at 25 intersections surrounding UCI and the adjacent city of Irvine, as part of a study to improve traffic and energy efficiency, road safety, and air quality.

Other contributors include Bluecity, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), the UCI Institute of Transportation Studies, Toyota Motor of North America, Pony.ai, and Hyundai Mobis. Velodyne’s IIS deployment is further assisted by a $6 million grant HIMaC² received from the US Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO).

By implementing advanced infrastructure monitoring as a V2X (vehicle-to-everything) solution, HIMaC² will gather and synthesize critical data needed to optimize routes and improve traffic flow. HIMaC²’s study also focuses on ensuring safety for vulnerable commuters, regardless of weather and lighting conditions.

“The HIMaC² program is tackling one of the most challenging and pervasive infrastructure problems that cities face — how to improve traffic flows and safeguard road users,” said Jon Barad, vice president of business development at Velodyne Lidar.

Barad added, “Velodyne believes that smart infrastructure integrated with connected and autonomous vehicles have the potential to deliver game-changing improvements in roadway efficiency and safety. We look forward to working with the HIMaC² team to explore how to create a more sustainable, safer future for our transportation infrastructure.”

Commenting on user privacy, HIMaC² said Velodyne’s lidar sensors do not track or capture individuals’ facial characteristics, an important consideration in civic applications. Additionally, HIMaC² plans to build a public road network platform to support developing, evaluating and deploying emerging connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) technologies.

“The program looks to advance connected and autonomous transportation and show how they can contribute to smarter, safer infrastructure for our communities,” said UCI Engineering Professor Scott Samuelsen, principal investigator in the HIMaC² program.

“By deploying Velodyne’s automated monitoring and control in an intersection network, backbone data can be generated and utilized to demonstrate improved safety, energy efficiency and traffic flow to which cities aspire. With its deployment at 25 intersections, this initiative will be the largest lidar-based traffic monitoring solution in the world.”

Self-driving company Aurora has released a beta version of its autonomous truck and passenger vehicle safety framework.

Aurora’s Safety Case Framework incorporates guidance from government agencies, best practices from safety-critical industries, voluntary industry standards, and consortiums. Most notably, the framework helps evaluate autonomous vehicles’ development, testing, and operation in public environments.

“The safety case-based approach is a defined way to evaluate when its vehicles are safe enough to operate on public roads and to assess that they are not creating an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety,” explained Aurora.

Aurora has based its framework on five safety principles: proficient, fail-safe, continuously improving, resilient, and trustworthy.

Aurora also uses its Safety Case Framework to continuously analyze and evaluate Aurora Driver's performance and development against internal standards. According to the company, the framework’s assessment offers organizations assurance for putting self-driving vehicles in use, with or without human operators.

The Aurora Safety Case Framework is also capable of assessing intentional misuse and abuse of autonomous vehicles.

“A Safety Case Framework is the most effective and efficient path to safely pulling the safety driver and it’s an imperative component for any company looking to operate without a safety driver and safely deliver commercial-ready self-driving vehicles at scale,” said Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora.

Urmson continued, “It’s something other self-driving companies should strongly consider using as they move towards commercialization.”

“Rather than being limited to just the vehicle, Aurora’s Safety Case Framework lays out the safety story for Aurora as a self-driving enterprise: the vehicle, people, processes, culture, and supporting programs and systems of the organization,” added Aurora.

Driverless cars have been “just around the corner” for more than a decade. We were supposed to take our hands off the wheel in 2020, according to car industry leaders Ford and Nissan – and yet here we are, still requiring driving licences.

Some progress has been made. Owners of Teslas can flip a switch to engage Autopilot mode, while Google’s Waymo is picking up taxi fares using cars without a human safety driver at the wheel; instead, engineers sit at the ready remotely to help the AI if it faces a situation it can’t figure out. Apple has plans to unveil its own driverless car in 2024.

Even so, car makers admit that progress hasn’t met their projections, while Waymo’s CEO John Krafcik has conceded that driverless tech would always have “some constraints”. The company said at the end of last year that it would offer entirely driverless rides in a select area of Phoenix, but these cars are remotely connected to engineers in case of challenges and some will still require safety drivers.

Perhaps, finally, the hype bubble has popped and reality has set in. “I think we’re starting to see a correction,” says Jack Stilgoe, associate professor at University College London and author of Who’s Driving Innovation? “The paradoxical thing is that the earlier a technology is, the more hype there is. The more work people actually do into the technology, the more they realise how hard it is to bring it into the real world.”

He adds: “Obviously, we shouldn’t listen only to what the companies say. They’re trying to sell stuff. But that isn’t to say that the technology won’t have enormous value in the years to come.”

Technical challenges

Creating a self-driving vehicle while AI is in its relatively early years is no easy task, and it remains likely that truly driverless technologies are years in the future. It’s already possible for cars to navigate streets using cameras for eyes, with a mix of other sensors to gather additional data, but the challenge is to ensure that the software can understand the images and data passed back to it by those sensors and make good decisions based on that information. For that, systems are trained in real-world scenarios – that is, they’re driven a lot – and also in simulations.

Driverless cars use three vision systems: Radar, cameras and LiDar. The latter stands for “light detection and ranging”, and works similarly to radar, bouncing pulses of light off objects to determine their size, shape and, if they’re moving, speed. The systems work best in combination, as each has its own weaknesses – radar, for example, doesn’t work as well in bad weather.

The AI-based interpretation can also be impacted by factors from precipitation to graffiti. For example, if you see a stop sign covered in spray paint, you understand that braking is still required; if snow covers lanes, you go slowly and follow the car ahead. To be safe and effective, AI systems need the same mental flexibility – but, to take just one example, Waymo’s cars have spent much of their time in the sunny states of Arizona and California. Following reports that the cars didn’t work well in heavy rain, Waymo sent a few down to Florida in 2019 for the wet season to help train them for driving in adverse conditions.

Another factor is road layouts. Trials are zooming ahead in the US, but the road networks in many American cities are simpler than in the UK, according to Camilla Fowler, head of automation at TRL. “The infrastructure we have actually adds a lot of complexity to the driving task,” she says.

How and why

If we can’t solve all problems through engineering, there are other possibilities. We can limit where the cars are used, cap their speeds, rework roads or pick and choose the elements of automation that do work. There’s more to driverless technology than waiting for engineers to work out the kinks of fully driverless cars: “The question is quite often posed in terms of ‘when we will see driverless cars?’,” says Stilgoe. “I think the real question is actually where and in what form.”

For example, some cars could be geofenced – limited in where they can travel, because the developers know that the system works well enough in a specific area. Or they could be limited to special lanes. “The technology could in some cases need dedicated infrastructure, whether that’s a dedicated lane or smart infrastructure like smart traffic lights,” Stilgoe adds. Researchers at Princeton University have developed radar reflectors to alert automated cars to the presence of pedestrians and cyclists on roads.

Another step that's already being worked on is permitting an element of driving automation on motorways, but not on roads that are shared with pedestrians and cyclists; “automated lane keeping systems” are set to be approved in the UK this year.

This iterative approach to automated features has already been emerging for some years with computer-aided parking and braking. “I don’t believe people understand that most cars actually already have a level of autonomy,” says Bani Anvari, research leader of the Intelligent Mobility Group at University College London. “We are just gradually increasing this.”

To help understand and manage this process, in 2014 the automotive standards body SAE International produced a classification system detailing six levels of vehicular autonomy. Level zero represents full driver control at all times, while level five would be a car that can drive itself anywhere and everywhere without human intervention. In the short term we can expect to live with cars that are partially automated (level two) or have conditional automation (level three), which means the driver may be asked to retake the wheel. And that’s fine: While lane-changing assistance and keeping a car creeping forward during a traffic jam may not be the stuff of sci-fi films, such features can reduce driver fatigue and exhaustion.

Some tech leaders believe that full autonomy isn’t far off. Back in 2015, Elon Musk declared that self-driving technology was "largely a solved problem", and has since claimed that software updates will make it possible for current Tesla cars to navigate roads wholly unaided. Indeed, beta testers already have access to a “full self-driving” mode – although in paperwork filed to the California Department of Motor Vehicles the company has admitted that this is actually level-two autonomy requiring human supervision.

TRL’s Fowler predicts that full automation will happen first in controlled circumstances where it’s actually useful, such as around campuses or down residential streets. “It depends on what society needs,” Fowler says. “What’s the impact going to be on people’s wellbeing, safety, network capacity? The benefits need to be realised in order for this tech to be realised, I think.”

Indeed, the point should be to solve specific problems, rather than developing new systems for their own sake. “I want governments to be clear on what they want to see from these technologies,” says Stilgoe. “If they reduce congestion, are sustainable, are safer than alternatives, if they benefit people who have previously lost out on mobility technologies – those things a city could be particularly keen on. Rather than just starting with technological possibilities, you start with what people need.”

Regulate the brains

The tech industry tends to lament regulation, but the concept of a driverless car demands a robust testing and approval process. After all, any “dumb” car currently on the road is required to undergo thorough testing before being allowed to be sold. Now that we’re cramming brains into vehicles, we need to test those brains.

Unfortunately, we’re only just figuring out how to assess algorithms and AI – and that’s before they’re put into machines at high speeds. So, Fowler points out, a key question is how we really know when driverless cars are safe “What does the manufacturer need to do to demonstrate that all the different use cases and scenarios have been considered that the vehicle could come across within its operational design domain?” he asks. “How do you validate, how do you approve?”

Building trust

From the industry’s point of view, the value of regulation and testing is not only to ensure safety, but to build trust. If these cars aren’t seen to be safe by the wider public, people will keep their own hands on the wheel. There have been a few driverless car accidents – notably two deaths in Teslas with Autopilot mode enabled and the death of Elaine Herzberg in a collision with an Uber car in Arizona – but so far such incidents haven’t set back research in this area (although Uber has now sold off its autonomous car research division).

