Nuro doesn’t have a typical Silicon Valley origin story. It didn’t emerge after a long, slow slog from a suburban garage or through a flash of insight in a university laboratory. Nor was it founded at the behest of an eccentric billionaire with money to burn. Nuro was born — and ramped up quickly —… Read More »
Nuro’s delivery autonomous vehicles (AVs) don’t have a human driver on board. The company’s founders Dave Ferguson (president) and Jiajun Zhu’s (CEO) vision of a driverless delivery vehicle sought to do away with a lot of the stuff that is essential for a normal car to have, like doors and airbags and even a steering… Read More »
In early 2021, a Nuro autonomous delivery vehicle pulled to a halt at a four-way stop in its hometown of Mountain View, California to let a user cross. This seemingly humdrum moment quickly looked like a decidedly science fiction storyline — the user was a small sidewalk robot from another startup on its own mission.… Read More »
May Mobility announced that it is advancing its transit program in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to an on-demand phase. Customers will be able to hail May Mobility SUVs at “more than 20” pick-up points in a 1.36 square mile area of downtown. I have mostly associated May with low-speed shuttles services for public transit. Covid-19 has… Read More »
How Far Should LiDAR “See”? Recently, the race to present a long detection range system in the automotive LiDAR industry has heated up. Velodyne boasted the detection ranges of a 10% reflective target from 50m achieved by the veteran HDL-64E to 265m by the recent Alpha Prime. At the same time, Luminar is promising to detect 10%… Read More »
Innoviz Technologies, a top provider of high-performance, solid-state LiDAR sensors and perception software, and EDOM Technology, a prominent electronics distributor based in Taiwan, announced a partnership to drive sales and enhance support initiatives for Innoviz’s LiDAR solutions in the Greater China region. EDOM Technology will influence its relationships with major manufacturers as well as its large staff of sales… Read More »
In the world of robotic startups, acquisition is often as good an outcome as any. And when it comes to robotic tractor startups, you could do worse than being acquired by John Deere. The agricultural technology giant announced today that it’s set to acquire Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million. The Bay Area-based firm, which… Read More »
Comma just wrapped up Comma Con, it’s developer and customer conference, in San Diego, no less 🙂 The big announcement is the Comma Three, a $2199 aftermarket product that provides high-level lane keeping and cruise control to a wide variety of vehicles. I purchased the original Comma several years ago and tried it out on a… Read More »
Agriculture cannot survive solely on traditional methods and needs large-scale technology interventions With global population growing at a rate of over 1 % per year, meeting the food requirement of all these people is going to be a challenge in the coming years. One of the ways in which this challenge can be addressed is… Read More »
Mobileye recently announced that it has expanded its autonomous vehicle testing to New York City. The Intel subsidiary released “an unedited 40-minute drive” of its camera-only vehicle traveling autonomously through the Big Apple. Previously, I annotated a similar Mobileye drive through Jerusalem, so I did that again for New York. My main takeaway is just how much… Read More »