Baidu brings autonomous driving unit to Silicon Valley

Heading right into Google’s turf, Baidu is forming a self-driving car team in Silicon Valley. This unit will focus on research, development, and testing of its own autonomous vehicle. Baidu is calling its Autonomous Driving Unit in Silicon Valley as ADU-US. The team, which they plan to grow to over 100 researchers and engineers by the end of 2016, will tackle things like planning, perception, control, and systems. They’ll take an “incremental approach,” starting with small “autonomy-enabled” regions and then design cars that will recognizable, like what we get from Google’s own fleet.

ADU-US will be working alongside Baidu’s Research team and they’re looking to have machine learning researchers with knowledge in both hardware and software, ranging from robotics and computer vision to onboard computers and sensors. They are looking for people with experience in the automotive industry as well.

Source: Market Wired

Tesla Motors latest video shows off revolutionary Model S features

Tesla Motors is showing how far ahead it is of the pack when it comes to innovative automated vehicle technologies. In a video above titled "Revolutionize your Commute," the company shows off what their Model S sedan can do including using an iPhone to summon the car to a designated pick up point, autopilot features for maintaining speed and changing lanes safely as well as automatic parallel parking. We can only dream that most cars will adopt some of these cool and convenient features which can make our lives easier and also safer.

Source: Tesla

Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn believes fully autonomous driving cars will come in 4 years

Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said in an interview that he believes that fully-autonomous driving will be the norm for consumer vehicles within three to four years. A number of carmakers, Nissan included, are currently in various stages of testing autonomous driving cars and technologies. 

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Volvo gives you back your commuting time with new concept

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Volvo’s new concept car has been named after the average number of time an American spends in the car to drive to work. While 26 minutes might be on the dot for you or slightly more or less than that, what Concept 26 has in mind is to give you back some of your time.

Shown at the LA Auto Show, Volvo’s take on the autonomous driving trend isn’t like the steering wheel-less Google concept car hopes to bring into the future. What Volvo wants is still give you access to manual controls, since their research showed that car customers still want a steering wheel on the autonomous car. Volvo’s research also showed that people will use autonomous drive when they drive to and from work and while stuck in traffic. And at this time you probably won’t have someone else in your car, so no need to swivel seats to face your companion. The company also claims people aren’t too keen on riding backwards anyway.

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