Self driving technology has captured the imagination of everyone, so much so that the craze now goes beyond people in the AI industry. Given the optimism in the industry, it is no surprise that there are well over a hundred companies currently working to build and advance the autonomous vehicles technology. Here is a look at the best of the lot.
- Tesla: Tesla is an American electric vehicle and clean energy. Autopilot is an advanced driver-assistance system developed by Tesla, which requires active driver supervision at all times. Full self-driving (FSD) is an optional upcoming extension of Autopilot to enable fully autonomous driving. Tesla’s approach to achieve full autonomy is different from that of other companies as it uses coarse-grained two-dimensional maps and cameras (no lidar) as well as radar and ultrasonic sensors. Tesla claims that although its approach is much more difficult, it will ultimately be more useful, because its vehicles will be able to self-drive without geofencing concerns.
- Waymo: This is an autonomous driving technology company creating a new way forward in mobility. With the Waymo Driver, the company has designed what it calls the world’s most experienced driver – a claim that is backed by the odometer. With millions of miles driven through countless situations on public roads, and billions more in simulation, they’ve gathered incredible amounts of data and invaluable lessons to develop autonomous driving technology further than anyone else. Waymo’s was founded in 2016 as a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
- Pony.ai: In 2016, the duo behind Pony.ai left lucrative careers in Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Unit to launch their own self-driving startup. They quickly rolled out their own auotnomous vehicle system PonyPilot, testing their Robotaxi pilot service in California and China. After successfully debuting a fleet of autonomous cars in early 2018, the company attracted substantial investment. Recently, they’ve raised $400 million from Toyota to accelerate autonomous driving development.
- Cruise: Founded in 2013, Cruise is today a leading company for building the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles. Through their partnerships with General Motors and Honda, it has become the only self-driving company with fully integrated manufacturing at scale, building all-electric, zero-emission, self-driving vehicles. There are currently two autonomous vehicles offered by Cruise.
- Aurora Labs: After years of working on automation for homes, pets and banking, Zohar Fox decided to turn his attention to self-driving cars. Together with VC maven Ori Lederman, Fox started Aurora Labs in 2016 in Israel. The company developed its own machine learning tool to help autonomous vehicle systems predict, detect and manage faults without outside input from humans. They’re building the next-generation of self-driving with powerful, independent, and robust technology—the Aurora Driver—at its core.
Source: indiaai.gov.in