What could prove a bigger hurdle is the hype itself, creating an unrealistic expectation that sets up the public for disappointment. “I find it worrying that people feel the technology can do more than it can,” says Fowler. “That misconception of what your vehicle is capable of, and not fully understanding the limitations, could be a potential issue.”

UCL’s Anvari agrees that the way forward is to set aside the hype and be honest about what’s going on. “If you have an autonomous minibus, if the people sitting within it don’t understand what this technology is observing and how it takes actions, they won’t gain trust,” she explains. “If they see that this technology can see what they see, and reacts the way they would react, it will help gain trust.”

“If the whole human side of things is not solved, the trust of users is not solved, you will not be successful in rolling out the technology.”

Innoviz Technologies has announced Whale Dynamic will equip its autonomous driving system with solid-state InnovizOne LiDAR sensors.

Whale Dynamic's autonomous driving (AD) platform identifies and interprets vehicles’ changing environments to provide intelligent driving suggestions. It’s equipped with drive-by-wire technology, making it an ideal plug-and-play solution for robo-taxi and autonomous delivery companies, among other full-stack autonomous service providers.

Per reports, the next-gen Whale Dynamic AD platform will feature low-power InnovizOne LiDARs in place of InnovizPro LiDAR used in the previous versions.

InnovizOne is a solid-state LiDAR sensor that can endure high temperatures and bright sunlight. Pairing the sensor with Innoviz's perception software provides unrivaled angular resolution in object detection, classification, and tracking.

InnovizOne stores and returns multiple reflections per pixel. This is of particular importance when a laser pulse simultaneously strikes multiple objects, such as rain droplets and snowflakes.

InnovizOne LiDARs can be integrated with Level 3, 4, and 5 autonomous vehicles. The sensors' detection range is 0.1 to 250 meters with 115° x 25° (H x V) maximum field of view. As for security, InnovizOne is ISO 9001:2015-certified and adheres to ISO 26262 safety regulations.

"We are excited to expand our technology collaboration with Whale Dynamic to bring Innoviz's advanced high-resolution solid-state LiDAR technology to their AD Platform," said Omer Keilaf, CEO and co-founder of Innoviz.

"We look forward to collaborating with Whale Dynamics to bring Innoviz's High-Performance LiDAR to L4 Platforms in China, the largest vehicle market in the world."

Whale Dynamic CEO and founder David Chang stated, "InnovizOne brings us more possibilities to create the world's best sensor fusion design and will also empower our perception algorithm to an unprecedented level. We are looking forward to working together to achieve the goal of building a fully autonomous vehicle capable of completing daily service tasks on public roads."

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.

Welcome to IT Pro's latest News in Review, our weekly roundup of the top stories from the past seven days.

In this week's episode:

• The UK takes its first steps towards having driverless cars on motorways
• The NHS App will soon incorporate a COVID-19 vaccination passport, raising security and privacy concerns
• The country's digital divide has shrunk thanks to the pandemic, but those missing out feel even more excluded

You can find more videos like this in our video library and even more on our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think of this week's video – you can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has called for 'Automated Lane Keeping Systems' (ALKS) to be legally defined as 'self-driving' as a cautious first step to allowing fully autonomous cars on UK roads.

The announcement follows the government's call for evidence on self-driving technology at the end of 2020 where it sought views from the motoring industry around the role of the driver in an automated system and what legislation would be needed.

ALKS are designed for use on motorways in slow traffic, in a single lane. They can be used to maintain a safe distance from other cars and control can be easily returned to the driver if need be. The DfT has proposed a maximum speed limit of 37mph.

The technology has the potential to improve road safety by reducing human error, which is said to contribute to 85% of accidents, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). The organisation suggests 3,900 lives could be saved over the next decade with the use of automated driving tech.

"Technologies such as ALKS will pave the way for higher levels of automation in future - and these advances will unleash Britain's potential to be a world leader in the development and use of these technologies, creating essential jobs while ensuring our roads remain among the safest on the planet," SMMT chief executive, Mike Hawes, said.

The announcement appears very cautious, particularly compared to other countries, such as the US, where automated systems are already allowed. Indeed, the initial reporting of the 'call for evidence' suggested that self-driving cars could be on UK roads by the spring, but that has now been pushed back to the autumn.

However, the announcement has come just weeks after an investigation was launched into a Tesla car that crashed with its autopilot reportedly engaged. The initial police report from the incident suggested that neither of the two men in the vehicle was in the driver's seat, leading them to believe that its automated system was at fault.

This has been disputed by Tesla, which claims to have data suggesting the autopilot wasn't engaged and that one of the men was in the driver's seat.

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."

The UK government has put out a call for evidence on Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS), a function used on self-driving cars that can take control of a vehicle at low speeds.

Industry experts have said that ALKS in new cars would reduce road accidents and could be ready by the start of 2021.

The Department for Transport (DfT) is seeking views from the motoring industry around the role of the driver and the rules of use. The call for evidence will ask whether cars using the technology should be legally defined as an 'automated vehicle, which would mean the technology provider would be responsible for the safety of the vehicle when the system is engaged, rather than the driver.

However, the driver would still be required to "stay alert" and ready to assume control of the vehicle.

"Automated technology could make driving safer, smoother and easier for motorists and the UK should be the first country to see these benefits, attracting manufacturers to develop and test new technologies," Transport Minister Rachel Maclean said.

"The UK's work in this area is world-leading and the results from this call for evidence could be a significant step forward for this exciting technology."

The AA's president, Edmund Kind said the government was right to start consultations on "collision-avoidance systems" citing the potential to make roads safer. Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders called the technology "life-changing", suggesting it could save 3,900 lives over the next decade.

"This advanced technology is ready for roll out in new models from as early as 2021, so today's announcement is a welcome step in preparing the UK for its use, so we can be among the first to grasp the benefits of this road safety revolution," he said.

A former Google engineer who used to work for its Waymo self-driving car unit has been sentenced to 18-months in prison for trade secret theft.

US District Judge William Alsup said that Anthony Levandowski had carried out the "biggest trade secret crime" he had ever seen during a hearing in San Francisco, according to Reuters.

Levandowski pleaded guilty to stealing sensitive documents related to Google's self-driving car technology in March. He left the tech giant in January 2016, loading more than 14,000 Google files onto his laptop before joining Uber's robocar project. He was fired from Uber a year later, as a result of the case.

Levandowski was a founding member of Google's self-driving car project, Waymo, but the case has soiled his reputation and left him in financial difficulty. He filed for bankruptcy in March this year, owing £136 million to Google's parent company, Alphabet, for his actions.

It's reported that Levandowski had hoped the sentence would be a 12 months confinement at home. The engineer is reportedly worried about dying of coronavirus in prison due to having pneumonia.

"Billions [of dollars] in the future were at play, and when those kind of financial incentives are there good people will do terrible things, and that's what happened here", Judge Alsup said.

The Judge added that a non-custodial sentence would amount to "a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets", but he did rule that Levandowski could begin his custodial sentence after the pandemic had peaked.

Despite the ruling, Levandowski has filed a lawsuit against Waymo and Uber, according to TechCrunch. This separate lawsuit was filed as part of his bankruptcy proceedings and focuses on an agreement with Uber to secure Levandowski against legal action when it bought his self-trucking startup.

It also includes allegations concerning the settlement that Waymo and Uber reached over the trade secret theft.

"Today marks the end of three-and-a-half long years and the beginning of another long road ahead," Levandowski said in a statement.

TuSimple, a global autonomous trucking technology company, has partnered with United Parcel Service (UPS), Penske Truck Leasing, US Xpress and McLane Company to launch the world’s first Autonomous Freight Network (AFN).

The network brings together autonomous trucks, digitally mapped routes, strategically placed terminals and TuSimple Connect, the company’s autonomous operations monitoring system that ensures safe autonomous driving and real-time tracking of freight.

The technology makes autonomous trucks as much as 10% more fuel-efficient and can support continuous operations without hours of service limitations.

TuSimple currently operates autonomous commercial vehicles on seven routes between Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso and Dallas, and plans to open a shipping terminal in Dallas to service customers in the "Texas triangle" and enable mid-sized customers to benefit from autonomous trucking.

TuSimple will continue mapping routes and delivering directly to large customers’ distribution centers.

The company will establish the groundwork for commercially available self-driving autonomous trucks by rolling out the AFN in three phrases:

• Phase I (2020-21): Service will begin in Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
• Phase II (2022-23): Service will expand to Los Angeles and Jacksonville to connect both coasts.
• Phase III (2023-24): Driverless operations will expand to major shipping routes across the continental U.S. and allow customers to use their own TuSimple-equipped autonomous trucks by 2024.

TuSimple plans to expand to Europe and Asia after 2024.

"Our ultimate goal is to have a nationwide transportation network consisting of mapped routes connecting hundreds of terminals to enable efficient, low-cost long-haul autonomous freight operations," said Cheng Lu, president of TuSimple.

"By launching the AFN with our strategic partners, we will be able to quickly scale operations and expand autonomous shipping lanes to provide users access to autonomous capacity anywhere and 24/7 on-demand."

US Xpress operates one of the largest carrier fleets in the US and will provide additional lanes to support TuSimple's L4 technology learning. This will enable the company to improve driving responses on the road to make it safer for all drivers on the highway.

"For the past two years, US Xpress has worked closely with TuSimple to help define carriers' needs for L4 trucks," said Eric Fuller, president and CEO of US Xpress.

"We are interested in understanding how TuSimple technology can make our fleet safer and more fuel-efficient as well as how it can improve the overall delivery experience for our professional drivers and customers."

Penske Truck Leasing enables TuSimple to expand its fleet operations, as it operates more than 750 service facilities across North America. It will also provide preventive maintenance and over-the-road service for autonomous trucks.

"Penske has always been committed to supporting its customers and innovation when it comes to mobility," said Bill Combs, vice president of Connected Vehicle Strategy and Experimentation at Penske.

"We look forward to our continued collaboration with TuSimple and supporting their fleet needs as this new freight network begins to scale."

