Self-Driving Truck Startup Kodiak Raises $125 Million in Series B Round
On November 11, self-driving truck startup Kodiak announced that it had raised $125 million in an oversubscribed Series B round for a total of $165 million raised to date.
Category: Self Driving
Pony.ai Expands Robotaxi Pilot, Plans Mass Production of Self-driving System in 2023
On May 13, autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai announced the expansion of its Robotaxi service in Beijing.
Scania and TuSimple Pilot Self-Driving Trucks in Sweden
Scania, the Swedish manufacturer of heavy lorries, trucks and buses, is testing L4 level self-driving trucks on the E4 motorway between Södertälje and Jönköping, in collaboration with San Diego-based company TuSimple.
Shanghai’s 2025 Ambition to Be the New Energy and Self-Driving Vehicles Hub
On February 25, the Shanghai Government announced its Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Development of the New Energy Automobile Industry (2021-2025).
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Daimler Subsidiary Torc Robotics Adopts Amazon Cloud to Develop Autonomous Driving
Torc Robotics has selected Amazon Cloud Services (AWS) as its cloud service provider to meet large-scale data transmission, storage and computing speed requirements.
Drift with Devil: Security of Multi-Sensor Fusion based Localization in High-Level Autonomous Driving under GPS Spoofing
This paper is the first to systematically study the security of Multi-Sensor Fusion (MSF) based localization in high-autonomy Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Researchers design FusionRipper, a novel and general attack that opportunistically captures and exploits take-over vulnerabilities.
Shenzhen’s First Driverless Metro Line Opens to Traffic in 2021
Shenzhen launched the construction of the Automatic Testing Center for Metro Center which is scheduled to be put into operation in June 2021.
Beijing Builds 100km Highway Lanes for Self-Driving Cars with Unmanned Machineries
Jingxiong highway, a highway with designated lanes for unmanned vehicles, is expected to be completed by the end of this year and open to traffic in June 2021.
Amazon Backed Self-Driving Car Company Aurora to Test Fleet in Texas
According to the Verge, Amazon funded self-driving company Aurora will test a small vehicle fleet at the highways near Dallas-Fort Worth area in the next few weeks.
TuSimple Partners with Navistar to Mass Produce L4 Driverless Trucks by 2024
China’s self-driving truck company TuSimple forges strategic partnership with US truck manufacturer Navistar to jointly develop L4 driverless trucks, striving for mass production by 2024.
Another Tesla Autopilot Crush; Companies like Intel Mobileye, AutoX, and Plus.ai Make Further Moves in Self-Driving Cars
News report that a Tesla Model S crashed into Arizona Department of Public Safety police vehicle on Tuesday in California.
LiDAR Industry Hits Impasse: Was Elon Musk Right After All?
Since the business mindset is to focus on short-term feasible technologies, the lack of serious buyers is the real problem for the LiDAR industry.
Cars, Cockpits, & Intelligent Pilot
A hot topic today is Intelligent Pilot Systems, an automotive driving concept comprising a smart vehicle assistant that enables a user to interact with the vehicle via voice; and intelligent mechanized function control for car entertainment, safety, autonomous driving and navigation.
Sidewalk Labs Releases $900 Million Blueprint for Toronto’s Tomorrow; Autonomous Vehicle Enterprises Explore New Roads
Synced Global AI Weekly June 30th
CVPR 2019 | Waymo Introduces Open Dataset to Accelerate Autonomous Driving Research
Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit Waymo surprised many by releasing a new high-quality multimodal sensor dataset for autonomous driving. The *Waymo Open Dataset *was introduced at top AI conference Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2019 in Long Beach, California.
Roadstar.ai: The Rise and Fall of a Self-Driving Startup
A year ago, Shenzhen-based self-driving start-up Roadstar.ai was cruising along promisingly. In May 2018 the company announced a US$128 million funding round led by Wu Capital and state-backed Shenzhen Capital Group — one of the largest autonomous driving investments ever in China.
Big Tech Accelerates Autonomous Driving
While there is nothing wrong with viewing autonomous driving as an emerging sector in the car manufacturing industry, big tech companies are also playing a central role, and have been making huge investments in automotive technologies.
Car Makers Are Expanding & Diversifying Self-Driving Business
Synced Global AI Weekly March 17th
Boeing 737 MAX Crashes Raise Public Distrust of Autonomous Systems
On Sunday, March 10, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft en route to Nairobi crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. It was the second fatal crash in six months involving Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplanes.
Baidu Unveils Major Apollo Intelligent Driving Ecosystem Advancements at CES 2019
At CES 2019 in Las Vegas today Chinese tech giant Baidu introduced Apollo Enterprise, a new suite of customizable autonomous driving and Internet of Vehicles (IoV) solutions for mass production vehicles. The company also released Apollo 3.5, the latest and most sophisticated iteration of its open autonomous driving platform, which now supports complex urban and suburban driving environments.
The DeepMap Approach: “Your Data, Your HD Map”
In a near future, when self-driving cars have replaced human drivers, it’s believed that high-definition (HD) maps can play a similarly useful role, as “the memory of robot drivers”.
Will Alibaba’s Smart Roads Pave the Way for L5 Autonomous Vehicles?
In the 1950s the philosophy informing the futuristic vision of autonomous vehicles was to “make the road guide the car” via electronics and mechanical devices embedded in high tech roadways.
