Didn’t see any general monitoring threads for this emergent design topic in the archives.
Worthwhile topic.
Not much to add except for recently watching a video of a bro picking up his CT and having the steering break as soon as he left the lot. But he mentions that self-driving wasn’t coming to the CT soon. Maybe a good thing.
The closest I’ve felt to the promise of self-driving is Hwy 280 going south to Palo Alto. Everyone doing 85mph, paying attention, and moving as a mass. This was back in 2005 so maybe it’s different now.
The 280 is still pretty great. I live in San Francisco, and any time I need to drive south I gladly take the extra five to ten minutes from taking the 280 over the congestion, disrepair, and general anxiety of the 101.
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Samsung halts self-driving research.
[Financial News] While Apple is withdrawing from the development of self-driving electric vehicles, which it has been working on for 10 years, Samsung Electronics is also discontinuing advanced research on self-driving car algorithms (software). Samsung Electronics plans to focus its capabilities on research on robots, a future food technology, instead of autonomous driving, which has uncertain prospects for commercialization.
According to the industry on the 9th, SAIT (formerly Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology), which is in charge of advanced research for Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor (DS) division, made the final decision to exclude autonomous driving from its research projects on this day. SAIT will convert the development staff that was used to research autonomous driving software into ‘robot intelligence’ research and conduct research on future robotics, including humanoid robots. Samsung Research, an advanced research and development (R&D) organization under the Device Experience (DX) division, is also not currently conducting autonomous driving-related research, so this decision effectively halts Samsung Electronics’ autonomous driving-related research.
Previously, Samsung Electronics received temporary permission to operate self-driving cars from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in 2017. At the time, Samsung Electronics accelerated autonomous driving research by stating that the reason for the application was ‘plans to develop next-generation sensor intelligent components that combine reliable autonomous driving algorithms with artificial intelligence and deep learning.’ Five years later, last year, SAIT succeeded in driving a 200km section from Suwon, Gyeonggi-do to Gangneung, Gangwon-do without driver intervention using the autonomous driving algorithm developed by SAIT. The industry estimates that Samsung Electronics has secured the necessary prior technology to realize level 4 autonomous driving, in which the driver does not intervene except in emergency situations such as bad weather. For this reason, observations have been raised that Samsung Electronics is aggressively expanding its development area to include ‘brains’ for self-driving cars in addition to semiconductors, displays, and sensors for self-driving cars, and is devoting company-wide capabilities to the electronics business.
However, like other big tech companies that have begun developing autonomous driving technology with a rosy future in mind, Samsung Electronics is said to have recently encountered the ‘reef’ of a shrinking electric vehicle market and technological difficulties.
Apple also decided last month to disband the ‘Special Project Group’ that developed the Apple Car. Apple, which has been developing self-driving electric vehicles under the name ‘Project Titan’ since 2014, stopped R&D related to self-driving after 10 years. Instead, Apple plans to focus on artificial intelligence (AI).
SAIT plans to invest the technology and know-how accumulated through autonomous driving research into ‘robot intelligence’ research. Autonomous driving technology is considered a core technology for future robot technology.
Currently, Samsung Research is also actively conducting robot-related research, and as SAIT is also joining robot intelligence research, some predict that there will be synergy in Samsung Electronics’ robot research. Samsung Research, which operates a robotics center under its wing, hired manager Jeong-Hyeon Kwon, an expert in self-driving robots from NVIDIA of the U.S., as a managing director last year. Managing Director Kwon is leading the robot intelligence team at Samsung Research Robot Center and is focusing on research on autonomous driving technology for robots.
We can take a look at Japanese (as well as other country) sleeping pods busses. They are essentially what it is really should look like inside in terms of safety (I mean seat belts and ergonomics which are commonly not discussed in a number of autonomous mobility projects). Plus, if autonomous vehicle will use public road, it is still subject of all the same dangers of mistakes or reckless driving from other parties. Let’s take airplane autopilot (which works great in certain situations) - pilot still monitors the radar information, TCAS, as well as airplane stats because of same reasons.
And if autonomous vehicle fails, what should one do in the middle of the winter blizzard with -10 degrees outside while he sleep? And really - one pod for 1-2 people is just overkill in terms of ecological impact
Small progress made by Tesla this week. ASS is released.