McLane is the supply chain unit for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and serves chain restaurants, mass merchants, drug stores and convenience stores. UPS is the world’s largest package delivery company and purchased a minority stake in TuSimple in 2019.

The technology powering today’s cars is evolving at breakneck speed. According to recent figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), around two-thirds of new cars manufactured today are connected – which means they’re sending data about the driver and the vehicle to the manufacturer. This number is expected to rise year-on-year until 2026 when 100% of new cars will be connected.

This is just the start of things to come. The next step for connected cars is vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, which will see cars exchange information left, right and centre – connecting with infrastructure, other vehicles, networks, pedestrians, the smart grid and more.

Getting to this point, however, will be no easy feat. Today’s connected vehicles are already effectively data centres on wheels, each creating up to 40 terabytes of data per day. “That’s the equivalent of 250 million pages printed both sides or 280,000 hours of music,” says Axel Schmidt, industry sector lead for automotive at Accenture.

While the rise of V2X will see this data creation increase to seemingly unmanageable levels, there is one technology that promises to help – and that’s 5G.

A quantum leap in connectivity

“5G technology will allow the network to handle more traffic and more devices, facilitating better quality communication and improved customer experience,” says Kirolous Zikry, a telecoms specialist at PwC Strategy&. “It also comes with major improvements in latency and reliability. At under 20ms, the latency of 5G is similar to, or lower than, the human brain.”

5G is also expected to be significantly more energy efficient. According to PwC, the network is already twice as efficient as 4G in early test cities, and this will only continue to improve. In the long term, 5G could reduce the energy consumption of the future network by up to a factor of 20 compared to 4G.

What’s more, 5G is expected to be pivotal to the eventual roll-out of autonomous vehicles. “It enables the flow of data generated by connected and self-driving vehicles and allows it to be processed and used to improve safety, reduce congestion and even reduce vehicle emissions,” says Dr Richard Porter, technology and innovation director at Zenzic, a UK company created by government and industry to accelerate the connected and self-driving ecosystem.

Driving new opportunities

Schmidt believes the potential is huge. “It could change literally everything,” he says. “Think about how powerful a combination between 5G and blockchain could be. Imagine you’re late for your flight and while you’re rushing to the airport, wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where we can leverage 5G and blockchain to be able to ‘buy’ a green light? Imagine you want to go on a ride and you’re keen on topping up your engine’s performance with additional horsepower to enhance your driving experience. This could be done with a simple software adjustment – and by using 5G that can be done quickly.”

The list of potential future scenarios is endless. “With V2X communication a driver could connect to their smart meter to switch on the heating as they head home,” says Akshara Chandhok, an auto specialist at PwC Strategy&. “Or they could share information with other nearby vehicles, or with vulnerable road users such as pedestrians or cyclists, about their speed and direction of travel to avoid collisions.”

Making progress

This potential is already proving attractive to automotive manufacturers, many of whom are working on integrating 5G into their cars. Ford, for example, is reportedly building its own LTE/5G network to test connected cars in a private environment. And when the first iterations of the BMW iNext make their debut in mid-2021, 5G technology will be present and correct.

“This will make the BMW Group the world’s first premium carmaker to offer the new mobile technology in one of its models,” says James Mallinson, BMW’s head of development for vehicle connectivity and mobile communications. “The introduction of 5G into other model ranges will commence soon after.”

Mercedes-Benz is following suit. “We are currently developing 5G technology for integration in our cars,” says Rainer Freitag, head of communication modules and over-the-air updates for research and development at Mercedes-Benz Cars. “5G will help make the connected car experience even better, with more applications, more reliable connections and will perfectly complement autonomous driving. We expect 5G to become available in our vehicles in 2022.”

Other industry players are using the potential of 5G to transform in-vehicle entertainment. Holoride, for example, wants to turn vehicles into moving theme parks for passengers, by combining navigational and car data with extended reality. “Using 5G might not only enable access to a greater variety of content while on the go, but also improve the overall holoride experience,” says Nils Wollny, the firm’s CEO and co-founder. “As 5G is implemented on a broad scale in connected cars and beyond, we can achieve this goal even faster and improve the backseat experience for passengers around the world.”

Approach with caution

While the promise for the future is huge, it’s important to remember that less than 10% of operators have deployed 5G today. It’s for this reason that German automaker Volkswagen is more cautious about its approach. “For now, I believe it is too early to set a date for when 5G will be available in our cars,” a Volkswagen spokesperson told IT Pro. “5G hardware and broad infrastructure is simply not available yet, so we would put the safety and comfort of our drivers at risk by trying to adopt it too quickly.”

Other stakeholders are also showing restraint. “We need to make sure we have the digital infrastructure in place to handle, and draw benefit from, the sheer amount of data generated by these vehicles,” says Zenzic’s Porter.

There are legal concerns too. “Regulatory frameworks are still in their early stages of development,” Porter adds. “They will need to mature significantly before we start to see public-facing services.”

However, Alex Epstein, director of transportation safety for the National Safety Council, believes 5G is one of multiple systems that will actually help alleviate concerns. “Connectivity within the transportation ecosystem is expected to translate into a variety of safety benefits, road-use efficiencies and traffic management solutions, among others. Fundamentally, we perceive the connected system to be a safer and more efficient system than one that maximises individual vehicle, personal or infrastructure choices. We view 5G, dedicated short range communication and other legacy solutions such as 4G, as well as other future solutions such as 6G (which might come in 2030), to be part of the solution. Vehicles tend to be in service longer each year and as such, ensuring a communication solution that works with legacy systems and evolving systems will be necessary.”

A collaborative future

Success will require a massive commitment on the part of infrastructure developers and owners, as well as OEMs and tech companies. But once this infrastructure is in place, the intelligent use of data will help foster new efficiencies across the entire transport network.

BMW’s Mallinson believes his organisation is helping to lay the groundwork for a collaborative effort. “That’s why we are the first carmaker to make our anonymised safety-related traffic data universally available for non-commercial use,” he says. “Ultimately, when it comes to road safety, there are no competitors, only partners. By sharing traffic data and implementing V2X connectivity, we can directly improve the automotive experience for road users everywhere.

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.

The FBI has formally charged ex-Apple employee Xiaolang Zhang with stealing self-driving car secrets from his former employer and supplying the confidential information to Chinese driverless car startup XMotors.

The organisation investigated Zhang's activities after he resigned and told his employer he was planning to join the startup, leaving his role in Apple's Project Titan division.

He apparently acted suspiciously when handing his notice in and so his manager decided to look into Zhang's activity. The company's New Product Security Team noticed Zhang's network activity was unusual and so seized his devices, analysing how they had been used.

Just before Zhang resigned, Apple discovered activity on his devices has increased substantially compared to previous years at the firm and he had been accessing data about the company's prototypes and prototype requirements, the FBI said.

"The majority of his activity consisted of both bulk searches and targeted downloading copious pages of information from various confidential database applications," the documents filed with the Northern District Court of California read. "The information contained within the downloading contained trade secret intellectual property, based on the level of Zhang's access within Apple's autonomous vehicle team."

Zhang also visited the Apple Campus on an evening in April, at which point data was downloaded from Apple systems and he also left with a box of hardware from the premises, the filing said. The data was downloaded onto Zhang's wife's computer in an alleged attempt to avoid being discovered, before he tried to leave the country on 7 July, when he was arrested.

"Apple takes confidentiality and the protection of our intellectual property very seriously," Apple said in a statement. "We're working with authorities on this matter and will do everything possible to make sure this individual and any other individuals involved are held accountable for their actions."

Zhang faces a punishment of up to 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine if found guilty of stealing the company's secrets.

05/12/2016: Apple confirms plan to develop self-driving car

Apple confirmed that it is working on a self-driving car system in a letter to US transport regulators, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The letter, signed by Apple's director of product integrity, Steve Kenner, said: "The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation".

In the letter, Apple asked the NHTSA not to introduce unnecessary restrictions relative to road testing. It also suggested that companies working on self-driving vehicles' share data related to their products' performance (e.g. crashes, successes, issues), in order to help each other perfect their respective vehicles.

A month ago, sources had told Bloomberg that Apple might never launch a self-driving car.

The sources in question said that staff members working on the Apple car had been reassigned, and executives had been given fewer resources to work on the project.

The five-page letter to the NHTSA appears to contradict these reports, with Apple openly expressing its interest in automated vehicles.

The company did not offer further details about the Apple car, but said: "Apple looks forward to collaborating with NHTSA and other stakeholders so that the significant societal benefits of automated vehicles can be realised safely, responsibly, and expeditiously".

18/10/2016: Apple car may never even reach a test drive

The much-rumoured Apple car may now never be launched, according to reports.

Apple had been working on a project termed Project Titan', that aimed to produce a smart car that could compete with those from Google, Tesla and other companies worldwide. The car's release to the public was expected to be around 2019.

Bob Mansfield, the same engineer that worked on the Apple Watch and MacBook Air, led the project that now appears to have been halted.

Sources told Bloomberg that hundreds of the staff members working on the Apple car are being reassigned to other project or being dismissed.

The same sources told Bloomberg that Apple's executives have been given fewer resources to work on the project until the end of the year. By then, the company should decide whether the project is still feasible or if it will be definitely spiked.

It now appears that Apple will not be designing and building its own car, as reports last month suggested it had also begun discussions with car manufacturers such as Lit Motors and McLaren.

German newspaper Handelsblatt also found that BMW and Daimler declined Apple's offer of working on their car due to an issue over the control of private data stored in iCloud.

This would confirm the opinion that Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared with the German newspaper Handelsblatt last year when he said: "It's good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction, but cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can't just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: build me a car."

Ocado is the latest retailer to try out driverless deliveries, using Oxbotica's CargoPod as part of the government's GATEway Project, led by transport research firm TRL.

The trials took place in Greenwich, where the GATEway (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) is focused and takes on the "last mile" challenge, which addresses how to get goods to customers more efficiently, linking between distribution and transport hubs without generating emissions or noise.

