Automated cars might be a thing of sci-fi movies but it will come to reality through the bold move of one of the giants in automobile, BMW.
The company, BMW, will build "the ultimate driving machine" and plans to start making the fully autonomous vehicle (AV) by 2021.
This move is quite a surprise since BMW has never spoken about this technology before. Google, Tesla, and General Motors have been competing in developing the said technology.
The announcement was made July 1, Friday. BMW said that they aim to build the AVs for the ride-sharing program in 2021 that would take on Lyft and Uber. The company is said to team up with the giant chipmaker, Intel and the company that build driver assistance system, Mobileye, YIBADA reported.
Mobileye is an Israeli company that leads the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). They build quality cameras which are the key features that will keep track of the lanes and help avoid collisions. They will also be the one responsible in avoiding accidents with pedestrians. The CEO and co-founder of Mobileye said that these safety features are the only way to make this technology a reality.
Intel on the other hand, manufactures and leads the market of chips, PC hardware, data centers and IoT devices. BMW made no mention of the role they will perform in this project but they will most likely manufacture the chips that will be used in the automated car's AI system.
BMW is now behind the competition. Google dominates the current race with dozens of fully automated cars that logs in 10,000 to 15,000 miles every week. These cars has also covered 1.3million miles in total.
Mapping is the main key to these cars. A more detailed map inside an automated car makes it more efficient in addressing cyclists, pedestrians and other vehicles -in real time. The cars would go only in mapped areas, WIRED reported.