Baidu & FAW Hongqi Unveil China’s First L4 Autonomous Passenger Cars
Baidu CEO Robin Li today gave the world a peek at China’s first Level 4 autonomous driving passenger cars, co-developed by Baidu and carmaker FAW Hongqi. Li introduced the vehicles at the 2018 Baidu World Conference in Beijing. The cars will enter mass production by the end of 2019, and their road debuts will be in Beijing and FAW Hongqi’s hometown of Changchun.
Baidu Announces Autonomous Taxi & Bus Fleet for Hunan
Baidu today announced plans for a comprehensive self-driving taxi and bus service in Changsha, the capital of southern Hunan province and birthplace of Mao Zedong. Baidu has signed a partnership agreement with the Changsha Municipal People’s Government and Hunan Xiangjiang New Area Development Group that aims to reinvent the local commute.
Checkout-Free Stores Going Global
According to the National Retail Federation there were approximately 3.8 million retail stores that provided more than 42 million jobs in the US in 2016. Retail store sales are forecasted to grow 3.4 percent this year, although this trails the 7-10 percent sales rise expected from E-commerce sites.
Drive.ai Launches Autonomous Ride-Hailing Service in Arlington, Texas
The slogan of Arlington, Texas is “American Dream City,” and as residents start their commute this morning some may wonder if they are in fact dreaming. A fleet of futuristic autonomous vehicles today began chauffeuring Arlingtonites along city streets in self-driving startup Drive.ai’s latest public road testing project.
New Funding Pushes Chinese Self-Driving Startup Momenta’s Valuation to $1Bn
Beijing-based self-driving startup Momenta has closed its latest funding round to boost its total funding to over US$200 million. The company bills itself as China’s most valuable autonomous driving startup, with an estimated worth of US$1 billion.
Fast Facts on Arm’s New Autonomous Driving Chip
Semiconductor giant Arm today unveiled the Cortex-A76AE, a microarchitecture CPU designed for use in autonomous vehicles. The UK-based Softbank subsidiary hailed the new chip as the world’s first autonomous-class processor with integrated safety features.
Tencent Licensed for Self-Driving Vehicle Testing on Beijing Roads
The Beijing Traffic Management Bureau yesterday issued new licenses for self-driving vehicle testing in the Chinese capital, with tech giant Tencent receiving authorization to operate an autonomous vehicle on designated roads for the first time.
The Golden Age of HD Mapping for Autonomous Driving
The market for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Vehicles (AV) will rise from US$3 billion in 2015 to US$96 billion by 2025, according to a Goldman Sachs report.
Meituan Announces Autonomous Delivery Open Platform
Meituan, one of China’s biggest group buying service providers, today announced an ambitious strategy to support autonomous delivery vehicles: “The company is going to use self-driving technologies to build the world’s largest interactive platform for intelligent delivery, and to speed up the development of unmanned delivery technology.”
Innoviz Envisions Mass Produced Self-Driving Cars With Solid State LiDAR
Innoviz is a two-year-old Israeli provider of LiDAR remote sensing solutions. The company took a leap forward in the solid state LiDAR field recently by scoring a couple of important partnerships: BMW chose solid-state Innoviz LiDAR sensors and computer vision tech to enable its Level 3-5 autonomous vehicles in April…
Self-Driving Startup Pony.ai Raises Another $102 Million
Chinese autonomous driving solution provider Pony.ai has reported an additional US$102 million in Series A1 funding — just six months after scoring US$112 million — to bring its Series A total to US$214 million.
A Chinese VC’s Take on Investing in Autonomous Driving
Synced recently spoke with Delian Capital Senior Vice President Xuesong Fan about the current status of automated driving startups. Fan graduated from Harbin Engineering University and worked for years on Chinese satellite engineering. In 2015 came down to earth, applying his experience to self-driving car investments.
UC Berkeley Open-Sources 100k Driving Video Database
UC Berkeley’s Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR) has open-sourced their newest driving database, BDD100K, which contains over 100k videos of driving experience, each running 40 seconds at 30 frames per second.
Year-Old Self-Driving Startup Roadstar.ai Gets $128 Million Birthday Present
Shenzhen City-based self-driving startup Roadstar.ai today announced US$128 million in Series A Funding, setting a single round private financing record for China’s autonomous driving industry.
Drive.AI Launches Self-Driving Car Service in Texas; Demo Video Now Available (Updated)
Starting in July, a Drive.ai fleet of vehicles will operate with fixed pick-up and drop-off locations in a geofenced area of the city comprising retail, entertainment, and office space.
China’s 350 kph Self-Driving Train Gets Ready to Hit the Rails
On April 29th, the Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of China’s State Council announced that China Railway Signal & Communication Corp (CRSC) had completed lab testing of their high-speed rail self-driving system (C3 + ATO)…
Alibaba Gears Up for Self-Driving Road Tests
China’s self-driving industry has just welcomed another major player: Alibaba Group is developing Level 4 autonomous driving technology and is ready to test its self-driving cars on public roads, Chinese media reported today.
China OKs Self-driving Tests on Public Roads
New Chinese regulations will permit self-driving vehicle testing on public roads across the country.
The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, and Ministry of Transport yesterday jointly issued the Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test Management Standards…