"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," said Simon Tong, principal research scientist for TRL and technical lead for the GATEway project.

"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."

Oxbotica's CargoPod runs on the company's autonomous platform, Selenium, which offers real-time navigation around obstacles and people. The autonomous pods can carry up to 128kg worth of groceries, making them well-suited to transporting goods.

"We are always looking to come up with unique, innovative solutions to the real-world challenge of delivering groceries in densely-populated urban environments," David Sharp, Head of 10x department at Ocado Technology said. "This project is part of the on-going journey to be at the edge of what is practical and offer our Ocado Smart Platform customers new and exciting solutions for last mile deliveries."

This is the third trial conducted by the government and industry funded GATEway project, with its previous tests including the transportation of people around the Greenwich area in vehicles provided by Westfield Sportscars, Heathrow Enterprises and Oxbotica.

"The GATEway project takes us another step closer to seeing self-driving vehicles on UK roads, and has the potential to reduce congestion in urban areas while reducing emissions," said business minister Claire Perry. "Backed by government, this project firmly establishes the UK as a global centre for developing self-driving innovation."

Uber's self-driving car experiment has ended in San Francisco, after transport regulators yanked the registration of the Volvos being used in the unauthorised trials.

Earlier this week, Uber started testing self-driving cars on the streets of the Californian city, but refused to get the necessary permit to trial autonomous vehicles on public streets. The permit itself reportedly costs only $150, but Uber said its cars had human drivers behind the wheel, so weren't fully self-driving and therefore didn't require a permit. Other self-driving car makers, including Google-parent Alphabet and Elon Musk's Tesla Motors, have been granted such permits.

Local authorities disagreed, with the Department of Motor Vehicles warning Uber it faced legal action if it didn't apply for the permit or take the 16 cars off the road. The DMV has now revoked the registration of the cars.

"The registrations were improperly issued for these vehicles because they were not properly marked as test vehicles," the DMV said in a statement sent to the Wall Street Journal. "The department invited Uber to seek a permit so their vehicles can operate legally in California."

Uber told The Guardian it was looking to trial the cars elsewhere, suggesting it would not apply for a permit. "We're now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100% committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules."

Uber has been testing its driverless cars in Pittsburgh for months.

Other concerns have been raised with the Uber autonomous cars, with San Franciscans uploading videos of the cars running red lights and a cycling group complaining the cars can't handle bike lanes.

20/12/2016: Cyclists warn against Uber's self-driving car trial

Uber has admitted its self-driving cars don't understand San Francisco's bike lanes, days after the taxi-booking firm started trialling its autonomous vehicles in the Californian city.

Uber started trialling its self-driving cars last week, though it didn't have the proper permits to do so, according to state officials. The company has refused to apply for a license, saying the cars remain in the control of humans behind the wheel, pinning the blame for running red lights on those drivers.

Now, a local cycling group has warned that the cars don't turn from the correct position to cross bike lanes. That's according to Brian Wiedenmeier, executive director at San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who rode in an Uber autonomous car at a demonstration day prior to their public trials. "I can tell you firsthand: Those vehicles are not yet ready for our streets."

Wiedenmeier said he didn't know the cars would be hitting public roads within days of the demonstration, but said he did warn Uber "about the shortcomings of the technology".

"In the ride I took through the streets of SoMa on Monday, the autonomous vehicle in 'self-driving' mode as well as the one in front of it took an unsafe right-hook-style turn through a bike lane," he said in a blog post. "Twice."

A right-hook-style turn sees the vehicle turn across a bike lane, potentially colliding with cyclists, rather than merging into the bike lane and turning from closer to the kerb. Such turns are banned in San Francisco, with Wiedenmeier saying they are one of the main causes of collisions between cars and cyclists.

"I told staff from Uber's policy and engineering teams about the safety hazards of their autonomous vehicle technology," he said. "They told me they would work on it. Then, two days later, they unleashed that technology on San Francisco's streets."

Wiedenmeier said Uber told him that the human "safety drivers" have been told to take the wheel when turning right over a bike lane and that engineers are working on the problem. "In the meantime, Uber is continuing to operate autonomous vehicles for passenger service in San Francisco," he said.

He said: "There's no other way to put it: Launching autonomous vehicle technology before it's regulated and safe for our streets is unacceptable."

Uber told the Guardian that its engineers were working on the issue.

16/12/2016: California bans Uber's self-driving cars hours after they hit the road

California regulators have banned Uber's self-driving car taxi service introduced this morning in San Francisco.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) told Uber it might face legal action if it does not get the permit required for putting autonomous vehicles on public roads.

In a letter to Uber, DMV chief counsel, Brian Soublet, said: "If Uber does not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and seek a testing permit, DMV will initiate legal action", reports the Independent.

The service introduced by Uber allowed people living in San Francisco to test its vehicles with integrated autonomous driving tools, allowing the company to test their performance in a real-life situation.

According to The Independent, Uber knew about this requirement but said its cars do not meet the definition of 'autonomous vehicle', as they require a human driver behind the wheel to intervene when needed.

To receive a permit, companies must pay a 120.87 ($150) fee and provide proof of insurance.

So far, the California DMV allowed 20 companies to test their self-driving vehicles on public roads, after applying for the relevant permit and receiving approval from the state authorities.

The permit forces the company deploying autonomous vehicles to report all crashes and situations in which the driver is forced to take control, and all this information is disclosed to the public.

IT Pro contacted Uber for comment but had not received an answer at the time of writing.

15/12/2016: You can now take an Uber self-driving car in San Francisco

Uber has launched its self-driving car taxi service in San Francisco, just a few months after announcing the service in its hometown of Pittsburgh.

Anyone ordering a taxi using the UberX service in the city could find one of its new XC90 autonomous cars pulling up rather than a driver-controlled car in its latest trial. Before accepting the trip via the app, the customer will be able to choose whether they want to use the autonomous car or would rather use a standard vehicle.

However, passengers won't be completely on their own with the self-driving car - an Uber engineer will also be present to take over if and when needed.

The service will use Volvo's XC90 sports utility vehicle, which is kitted out with Lidar to detect hazards and seven cameras to help navigate. It was created alongside Uber at the taxi firm's Advanced Technologies Centre in Pittsburgh.

"The promise of self-driving is core to our mission of reliable transportation, everywhere for everyone," said Anthony Levandowski, Uber's vice president of self-driving technology.

Up to three passengers can fit into the Volvo XC90 cars and those sitting in the back will be able to use a touchscreen to view their route as they travel through the city. The screens will also display 3D footage obtained from the cameras dotted around the car's exterior so they can see what's happening around them.

Uber explained it chose to test the cars in San Francisco because it presents different challenges compared to Pittsburgh.

"We drove in the rain and other kinds of weather, and we've added lane-changing capabilities since we started in September," Levandowski said.

"Now we want to see how we operate in this new environment, especially with the giant hills that San Francisco has to offer."

The next time you use BlackBerry software, it may be in a self-driving car.

The struggling smartphone maker expanded into transport with BlackBerry Radar, an Internet of Things system for lorries, and has long been working on in-car software. It's now expanding its efforts with the launch of an Innovation Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

Based in Ottawa, Canada, the centre won't make vehicles, but will develop the software to control them, working with the University of Waterloo, PolySync and Renesas Electronics on a concept car. The local government has already approved the use of BlackBerry's QNX software to control autonomous cars on public roads.

"Autonomous vehicles require software that is extremely sophisticated and highly secure," said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO of BlackBerry. "Our innovation track record in mobile security and our demonstrated leadership in automotive software make us ideally suited to dominate the market for embedded intelligence in the cars of the future."

While driverless cars attract more attention than their connected siblings, the latter are already a major market for BlackBerry. The company said its BlackBerry QNX software is already found in 60 million vehicles, for "infotainment", telematics and more.

"Experts predict that 50% of all cars will connect to the cloud by 2020, and the wide range of 'connected things' could exceed 20 billion. In the coming hyper-connected world, cars will soon carry one of the highest concentrations of Internet of Things (IoT) edge nodes and sensors, generating a vast amount of valuable and actionable data," the company said in a statement.

BlackBerry is now looking to extend that to driving assistance and autonomous systems as well as developing secure, over-the-air update services.

BlackBerry QNX has its origins in QNX Software, which the company formerly known as RIM bought back in 2010. The founder of QNX, Dan Dodge, jumped ship to Apple over the summer, where he's believed to be working on that company's self-driving car efforts, called Project Titan.

Of course, if you're still sold on having a BlackBerry handset, don't forget the company has licensed its brand to China's TCL to make new mobile devices after it stopped making hardware earlier this year.

News emerged earlier this week that chipmakers Intel are partnering with auto supplier Delphi Automotive, and vision systems developer Mobileye, to create self-driving technology. Intel has now followed this up with an announcement that its autonomous efforts are to be encompassed within a new business group.

Intel's Automated Driving Group (ADG) will be headed up by Doug Davis, who has previously led the Internet of Things (IoT) unit. Davis has been at the company for 30 years, and had actually announced his retirement in August, but has now delayed it so he can become senior vice president and general manager of ADG.

"Throughout his career, Doug has consistently been on the leading side of disruption standing up amazing new technologies that redefine how we experience work and life," Intel president of Internet of Things (IoT) businesses and systems architecture group, Murthy Renduchintala, said in a blog post.

"Doug sees the new Automated Driving Group as another not-to-be missed opportunity to lead through disruption, so much so that he has postponed his retirement to become the senior vice president and general manager of the new ADG," said Renduchintala.

Joining Davis will be Kathy Winter, who was previously vice president of software and services for automated driving at Delphi. Winter will be vice president and general manager of ADG. Replacing Davis as IoT head will be Tom Lantzsch, who is coming from rivals ARM, where he was executive vice president of strategy.

The creation of ADG marks a significant move for a company that has undergone something of a transformation in recent years. CEO Brian Krzanich recently talking about Intel's focus on powering the "next wave of computing".

