Lifeboat Foundation

Toshiba’s next-generation SCiB lithium-ion battery could give electric cars a 200-mile range after recharging for just six minutes.

Driverless cars need superhuman senses. And for the most part they seem to have them, in the form of lidar, radar, ultrasound, near-infrared, and other sensors. But regular cameras, often forgotten about in favor of more exotic technologies, are incredibly important given they’re used to collect data that’s used to, say, read the messages on road signs. So Sony’s new image sensor is designed to give regular camera vision a boost, too.

The new $90 IMX324 has an effective resolution of only 7.42 megapixels, which sounds small compared to your smartphone camera. But with about three times the vertical resolution of most car camera sensors, it packs a punch. It can see road signs from 160 meters away, has low-light sensitivity that allows it to see pedestrians in dark situations, and offers a trick that captures dark sections at high sensitivity but bright sections at high resolution in order to max out image recognition. The image above shows how much sharper the new tech than its predecessor from the same distance.

Don’t expect a beefed-up camera to eliminate the need for other sensors, though: even with strong low-light performance, cameras don’t work well in the dark, and they can’t offer the precise ranging abilities of other sensors. That means lidar and radar will remain crucial complements to humble optical cameras, however fancy they get.

Continue reading “Sony’s New Autonomous Car Camera Sees Road Signs at 160 Meters” »

General Motors says its most recent test vehicle meets some of the requirements for total autonomy.

This announcement comes just a few days after the UAE announced their UAE 2031 AI strategy, which aims to make the government more efficient and streamlined by relying on AI technologies.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) appears to be leading new trends in government reshuffles, now having introduced its first Minister for Artificial Intelligence.

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Daimler is creating a driverless snowplow for use in places like airports and is already testing a design in Germany.

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After more than a year of testing on crowded San Francisco streets, Cruise thinks it’s ready to operate the first robotic car fleet in Manhattan. GM also appears to be ramping up competition with Waymo for leadership in the technology.

The vehicles, set to begin testing in 2020, will use deep learning to learn motorists’ preferences, emotions, and habits.

The BMW i8 is already one of the most futuristic-looking cars on the road, but it’s about to get more innovative inside, too. BMW has just announced a brand-new tech collaboration with IBM, which will see the tech giant’s Watson AI tested in four of BMW’s hybrid sports cars. The project will see BMW engineers and IBM researchers work together in Germany, as both IBM and BMW have research facilities in Munich.

The project aims to make driving assistance and information more personalised and intuitive – and Watson looks to be the perfect candidate for the job. IBM’s powerful AI should make the car’s existing systems much easier to use, and BMW has already given a few examples of how it could work. The i8’s manual will be by Watson, so drivers will be able to enquire about vehicle information in natural language, rather than select phrases. In the same way, BMW and IBM want the Watson-fitted i8 to provide updates on everything from fuel levels to traffic updates in a simple, easy way.

However, Watson’s machine learning will have another benefit, too: personalisation. By gradually learning the routes, language and needs of a driver, Watson will be able to deliver the right amount of information almost before it’s needed.

Continue reading “BMW is putting IBM’s Watson AI in the passenger seat” »