USA: Cruise says they have made significant progress in handling bad weather. The’ve deployed custom sensor-cleaning solutions to keep lenses clear of water and dirt, and say their AI system has ‘learned’ to detect and filter out “phantom objects” that might otherwise lead to false positives. Cruise AVs adjust their acceleration; deceleration, and steering behaviors in bad weather conditions, in an effort to mimic a human driver. Cruise says their fleet has maintained 86-per-cent uptime during California’s historic winter storms.
China: Pony launched their latest robotaxi model for public-roads testing in the Beijing High-level Automated Driving Demonstration Area (BJHAD). This new system includes four solid-state lidars; three supplemental lidars; three radars, and eleven cameras. The design is lighter of weight and aesthetically pleasing. In addition, the vehicles’ performance has been greatly improved in rain; snow; fog, and sandstorms, thanks to the company’s self-developed sensor cleaning system.
China: Baidu was granted Shanghai’s first batch of fully-unmanned intelligent connected vehicle innovation application testing notices, and will officially kick off autonomous road test in the city without safety operators onboard. Baidu Apollo’s L4 autonomous-driving tests have accumulated 50 million kilometers so far.
China: TuSimple has become one of the first companies to receive a testing permit for the innovative application of driverless intelligent connected vehicles in Shanghai. TuSimple has been conducting routine testing on the Yangshan Port Phase IV Terminal-Donghai Bridge-Shenshui Port Logistics Park route for container transportation. The company has developed key technologies such as automatic container loading and unloading; task information exchange systems, and automatic gate passage in the port area.
China: Didi‘srobotaxis became available on 27 March for ride-hailing in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. They’re customized Volvo XC90s on DiDi’s proprietary TwinStar autonomous driving platform.
Beijing – Haomo.ai, the autonomous driving solution developer backed by Great Wall Motor, saw its terminal delivery vehicles licensed by the Beijing High-level Automated Driving Demonstration Area (BJHAD). The vehicle, named Xiaomotuo 2.0 in Chinese (128,800 yen per unit), is Haomo.ai’s proprietary self-driving vehicle targeting the last-mile terminal goods delivery scenario. The licenses give the vehicles permission to conduct normalized tests and operations.
China: Neolix, a Chinese developer of self-driving vehicles, has completed evaluations and audits to become the first licensed low-speed autonomous vehicle enterprise in Hainan Province. Neolix is currently working with SF Express and China Post to develop city-level low-speed autonomous vehicle deployment projects in Haikou and Qionghai cities in Hainan. The company aims to deploy more than 1,000 low-speed autonomous vehicles.
Japan: Suzuki has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Australian technology company Applied Electric Vehicles for the co-development of an autonomous EV platform. Applied EV specializes in software development and supply in the mobility field. In this collaboration, Applied EV’s autonomous vehicle platform, Blanc Robot™, will be integrated into Suzuki’s 4WD Jimny, electrified by Applied EV, and controlled by their central control system, Digital Backbone™.
UK: Oxbotica, an AV software developer, has partnered with Google Cloud to accelerate the deployment of their software platform and their AD solutions for businesses such as last-mile logistics; agriculture; light industry, and public transport. Oxbotica will accelerate the development and validation of their self-driving technology by using Google Cloud products like Vertex AI; compute; storage; and networking. Google Cloud will provide the data and machine learning tools to enable MetaDriver to apply Oxbotica’s generative AI tools to an extensive bank of virtual scenarios.