"We're really evolving to be a company that powers all the billions of smart and connected devices, and to look at that you have to think about the importance of artificial intelligence; a critical component in those connected devices," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said on stage at the firm's AI Day. "We are looking at investing through our technology and acquisitions to build and fuel AI across everything we do."

In terms of autonomous driving technology, Intel has some catching up to do on other processor manufacturers, such as Qualcomm and Nvidia. Tesla announced that the latter's Nvidia's Drive PX2 will be the on-board "supercomputer" for all of its vehicles. Intel has said that it plans on announcing a processing chip built specifically for autonomous cars in the "near future".

Main image credit: Bigstock

Germany has asked Tesla to stop advertising its 'Autopilot' feature, following a number of crashes involving the system.

In a letter to Tesla, Germany's Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) said the term 'Autopilot' could be misleading for customers, prompting them to not pay attention on the road.

Autopilot is Tesla's assisted driving feature, a semi-autonomous system that relies on cameras and sensors to drive the car on highways, but it also requires drivers' hands to be on the steering wheel, and drivers can manually intervene at any moment.

The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag (BamS) reported that the letter to Tesla read: "In order to prevent misunderstanding and incorrect customers' expectations, we demand that the misleading term Autopilot is no longer used in advertising the system."

The Federal Motor Transport Authority confirmed the existence of this letter, in an interview with Reuters, saying: "It can be confirmed that a letter to Tesla exists with the request to no longer use the misleading term Autopilot for the driver assistance system of the car."

Tesla suggested the term Autopilot does not in any way suggest the driver should not be paying attention to the road, but should be used combined to the human driver's thoughtfulness.

A spokeswoman for Tesla told Reuters: "Just as in an airplane, when used properly, Autopilot reduces driver workload and provides an added layer of safety when compared to purely manual driving".

One of the accidents involving a Tesla S car took place in Florida in May. The driver was using the Autopilot technology, and was said to be watching a Harry Potter movie when he crashed into a truck.

The safety of the feature has since become topic of debate and attention worldwide.

Uber is planning to establish a long-haul freight transportation service using self-driving trucks, it has emerged.

The company recently purchased Otto, a startup focused on building tech to retrofit existing trucks with self-driving technology. Today, it became clear that Uber doesn't just want to use that tech for self-driving taxis.

Instead, it will directly target the $700 billion trucking industry, applying Uber's signature business model to the haulage market. Otto co-founder Lior Ron told Reuters that the company was making connections with independent truckers, and plans to more than double its current fleet of vehicles, to a total of 15.

The company's test trucks can currently operate autonomously on interstate highways (albeit with two backup drivers in case of emergencies), but full automation is still several years away and the company stresses it is still in the testing phase.

However, Uber is aiming to use its other areas of expertise to shake up the sector too. According to Otto, more efficient mapping, tracking and navigation software can make long-haul trucking cheaper and more efficient.

One of the company's key ambitions is to replace the industry's brokers - the middlemen who connect carrier fleets with shippers who need goods transported. The company is hoping to accomplish this using similar technology to the system that connects drivers and passengers in its existing ride-hailing service.

"In Uber, you press a button and an Uber shows up after three minutes," Ron told Reuters. "In freight... the golden standard is that it takes [the broker] five hours of phone calls to find your truck. That's how efficient the industry is today."

The news follows George Osborne's announcement earlier in the year that similar autonomous lorries are to be trialled in the UK.

Self-driving car makers have been handed a 15-point checklist to ensure safety, as the US government agency tasked with looking after the country's road safety issues its guidelines on autonomous vehicles.

The policy is designed to ensure self-driving cars are safe while allowing innovation to continue.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Agency published its Federal Automated Vehicles Policy, which includes performance guidelines for self-driving cars as well as a model policy for individual states to follow. The policy document is open for public comment over the next couple of months.

The document marks the adoption of the SAE scale in favour of the agency's own scale. The SAE Scale rates the level of autonomous driving from zero (where a human is in control of everything) to five (complete automation). Cars using technology such as Tesla's Autopilot as well as lane assist fall into SAE Scale level two to three.

There is a 15-point checklist for car makers to fill out to help regulators make sure due process is followed on safety. There are four major sections: Vehicle Performance Guidance for Automated Vehicles; Model State Policy; NHTSA's Current Regulatory Tools; and Modern Regulatory Tools.

The Model State Policy makes clear what division of responsibilities between state and federal entities. The aim of policy is to maintain a consistent framework for states for testing and deploying vehicles.

"As the digital era increasingly reaches deeper into transportation, our task at the US Department of Transportation is not only to keep pace, but to ensure public safety while establishing a strong foundation such that the rules of the road can be known, understood, and responded to by industry and the public," said US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx.

He added that the agency will conduct significant public outreach to inform its next update to this policy.

Professional drivers, take note: driverless cars may be about to steal your job, but you can start your retraining with Udacity, which is offering an online degree in automated vehicle design.

Udacity is the online education site founded by former Google Labs chief Sebastian Thrun, and offers a wide range of courses from programming to machine learning and data analytics.

It's latest course is for a self-driving car engineer, for which it's partnered with Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia, among others. Students will be taught about deep learning, computer vision, automotive hardware and more - and you'll get to run your test code on an "actual autonomous vehicle", the site boasts.

"We will build a crowd-sourced, open-source self-driving car and it will be on the streets of San Francisco," Thrun told the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, according to reports. "If you see a car go by that has the Udacity logo, run as fast as you can the other way just to be safe," he added, jokingly.

In a blog post, he said that if autonomous cars succeed, they'll change every aspect of our lives. "To make this a reality we will need the best inventors, dreamers and mavericks to come into this field from wherever they might be in the world," he said. "Udacity is all about democratising learning and today we have the ability to put the latest advances into the grasp of millions."

Thrun said there simply isn't enough engineers working on self-driving cars, and bridging that gap is part of the reason he left Google X to found Udacity. "I was working on all these wonderful technologies, then I realised there were only a small number of engineers doing this stuff," he said. "I decided to make it possible for others to do these things. I felt, if we could build a new kind of university, we could have a bigger impact on the world than just building a self-driving car."

The "nanodegree" program is made up of three terms of 12 weeks each, at a cost of $800 per term or $2,400 (1,800). There are 250 spots available in the online course, and at the time of writing, there had been 1,941 applications for the first course starting in October. You will need some pre-existing skills to get in - don't apply unless you have some knowledge or coursework in probability, statistics, machine learning and are an intermediate Python programmer. The full prerequisites are here.

Update:Google has announced a competitor to Amazon's Echo speaker and personal assistant, Google Home. Designed for use away in domestic settings, but with obvious workplace applications, Google Home uses the new cloud-based Google Assistant conversational artificial intelligence.

The jug-sized Google Home will have a customisable base with a choice of different colours and finishes from metal to fabric. Similar to Google Now, you'll be able to use Google Home to control music playback and control streaming video playback on a linked TV thanks to built-in support for the familiar Google Cast protocol introduced in the Chromecast. You can ask questions and get answers, culled from Google search results of course, in a conversational back-and-forth format.

You can of course use Google Home to add to and manage your to do lists, reminders, calendar and timers. Naturally, it will recognise the voices of multiple people. It will also integrate with popular' smart home IoT systems, starting with the Google-owned Nest of course - but this feature is set for the future and won't be available at Home's launch.

Google hasn't set a precise launch date or price, only saying that it will arrive later this year'. Even so, this throws down the gauntlet to Amazon, which has yet to sell its Echo personal assistant outside the US, and Facebook which is currently trialling a similar conversational artificial intelligence in Facebook Messenger.

18/5/2016

Google is reportedly planning to launch a smart home assistant, to compete with the Amazon Echo, at the Google I/O developer conference later today.

The device will be known as Google Home and will be available this autumn, said anonymous sources speaking to the New York Times.

Google Home will be primarily designed to answer questions and perform 'smart home' tasks, and its primary competition will be the Amazon Echo.

The Amazon Echo has become an unlikely success in the home automation sphere, selling around three million units since its release in 2014.

The device is controlled by an AI software core known as 'Alexa' and powered by AWS' cloud computing platform.

Alexa can link to various third-party services and hardware to perform tasks like ordering an Uber, answering questions from Wikipedia, or controlling lights and thermostats.

However, while the Echo has been remarkably successful, Google is in an excellent position to supercede it.

Effectively, Google Home can be expected to act as a standalone version of Google Now, Android's contextual digital assistant.

Users will be able to check their schedule via Google Calendar, play music through services like Spotify, and perform any number of actions through third-party integrations.

Thanks to its acquisition of Nest, the company also has strong integrations with many smart home and Internet of Things products.

Thanks to smart diversification across many areas, Google now has one of the strongest ecosystems around, and Google Home could be the final piece of the puzzle.

17/05/2016:Google rolls out Cardboard support for YouTube on iOS

Google has just rolled out YouTube support for Google Cardboard on iOS, bringing full-scale mobile VR to iOS for the first time.

iPhone users have had the ability watch 360-degree videos on the platform since last year, but now they can use Google's cheap mobile viewer to experience 360 content in virtual reality.

Cardboard can also be used to watch regular YouTube videos, which display in a 'virtual theater' to let users feel like they're watching them on a big screen.

The news follows rumours that the company's Google I/O developer conference will see a new version of Google Cardboard, as well as a standalone 'Android VR' headset that will not need a smartphone to power it.

12/05/2016:Google set to unveil standalone 'Android VR' headset

Google will be unveiling a standalone 'Android VR' headset at its I/O developer conference later this month, it has been claimed.

The rumours come from Engadget and Gizmodo founder Peter Rojas, who tweeted that a standalone headset would "definitely be announced next week".

This coincides neatly with the dates of Google's annual conference, which will run from 18-20 May in Mountain View, California. According to Rojas, the new device will be "better than Gear VR, [but] not as good as [the Oculus] Rift [and the HTC] Vive".

