Sumitomo Rubber Industries has been working together with Japan’s Gunma University since last year to develop a system that remotely monitors tyre pressure in driverless vehicles. The tyre maker reports that, having created a system that works with Level 4 autonomous vehicles, it conducted a successful proof-of-concept test of this new system on public roads on 12 November.
The UK government’s £300 million-odd funding for connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) projects is unlikely to establish the country as a leader in CAV technology. However, it is well positioned to become a global hub for CAV testing and regulatory development, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
A new report published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and Frost & Sullivan has found that the UK could be set for a £62bn windfall from connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) by 2030.
The report, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: Winning the Global Race to Market, has found that the UK is in pole position in the global race to market for CAVs.
Continental commissioned the first driverless tyre test vehicle for a wide range of road surface types at its Ulvade, Texas test track on 19 December 2018. The aim is to make the test results for Continental’s passenger and light truck tyres more conclusive and minimize the impact of the test procedure on the results. The new test vehicle is based on Continental’s automated Cruising Chauffeur, which was developed for freeways.
Phillip K Dick may well have been thinking far further into the future than the current popularisation of electric cars when he wrote his famous novella “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, however the rise of big data alongside electric and autonomous vehicles means the most advanced cars of today have an increasing amount in common with the artificial intelligence in the source material for the film Blade Runner.
Hella, the lighting and electronics specialist is participating in a consortium initiated by the Chinese automobile manufacturer BAIC to develop an intelligent mobility infrastructure in Beijing. This includes communication between vehicles and their environment, via traffic lights equipped with sensor technologies, for example. A total of thirteen international and Chinese technology companies are involved in the non-exclusive cooperation.
Wejo, a leading UK technology company which collates data from connected vehicles, has announced that its technology is now tracking seven million vehicles in 190 countries worldwide and it has acquired a Silicon Valley based technology firm as part of its expansion plans.
Driverless cars? Continental had those 50 years ago…It is exactly half a century today since the tyre maker demonstrated its first electronically controlled driverless car at its Contidrom facility in Germany. In those days a car cruising the Contidrom circuit without someone behind the wheel was a novel sight, to say the least, and Continental recalls that more than 400 newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television channels reported on the events of 11 September 1968.
Together with autonomous driving specialist ZMP Inc., Bridgestone Corporation has launched a development project to utilise automated driving technology in tyre noise tests. By removing the driver from the process, the Japanese firms aim to increase the accuracy and efficiency of this particular tyre test.
On Wednesday 18 April the Driven consortium demonstrated publicly for the first time the capabilities of its fleet of autonomous vehicles to interact and ‘talk’ to each other. From its headquarters at the RACE Building at the Culham Science Centre in Abingdon, Driven set two of its vehicles, a white and blue 2014 Ford Fusion Titanium hybrid and a 2017 Ford Mondeo hybrid on the roads to show assembled media the latest milestone in the project.
Driverless cars could be on UK roads within four years under Government plans to invest in the sector. In his budget, chancellor Philip Hammond announced that driverless cars will be able to be tested without any human operator inside or outside the car, and without the legal constraints and rules that apply in many other EU nations, and much of the US.
Are British drivers comfortable with the thought their grandchildren may never drive a car? Over a quarter (26 per cent) claim they are, believing the autonomous evolution is simply ‘part of life’ with the next generation having to embrace learning new skills, other than driving.
Having invested millions to develop automated driving technology, Continental may need to invest in winning drivers over to the advantages on offer. A survey undertaken on the company’s behalf suggests many of us would struggle to hand control over to the car.
Welcome to the future of driving, your Cruising Chauffeur awaits. That’s the name Continental has given its eagerly-awaited automated driving technology, and regardless of how it rolls off the tongue, Cruising Chauffeur represents something that will significantly change our driving experience. Continental plans to bring Cruising Chauffeur into production in 2020.
Greg Clark MP, Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, has given the green light to 5*StarS as part of the national strategy to establish the UK as a global centre for the development, testing and commercialisation of Connected Autonomous Vehicles.
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