#002 Top 5 autonomous driving systems in the world
The concept of autonomous driving has been around for a very long time. Today, almost every car manufacturer produces some sort of self-driving car, but only a few of them are developing systems that in the future will do not need human drivers to take control to operate the vehicle. With more self-driving cars hitting the road every day, we’re taking a look at the 5 best autonomous driving systems in the world available today.
Huawei
Chinese tech giant Huawei is developing autonomous vehicles in partnership with various European, Japanese and Chinese car manufacturers to launch self-driving cars as early as 2021. The Company seeks to move beyond its traditional telecom equipment industry to embrace a broader range of artificial intelligence products.
Huawei recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Audi. Companies are combining their expertise in IT and car making to develop smart car technology using new wireless connection standards. They unveiled a prototype of the Audi Q7 with Huawei’s Mobile Data Center (MDC) fitted into the boot to support urban automatic driving environments.
Huawei is focused on achieving Level 4 of autonomous driving. By combining AI with object recognition the technology can distinguish between thousands of objects as they appear and take the most appropriate course of action when it sees them.
Huawei previously announced it was developing a Mobile Automation Engine, designed to enable autonomous car technologies using cellular networks.
The company also partnered with Jaguar Land Rover and Vodafone to show off a vehicle communication system for road safety alerts, such as lane changing or speed limit alterations.
Waymo
The company originated as a project of Google before it became a stand-alone daughter company in December 2016. The Waymo journey first started out in 2009 as the “self-driving car project” in secret. In that same year, they began to test their vehicles on city streets.
Google designed a new vehicle that took to the roads in 2015, nicknamed the “Firefly.” This vehicle was built without a steering wheel or pedals as one interpretation of what the future of autonomous vehicle design would be.
It was in 2016 that the self-driving car project became Waymo. The name was in reference to “a new way forward in mobility.”
In 2017, Waymo unveiled new sensors and chips that are less expensive to manufacture, cameras that improve visibility. Waymo manufactures a suite of self-driving hardware developed in-house. This system allows Waymo to efficiently integrate its technology to the hardware.
Mercedes-Benz
Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company has recently teamed up with BMW to develop next-generation self-driving car technology.
The partnership between the two German automotive giants will initially focus on developing the technologies for driver assistance systems, automated driving on highways and parking features up to level 4, which they aim to sell by the mid-2020.
Daimler previously announced that it aims to launch driverless robot taxis in the early 2020s. The company has licences to test its self-driving vehicles on public roads in Germany, the USA and China, where it is the first foreign company granted permission to test its autonomous cars.
The Companies also announced several other partnerships with others when it comes to autonomous driving. BMW has been working with Intel’s Mobileye and Delphi on autonomous driving and it also invested in self-driving startup Nauto.
Daimler joined forces with Bosch to build level 4 and 5 autonomous driving systems.
Continental
The technology company Continental and NVIDIA are partnering to create Artificial Intelligence self-driving vehicle systems based on the NVIDIA DRIVE platform, with a planned market introduction in 2021 for level 3 features.
The partnership will enable the production of AI
Continental and NVIDIA will initially develop highly automated driving features, including 360-degree perception and automatic lane changing on highways, plus the ability to merge in traffic. In addition, the system will integrate HD maps, enabling the vehicle to localize themselves and provide mapping updates.
Continental’s expertise in advanced driver assistance systems integrates multi-function cameras, fish-eye cameras with surround view, as well as short and long-range radar sensors, High-Resolution 3D LiDAR technologies, as well as central control units for assisted and automated driving.
In 2016, Continentals’ sales of advanced driver assistance systems exceeded €1.2 billion and the company expects it to grow to €2.5 billion by 2020.
Nvidia
A full-featured, Level 2+ system requires significantly more computational horsepower and sophisticated software than what is on the road today. NVIDIAAutoPilot provides these systems, making it possible for carmakers to quickly deploy advanced autonomous solutions by 2020 and to scale this solution to higher levels of autonomy faster.
More than 320 companies in the world using the NVIDIA Drive computing platform to accelerate the production of autonomous vehicles. The chipmaker’s GPU technology has already been used in Uber’s self-driving vehicles, while Volkswagen has used Nvidia’s Drive IX SDK to enhance the AI features, gesture control and language processing of its autonomous cars.NVIDIA is also working with Silicon Valley startup Aurora to build a new self-driving hardware platform.