Rojas also claimed that the headset would be markedly different to the current VR products on offer. Unlike the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, Android VR will not be connected to a PC, but will be entirely self-contained.

However, it will also differ from Android's existing mobile VR products like Google Cardboard and the Gear VR, in that it won't require a smartphone to act as the main display.

Samsung has also confirmed it is working on a VR headset that doesn't require tethering to a phone or PC, so the new device could be a partnership between the two.

The rumours are lent more credibility by the appearance in the latest Unreal Engine 4 preview of a reference to "engine changes in support of Android VR", a reference that was swiftly changed once discovered.

Google is also expected to launch an updated version of its Google Cardboard headset at the conference, after releasing the original in the UK for the first time this week.

13/01/2016:Google I/O 2016 will take place in May

Google's annual developer conference, Google I/O, will take place between 18-20 May this year, the company has confirmed.

It will be the 10th time Google has put on the event, and this year's show will be hosted at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, in San Francisco, said CEO Sundar Pichai.

He tweeted: "I/O'16 coming to neighborhood where it all started 10 yrs ago".

Developers unable to attend should be able to stream the show online, with the event typically discussing major Android updates.

Last year, Google used the event to officially unveil Android M (now Android Marshmallow), boasting that it had solved "thousands of bugs" in the latest iteration of the operating system.

Other possible topics could include Google's self-driving car project, and its wearable, Android Wear.

With many other manufacturers also developing driverless car technology, Google will be keen to show it is ahead of the curve.

It has been in talks with the UK government for two years about the potential of the tech, but its prototype also nearly collided with another autonomous vehicle, created by Delphi, last summer.

Today, Google revealed that human drivers have had to take control of its fleet of driverless cars 341 times over 14 months to avoid accidents and counteract software problems.

Between September 2014 and November 2015, human drivers have intervened 13 times to prevent a crash, and another 69 times to prevent dangerous driving, according to the firm's filing with California's Department of Motor Vehicles.

Google also confirmed last year that it is developing an iOS app for Android Wear, allowing people to use the smartwatch with their iPhone.

In a blog post announcing the move in September 2015, David Singleton, director of engineering for Android Wear, said: "When you wear something every day, you want to be sure it really works for you. That's why Android Wear offers countless design choices, so you can find the watch that fits your style.

"With Android Wear you can do all of that. And now, Android watches work with iPhones."

A group of technology firms, car manufacturers and service providers have joined forces to help make driverless cars a reality.

The Self- Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which includes Google, Ford, Volvo, Uber and Lyft will attempt to help shape the regulations and laws needed for the cars to hit the roads. They will present these ideas to governments in the hope such vehicles will be able to drive on public highways sooner and communicate the benefits of driverless cars to the public.

Former US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official David Strickland will be the group's counsel and spokesman, providing information on the safety issues involved and advising the group how they should be tackling the public and government's doubts.

At present, some US states have ruled automated vehicles that don't have common car components, such as steering wheels, pedals or a way for someone to take over control of the car in the case of an emergency are currently illegal and California is even attempting to bar such vehicles from ever being able to operate on its roads.

Google has objected to such rules and wants a blanket law to cover the entire US, rather than a different set of regulations in each state.

"Self-driving technology will enhance public safety and mobility for the elderly and disabled, reduce traffic congestion, improve environmental quality, and advance transportation efficiency," the group said in a statement.

Ford added the group's purpose is to "work together to advocate for policy solutions that will support the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles."

Later today, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will be holding a public forum at Stanford University on its self driving car guidelines, with contributions from technology companies and car manufacturers.

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

Anthony Foxx, the US secretary of transportation, has spoken out about the recent crash involving Google's autonomous car last month, sayin it is "not a surprise".

Speaking to BBC News, Foxx said we shouldn't expect the emerging technology to be perfect.

"Driverless technology presents a lot of potential for disruption on a number of fronts. It's unclear to me now exactly how that future unfolds," said Foxx.

"It's not a surprise that at some point there would be a crash of any technology that's on the road. But I would challenge one to look at the number of crashes that occurred on the same day that were the result of human behavior. I think the question here isn't comparing the automated car against perfection, I think it's a relative comparison to what we have now on the roads which is you and I, and our eyeballs, and our brains."

The accident in question occurred on 14 February with details emerging at the beginning of the month, when one of Google's Lexus SUVs changed lanes suddenly and collided with a bus. Though nobody was injured and both vehicles were moving slowly at the time, the incident has raised concerns.

"In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved there wouldn't have been a collision," a Google spokesperson said at the time.

Fox told the BBC, however, that one of the biggest challenges related to autonomous vehicles is not the technology itself but the legal issues surrounding such a crash, particularly determining who is at fault out of the passenger, the computer and the software company.

At the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, Foxx announced that seven cities across the US had reached the final stage of a competition to receive $40 million (28 million) funding for 'smart technologies' such as driverless vehicles. The US government has already committed $4 billion (2.8 billion) to self-driving cars in the country.

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.

One of Google's self-driving cars just crashed into a public bus on a busy city street.

The vehicle was in autonomous mode when the collision happened in Mountain View, California.

The accident came about on 14 February, with the details noted in a report filed by Google to the state's department of motor vehicles.

According to the accident report made public on Monday 29 February, one of Google's Lexus SUVs changed lanes and put itself into the path of a munipipal vehicle. It moved to make a right turn, but stopped when it deteced a grouo of sand bags placed around a drain. When it veered out to pass them, things went bad.

Here's a notable extract of what Google announced:

It's not exactly a major crash, however. Google's self-driving car was travelling at a mere 3mph, while the bus was going 15mph. Nobody was injured.

However, the fact that the vehicle struck another has rung alarm bells. Autonomous cars is a huge topic of discussion - many believe it to be the future and tests are being conducted across the world. But, naturally, there are concerns.

As Google admits: 'In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved there wouldn't have been a collision.'

Google had previously admitted that its car 'could' have been at least partly responsible for the collision. Apparently the car's test driver, who must take control when needed, according to state law, thought the bus would move to evade the coming together.

This now appears to be the first time one of the company's self-driving cars will have had an accident. But there are still questions to be answered and finer details will no doubt be sought. If these cars are on the road as planned by 2020, these issues will have to be ironed out.

Google has been testing its Lexus motors, kitted out with cameras and sensors, for some time now. There have been other incidents, but none where Google has been determined as soley responsible.

This article originally appeared on sister site Alphr.

The Isle of Man could become the self-driving car capital of the world thanks to its unlikely status as a tech hub, and willingness of companies to make use of the land.

The small island, nestled in between Britain and Ireland, has a population of just 90,000 and a land mass no larger than Chicago, US.

Yet in recent years, the nation has become somewhat of a haven for digital industries cryptocurrencies flourish there, startups often set up on its sweeping hills, and it could soon become home to the world's first 5G network.

The reason for a Celtic-tech crossover is the government's openness to modernism in a starkly traditional landscape and a very lenient tax system that benefits business.

And, true to form, one of the tech world's biggest ambitions, automated vehicles, could soon call the Isle of Man its home. That's if transportation minister Phil Gawne has his way. He's working 16-hour days to see his plans progress.

Gawne is hoping to bring self-driving car manufacturers no prizes for guessing which to the Isle of Man. And it appears they want to play ball. The island may have the oldest continuous parliament in the world, apparently dating back 1,000 years, but it also wants its roads run by robots.

"We like to be innovative on the island," Gawne told the Washington Post.

"We like also to be independent. This helps both those areas in terms of our international image and reputation."

Indeed, the Isle of Man may prove the ideal spot for such ventures. It's government is small and can pass legislation easily. Manufacturers are continually searching for places to trial self-driving cars in the real world, free from the shackles of bureaucracies.

It's an ideal combination.

"Things can be tried on an island that may not be practical in a city," David Alexander, an analyst at Navigant Research, explained.

"On the mainland there will always be someone who wants to go beyond the range of the trial and will then proclaim how useless autonomous cars are."

Of course none of this is set in stone. There'll always be expense perhaps out of the reach of the Isle of Man as well as legal challenges, the sensitivity of self-driving vehicles on public roads. And there are plenty more places with aspirations.

But the Isle of Man has a history of technological coups. Its pubs, for example, are full of Bitcoin cash machines, something not even seen in many parts of London. Its college focuses much of its resources on the future'.

Will the Isle of Man be the first nation in the world to see automated transit? One thing's for certain watch this space.

Documents released to the Telegraph have revealed Google has been in talks about automated cars with the UK government for the last two years.

In total, Google and the Department of Transport have had five meetings to discuss how driverless cars will be tested and potentially rolled out on the UK's roads, including issues surrounding safety and the infrastructure needed to support such vehicles.

The files relating to the conversations were released to the Telegraph following a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request, although it's unclear whether the government will be allowing trials of the cars on UK roads, despite committing 20m to research into automated vehicles.

"Driverless cars will bring great benefits to our society, the economy and road safety and we are investing millions into research and trials for the motoring of the future," a spokesman for the Department for Transport said.

"The UK is in a unique position to lead the way for the testing of connected and autonomous vehicles. We are making sure our laws are in step with this fast evolving technology and are working with industry to keep the UK at the forefront of its development."

The documents reveal Sarah Hunter, the head of policy for Google's experimental division known as Google X, met with government officials in February 2015, with notes from the meeing statating the tech company was "very positive about the non-regulatory approach being taken in the UK [which] places the UK in a good position and could be seen as an example of best practice."

Another meeting took place in July, where Hunter described the UK as showing remarkable leadership in this area," while the Department for Transport's Michael Hurwitz explained Google's driverless cars initiative is very important to show the UK's momentum in the area. He said the meeting "emphasised our desire to work with Google to ensure the UK stays ahead."

The next steps following Google's meeting with the government back in July was for the company to talk to the Bank of England about the impact of driverless cars on the UK economy, including whether automated vehicles will have a negative impact on insurance costs.

