Autonomous vehicles have Silicon Valley buzzing again. Auto parts supplier Bosch and German carmaker Daimler have teamed up to pilot self-driving taxis somewhere in the Valley, but no one will say where. The pilot is expected to launch in the later half of 2019, and speculation is rife over which city is the guinea pig.
"Daimler is already testing autonomous vehicles in Sunnyvale and other Silicon Valley cities," Sunnyvale Communications Officer Jennifer Garnett told Techwire in an email. "They don’t need city permission to test."
But this pilot will research how AVs work in a city environment and demonstrate how mobility services like multimodal platforms, ride-hailing and car sharing can improve travel in a city.
Nvidia, an American tech company, will provide the AI platform built into vehicles to analyze data picked up on sensors.
In an article in Global Banking and Finance magazine, Stephan Hönle, senior vice president of the Automated Driving Business Unit for Robert Bosch GmbH, wrote: “Developing automated driving to a level ready for series production is like a decathlon. It’s not enough to be good in one or two areas. Like us, you have to master all disciplines. Only then will we succeed in bringing automated driving to the roads and the city safely.”
Driving in cities requires intelligence but also adaptation. AI will assist in interpreting gathered data through cameras, infrared and radar. The information will be processed across multiple platforms, in parallel, creating a supercomputer in the vehicle that allows for flexibility in commands, depending on how situations change.
There are few details on which city will host the pilot, but Bosch and Daimler have said negotiations are ongoing. The size of the pilot is not being disclosed, but the companies have revealed that pre-selected routes will be chosen and customers can hail free rides through Daimler's app.
Bosch and Daimler teamed up last year in an effort to mass-produce AVs within the next decade. The companies are financing the efforts equally and housing staff in Stuttgart and Silicon Valley.
