Kangaroos are confusing Volvo’s self-driving cars

Volvo seems to have run into trouble with a certain marsupial as they test their self-driving cars in Australia. The car maker has discovered that kangaroos are both a nuisance and a source of confusion for its self-driving vehicles. This isn’t the first time Volvo’s detection system has been exposed to large animals. In Sweden, it’s responded to deer, caribou, and elk. But the unusual pattern that kangaroos move seems to have thrown these machines into a loop.

“When it’s in the air it actually looks like it’s further away, then it lands and it looks closer,” Volvo Australia’s Technical Manager David Pickett explains to ABC. Kangaroos aren’t just wreaking havoc with Volvo’s cars, these marsupials have been the cause of vehicle collisions in Australia. But it’s a good thing that this was detected early on to avoid any catastrophic run-ins with the creature somewhere down the line. But it does seem to delay Volvo’s plans a bit. Or at least make things a bit more challenging as they aim to sell autonomous driving vehicles by 2021.

Source: Engadget + The Verge

Two Canadian universities chosen for new Autonomous Vehicle Competition

At WCX 17: SAE World Congress Experience, SAE International and General Motors announced that the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo are finalists among eight North American universities who will compete in the upcoming autonomous vehicle design competition, AutoDrive Challenge.

This new autonomous vehicle design competition will be a three-year challenge to develop and demonstrate a full autonomous driving passenger vehicle. The competition’s technical goal is to navigate an urban driving course in an automated driving mode as described by SAE Standard (J3016) level four definition by Year 3.

The other finalists are: Kettering University, Michigan State University, Michigan Tech, North Carolina A&T University, Texas A&M University and Virginia Tech.

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Former head of Google’s self-driving car initiative looks to start his own autonomous vehicle company

The autonomous vehicle market is growing quiet quickly and hoping to join in on the fun is a former Googler. Chris Urmson, the ex-chief technology officer for Google’s self-driving car program, is said to be preparing to launch his own company that will compete not just with its former employer but with the many others working on autonomous vehicles. Urmson was approached by a lot of self-driving startups and Silicon Valley companies when he left Google back in August but he’s decided to strike out on his own.

He’s reportedly in talks for the past month with engineers from the likes of Uber, Tesla, and Apple in hopes of having them work with him. What Urmson wants to bring to the market is a complete self-driving package, including everything from software, data, to hardware. He’d allow the package to be licensed and altered by automakers, much like what Microsoft does with Windows.

Source: ReadWrite

Tesla announces full self-driving hardware on all cars being produced

Yesterday's big Tesla news was that, "all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."

This means that Teslas will now feature, "eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range. Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead."

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