Jaguar Land Rover and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have set out their plans for a driverless car research project, worth 11 million.

The study will investigate whether autonomous cars can fully operate without input from humans, how integrated technologies such as distributed control systems and cloud computing can be used in the vehicles and how they will interact with humans and the environment around them.

Ten universities around the country will be involved in the research, alongside the new Transport Research Laboratory set up by the government and announced by secretary of state for business, Sajid Javid.

Javid explained that research into driverless vehicles is something the government plans to be heavily involved in, with the department of Business, Innovation and Skills taking the lead where the authorities are concerned.

"The UK Government has no intention of being a passenger in innovation so is pioneering autonomous car technology in partnership with industry," Javid said. "This 11 million research and development programme and the winning projects are a perfect example of this and will help to keep us at the forefront of the robotics revolution."

Jaguar Land Rover has selected five research proposals focussed on developing fully autonomous cars, with which it will collaborate in order to develop best-in-class technologies for the future.

"To realise the future potential for fully autonomous vehicles, we need to give drivers, pedestrians and other road users the confidence that a car driving around with little or no human input is a safe, viable and rewarding experience," Dr Wolfgang Epple, director of research and technology at Jaguar Land Rover, said.

"These collaborative projects will bring some of the UK's leading academics together with our autonomous driving team to address the fundamental real-world challenges that are part of our journey towards autonomous driving."

Last week, Toyota became the latest car manufacturer to announce trials with driverless vehicles, adding to the long list of companies involved including Google and Ford.

(Image Credit: The Car Spy, Flickr)

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."

A new security organisation for connected cars has been set up by Intel in the wake of several high-profile vulnerabilities exposed over the course of the summer.

The Automotive Security Research Board (ASRB), as the group has been called, comprises Intel, security consultancy IOActive, lobby group I Am The Cavalry, and vehicle research lab collective Open Garages.

It will work to codify best practices and design recommendations through ongoing security tests and audits, while Intel will provide specialist infrastructure on which these investigations can be carried out.

The chipmaker is currently asking security professionals who would be interested in joining the organisation to get in touch.

Alongside the launch of the ASRB, Intel Security (formerly McAfee) has published a whitepaper on automotive security best practices.

Co-authored by eight Intel security researchers, the paper sets out three primary areas of focus for best practice discussion - security lifecycle development, meaning the car must be protected for the entire time it's on the road, supply chain security, and the use of recognised secure coding standards.

"Computer security joins reliability and safety as a cornerstone for consumer confidence and continued success in the automotive industry," said the report.

"Best practices for automotive security are an evolution and amalgamation of both product safety and computer security," it added.

Intel and the ASRB are not the only ones working to improve connected car security, however. BT announced in April a new initiative, Assure Ethical Hacking for Vehicles, which will carry out penetration testing on connected vehicles, including buses and lorries, as well as cars.

Hackers can fool self-driving cars into thinking obstructions such as cars, other people and walls are in front of them, forcing the vehicles to take action to evade the non-existent objects.

This would involve the car slowing down or stopping to avoid a collision and means, of course, that automated cars may be fundamentally insecure, vulnerable to cyber criminals armed with nothing more complex than a $60 low-power laser and pulse generator, according to IEEE Spectrum.

The pointer can compromise the reliability of the laser ranging system (lidar) used by self-driving cars to map the world around them. The vulnerability was discovered by researchers at software security company Security Innovation, and will be presented at the Black Hat Europe security conference later this year.

Jonathan Petit, principle scientist at Security Innovation, explained: "I can take echoes of a fake car and put them at any location I want. And I can do the same with a pedestrian or a wall.

"It's kind of a laser pointer, really," he added of the technology needed to hack the cars. "And you don't need the pulse generator when you do the attack. You can easily do it with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino. It's really off the shelf."

Earlier this year, it was reported that BT Assure Ethical Hacking for Vehicles had been deployed to identify potential security issues present in driverless car technology before they could be exploited.

Back in June, two self-driving cars owned by Google and Delphi narrowly avoided a crash as companies tested the autonomous vehicles in Palo Alto. It was confirmed that over 1.7m miles driven by Google's cars, there had been only 11 accidents recorded.

"There are ways to solve it," continued Petit. "A strong system that does misbehaviour detection could cross-check with other data and filter out those that aren't plausible. But I don't think carmakers have done it yet. This might be a good wake-up call for them."

Nokia has agreed to sell its HERE digital mapping business to BMW, Audi and Daimler for approximately 2.8 billion (1.9 billion).

The Finnish former phone maker today confirmed the German car manufacturers have clubbed together to buy its geomapping division, which provides services such as satellite navigation as well as technology for self-driving and semi-autonomous cars.

The car manufacturers were reportedly spurred into action by fears the technology may fall into the hands of Uber, which reportedly bid $3 billion (1.9 billion) for it in May, as well as interest from Google or Apple.

Although HERE has been valued at 2.8 billion, Nokia expects to recieve a little over 2.5 billion, due to the purchasers being compensated for "certain defined liabilities" within the asset.

This deal's completion could mean the car makers will invite the likes of Renault, Ford, Toyota, Peugot Citroen and Fiat Chrysler to invest in the system as well.

"I believe today's announcement is a very good outcome for HERE, its customers and employees", said HERE president Sean Fernback. "The new ownership structure of HERE will allow us to accelerate our strategy, further scale our business and fulfill our intent to become the leading location cloud company across industries".

Nokia mooted the idea of selling HERE in April following its 15.6 billion acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, as well as the sale of its hardware arm to Microsoft last year.

"With this step we complete the latest stage of Nokia's transformation", Nokia president and CEO Rajeev Suri said in a statement issued today.

"Going forward, we will focus on our planned combination with Alcatel-Lucent. Once that is complete, Nokia will be a renewed company, with a world-leading network technology and services business, as well as the licensing and innovation engine of Nokia Technologies."

A virtual reality suite could help engineers improve the UK's transport infrastructure by creating a digital version of Milton Keynes.

A government-backed innovation centre in the city, the Transport Systems Catapult (TSC), has built the visualisation laboratory', which includes an omnidirectional treadmill built by Swedish manufacturers Omnifinity.

Used in conjunction with VR headsets, this allows users to walk around a virtual version of Milton Keynes constructed by Virtual Viewing, a local design firm.

The system is designed to allow companies to test the effects and consequences of implementing new transport technologies without costly pilot programmes.

According to Graham Fletcher, modelling and visualisation director at TSC, a major use case is the ability to test how pedestrians react to sharing thoroughfares with driverless cars.

"It is envisaged that we can conduct user trials that will allow subjects in a virtual environment to walk along pathways and interact with autonomous vehicles being controlled by their experimental control algorithms," Fletcher said.

"We have already had interest from major manufacturers in testing their vehicles in this way before implementation on UK roads.

"We see huge potential for virtual reality technology to help solve the UK's transport problems at a lower cost and without the associated risks of testing new technology in a live environment."

It comes after Google recorded the first self-driving car-related injuries, claiming a human-driven vehicle crashed into the back of a prototype, sending three employees to hospital with minor whiplash.

Fletcher added: "The Omnideck Treadmill and virtual reality equipment we have installed here at the TSC is totally unique in the UK and will allow businesses to experiment, develop and demonstrate new technologies in a new and inspirational way."

This news follows the announcement that the UK government is funding a research and development project for driverless car innovation.

The government has revealed a driverless car research and development project to make the UK a leading force in the field of autonomous transport.

The initiative, launched with a 20 million budget, also includes creating a code of practice for testing the technology.

The project has been developed in collaboration with the Department for Transport and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which have created the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (C-CAV) to deal with matters directly related to autonomous vehicles.

Business secretary Sajid Javid said at the launch: "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."

"The country's automotive industry, strengths in innovation and light touch regulatory approach to testing driverless technology combine to make the UK market competitive and an attractive destination for investors."

The code of practice will allow organisations developing driverless vehicle technologies to test their innovations using framework provided by the government. It will help develop safer policies, merging real-life scenarios with processes, enabling companies to create new models for different circumstances.

"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," transport minister Andrew Jones said. "Our code of practice clearly shows that the UK is in the best position when it comes to testing driverless cars and embracing the motoring of the future. We now look forward to working with industry to make this a reality."

The government's initiative will focus on safety, reliability, communication between vehicles and the environment around them and developing solutions for the elderly. It is inviting companies to bid for funds to work on the research projects, although successful parties will be expected to match contributions with their own money.

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."

Two self-driving cars owned by Google and Delphi only just escaped a collision on Californian roads earlier this week.

The near-miss took place in Palo Alto, where seven companies are currently testing autonomous vehicles.

A car from Google's fleet reportedly cut off an Audi being tested by rival Delphi Automotive during a lane change.

Delphi's vehicle took "appropriate action" to avert an accident, company executive John Absmeier, who was in the car during the encounter, told Reuters.

The news marks the first reported incident of a close call between two self-driving cars.

Google's Chris Urmson, director for the firm's driverless cars project, boasted of the vehicles' safety record in a blog post last month.

He stated that over the course of 1.7 million miles, the fleet had been involved in just 11 accidents, with none being the fault of the driverless car.

"They're ultimately designed to work without a steering wheel or pedals, but during this phase of our project we'll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving if needed", Google said in a recent blog post.

Google has reportedly taken great pains to ensure that their vehicles are as safe as possible during the testing process, capping their speed at just 25mph.

Delphi Automotive has a similar backup driver system in place, and has also reported a minor collision although the car wasn't in self-driving mode at the time, California state law still requires the company to report the incident.

Google has not commented on this week's narrow miss.

German car maker Daimler is pushing forward smart automotive tech by joining forces with Chinese software company Baidu and chip maker Qualcomm.

The companies announced their deal at the Asian edition of the consumer electronics show, CES, in Shanghai.

The first tie-up will involve integrating Baidu software in Mercedes-Benz cars sold in China, allowing drivers and passengers to access content from their smartphones on their car dashboards. The exact content or applications have not been confirmed, but the companies said it will include music and internet services.

