Volvo and Aurora partnership
News
Volvo and Aurora partnership
Volvo Autonomous Solutions this week announced a partnership with self-driving tech firm Aurora to develop on-highway autonomous trucks. The multi-year partnership will focus initially on hub-to-hub applications for customers in North America, integrating the Aurora Driver into Volvo's trucks. The companies also plan to develop Transport as a Service solutions.
John Krafcik to leave Waymo
Waymo CEO John Krafcik has announced that he is to leave the autonomous driving technology company after five and a half years to "kick-off new adventures". In an email announcing his departure, Krafcik said that he would continue to serve as an advisor to Waymo and that Dmitri Dolgov and Tekedra Mawakana – the company's COO and CTO, respectively – would take over as new co-CEOs.
Optimus Ride partners with Polaris
Autonomous mobility firm Optimus Ride has announced a partnership with outdoor vehicle company Polaris to bring to market fully autonomous versions of the vehicle-maker's GEM electric vehicles. The partners will integrate Optimus Ride's autonomous software and hardware suite directly into the vehicles and hope to bring the new fully autonomous vehicles to market by the second half of 2023.
News in brief
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich have developed a new early-warning system for self-driving cars that uses artificial intelligence to warn about potentially critical situations, with better than 85 percent accuracy
The University of Warwick and Deepen AI have unveiled the world's largest public repository of scenarios for testing autonomous vehicles
Motional has revealed that it plans to use the Hyundai IONIQ 5 as the vehicle platform for its next-generation robotaxi – set to launch in 2023 in a partnership with Lyft
Self-driving truck company Plus has raise an extra $220 million from investors, reports Reuters
Navya has announced the deployment of a fleet of its Autonom shuttles in the French city of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
The Connecticut Department of Transportation has released a statewide strategic plan for connected and automated vehicles, focused on the ways that the state can benefit from the technologies
And finally...
While it can be hard to keep up with the latest developments in self-driving tech, an announcement this week suggested that things were progressing faster than ever, when Ola Air unveiled the "world's first fully autonomous electric flying car".
In a video dated 1 April, Bhavish Aggarwal, the Co-Founder and CEO of India-based Ola Cabs, introduced the new project, which a colleague noted was built from materials 'sustainably sourced from F1 cars in Germany, fighter jets from the US and soft drink cans from Shivajinagar'.
Meanwhile, Kentucky's Pulaski County Sheriff's Office also got in on the April Fools' Day fun, revealing that they would be getting new self-driving electric cars to fight crime.
Elsewhere, BMW USA used the date to reveal the carmaker's 'Ultimate Self-Driving Machine'.