At the show, Daimler also revealed it is working on wireless charging of smartphones and mobile devices in cars with Qualcomm. The two companies are looking into recharging electric cars without the use of cables too.

Daimler's board member for research and development, Thomas Weber, said: "It's important that we remain on the cutting edge of technology and continue to deliver unparalleled experiences to our customers.

"With this in mind, we are eager to jointly explore possible fields of future cooperation with an internationally leading tech firm like Qualcomm."

Daimler had used the European CES 2015 trade show in January to show off a fully-automated Mercedez-Benz concept car, the F 015 Luxury in Motion, but this is the first time a partnership with plans to bring products to the mass market has been announced.

The news also lends some creedence to reported from the Wall Street Journal that Daimler is entering into a partnership with BMW, Audi and Baidu to bid for Nokia's Here maps business, which is already in use in some connected car technology.

These are not the only car manufacturers exploring the field of smart automation. Last September, Ford released details about its connected car. The Mondeo features built-in pedestrian detection and Active City Stop that predicts hazards and reacts appropriately. The tech is due to be released in this year's model of the car.

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.

The Conservatives will rip up 10 billion of red tape to help SMBs and start-ups make Britain Europe's leading technology hub if the party wins a second term in power.

SMBs and start-ups

The party released its election manifesto today, promising to make the UK the best place to do business in Europe by 2020 by cutting through unnecessary bureaucracy though details of what comprises that red tape were scarce.

It will also triple its Start Up Loans programme to lend cash to 75,000 enterpreneurs hoping to start their own businesses.

These measures come after the Tories, in the current coalition government, helped small businesses by upping the Annual Investment Allowance to 500,000 though it's due to drop to 25,000 in January 2016.

Claims over late payments, which can be especially damaging to SMBs, may be mediated by a Small Business Conciliation service under a Tory government.

R&D

The UK would become Europe's leading beacon in modern technology under a Conservative government, the party claimed, thanks to 2.9 billion investment in R&D.

That cash would be funnelled into a Grand Challenges Fund to spend on research facilities like the new Big Data lab in King's Cross, the 42 million Alan Turing Institute.

The manifesto added: "We have boosted research and development tax credits and we will continue to support our network of University Enterprise Zones, ensuring that Britain's world-beating universities are able to make money from the technology they develop."

Another research area getting focus from the Tories is driverless car technology.

Four projects around England have already got 19 million in funding from the coalition government to trial self-driving cars, and the Department for Transport (DfT) has approved real-world testing.

If the Tories are re-elected, they plan to work with the Automotive Council to bolster the burgeoning technology, as well as splashing cash on robotics and nanotechnology.

Digital skills and training

Addressing the tech skills gap has been a priority for some time, with the coalition spending 20 million on IT degree apprenticeships in an attempt to plug it.

It's also introduced a new computer curriculum for schools and in addition, the Conservatives want to train another 17,500 maths and physics teachers in the next five years.

Broadband and 5G

David Cameron's party again underlined its commitment to bring superfast broadband to 95 per cent of the population by the end of 2017.

So far two million UK homes or offices are connected, and 40,000 are being upgraded each week, it claimed.

The 790 million pound roll out is in the hands of BT, which has aired doubts over whether it will meet the deadline, however.

Labour yesterday said all of the UK would have superfast broadband by 2020 in its own manifesto.

But the party's efforts in the coalition government saw mobile operators agree to end mobile not-spots' by coughing up cash to ensure 90 per cent of the UK will have voice and text coverage by 2017.

The manifesto read: "We will hold the mobile operators to their new legally binding agreement."

It added: "We will ensure that Britain seizes the chance to be a world leader in the development of 5G, playing a key role in defining industry standards."

Digital government and public services

Under the coalition government, large legacy IT contracts are being phased out in favour of using smaller suppliers through frameworks like the G-Cloud.

While doubts were aired over the Cabinet Office hitting its target to spend 25 per cent of its procurement budget with SMBs a year early, the Tories would up that target to one-third in a second term.

Whitehall introduced the Government Digital Service (GDS), a large team driving departments to become digital while also transforming IT and public services.

Initiatives like Gov.uk have seen all government websites move to one platform, while Government-as-a-Platform (GaaP) would create common components departments can re-use for different services, cutting down on outsourcing and waste.

"We have already created 20 high-quality digital services, which include apprenticeships applications and tax self-assessments," read the manifesto.

"We will save you time, hassle and money by moving more services online, while actively tackling digital exclusion.

"We will ensure digital assistance is always available for those who are not online, while rolling out cross-government technology platforms to cut costs and improve productivity such as Gov.uk."

Labour published its own election manifesto yesterday.

Apple could become the only $1 trillion company thanks to innovations like the Apple Watch and its rumoured self-driving car, one analyst claims.

Brian White, analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, cited Apple's strong performance in China as another factor behind his estimate, detailed in a note to investors.

He said: "Next month, Apple will enter its first new product category in five years, while media reports over the past several weeks have highlighted potential new areas of future innovation.

"Also, we believe Apple's iPhone portfolio and position in China have never been stronger.

"Finally, Applehas shown its commitment to returning cash to shareholders, and we expect more in April. We believe the combination of these forces will drive the market to reward Apple's stock."

The prediction comes after the tech giant netted the highest profit ever recorded by a company in a single quarter in the last three months of 2014.

The $18 billion profit, and record $74.6 billion revenue, were chalked up to the popularity of the iPhone 6.

Cantor Fitzgerald think that Apple's shares could soon be worth $180 per share.

Currently they are at $127, which puts the company at a value of $733 billion.

If Apple does hit $1 trillion in value, it will be worth more than each respective GDP of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or the Netherlands, according to statistics from the World Bank.

However, some sources are predicting the opposite of Cantor Fitzgerald's positive speculations.

Berenberg Bank predicted that their share could crash to $85. According to Forbes, the average prediction for the company's stock is $135.

Google has confirmed its commitment to self-driving cars by saying they will be on the roads by 2020, if the department's director has any say in the matter.

Chris Urmson, director of the search engine's self-driving car division, explained that his son is due to take his driving test in four-and-a-half years and he is urging his team to ensure self-driving cars are mainstream by that time so he doesn't need to take his test.

Joking aside, he said one of the main reasons Google wants to develop self-driving cars is accident prevention and the number one way to do that is to remove the driver, which is the least reliable part of a car.

"Some 1.2 million people are killed on the roads around the world each year. That number is equivalent to a jet falling out of the sky every day," Urmson explained at the TED conference in Vancouver.

Additionally, he said driverless cars are more efficient than those with a human at the wheel. According to Google's research, six billion minutes a day are wasted sitting in traffic.

Google's self-driving cars were first released in 2009 and the prototypes - designed as pods - have racked up 700,000 miles on roads around Silicon Valley.

They are manufactured without a steering wheel or conventional controls, because Google believes they don't need human interaction to work. However, the prototype vehicles will have some controls, just in case those testing the cars run into any problems during the testing period.

Urmson continued: "That is not to say that driver-assistance cars won't be useful but if we are really going to make changes to our cities, get rid of parking lots, we need self-drive cars."

Apple is accused of poaching staff from a firm specialising in the development of electric car batteries, in a lawsuit filed with the Massachusetts federal court.

The consumer electronics giant is said to have lured away five employees working for A123 Systems with expertise in product testing and development, despite the presence of non-compete clauses in their employment contracts.

As a result, A123 Systems has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Apple and the employees who defected. The document also details instances of unfair competition and misappropriation of trade secrets.

The lawsuit, first picked up by Law360.com, claims Apple embarked on an "aggressive campaign" to poach the company's staff and that five then left under "suspicious circumstances".

These members of staff, named in the lawsuit as Mujeeb Ijaz, Don Dafoe, Michael Erickson, Depeng Wang and Indrajeet Thorat, all worked for A123 Systems' Venture Technologies Division.

"In the wake of defendants Erickson, Wang and Thorat's departures, the projects that each was individually and principally responsible for have been effectively shut down for lack of PhD employees to replace them," read a court filing from A123.

The company said it wrote to Apple, making it aware of the non-compete clauses in its contracts, but claims the iPad maker stopped responding to its letters.

The reason it supposedly embarked on this illicit recruitment drive was to set up its own battery division, the lawsuit claims, as reports about Apple's plans to build a self-driving car continue to circulate.

A123 Systems makes lithium iron phosphate batteries, and employs more than 2,000 people across the globe.

At the time of writing, neither Apple nor A123 Systems had commented on the contents of the lawsuit.

Uber is embarking on a research and development push with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US that could pave the way for self-driving taxis.

The company confirmed the partnership with CMU in a blog post, where it said the collaboration will centre on R&D related to mapping, vehicle safety and autonomy technologies.

In the post, Jeff Holden, chief product officer at Uber, said it chose to partner with Pittsbugh-based CMU because of its track record in the field of robotic technologies.

"We have the unique opportunity to invest in leading edge technologies to enable the safe and efficient movement of people and things at giant scale," said Holden.

"This collaboration and the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Centre represent an important investment in building for the long term of Uber."

The Dean of CMU's School of Computer Science, Andrew Moore, added: "We look forward to... working together on real-world applications, which offer very interesting new challenges at the intersections of technology, mobility and human interactions."

Despite the focus on autonomy technologies, the Uber post said the centre should help create new jobs, an assertion backed by City of Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto.

"This is yet another case where collaboration between the city and its universities is creating opportunities for job growth and community development."

The move will be seen by many as an attempt by Uber to encroach on Google's territory in the self-driving cars space.

However, a report on Bloomberg suggests Google is in the throes of developing its own taxi-hailing app to rival Uber, which is a curious move given the search giant is one of the firm's biggest investors.

The report claims David Drummond, who serves on the Uber board and is Google's chief legal officer, has notified the former about the company's plans.

And, with Uber relying on Google's mapping technology to power the applications its drivers use, the company is said to be "deeply concerned" by Drummond's report.