Self-Driving

UPS is expressing a keen interest in autonomous heavy haulers, revealing it has spent the last couple of months testing them out along an Arizona highway and has snared a small stake in self-driving startup TuSimple, whose vehicles it used throughout the trials.

​In its ongoing bid to automate its pizza operations in every which way possible, Domino’s has announced a new partnership with robotics startup Nuro. The agreement will see Nuro’s self-driving pods bring some customers in Houston their pizzas without the aid of a delivery person.

Forget the skateboard chassis; Swedish brand Scania is exploring something that's much more of a hoverboard chassis. Its NXT autonomous EV concept uses detachable front and rear axles as the basis of a modular vehicle system that can go from dropping kids at school to dropping garbage at the dump.

​​Back in 2016, Uber and Volvo joined forces to usher in the self-driving era and they've now introduced the first production vehicle built to accommodate the self-driving tech from the ground up, making for a plug-and-play autonomous car that could help speed things up a little. ​

​Last month, Tesla introduced an update for its Autopilot self-driving software designed to allow the car to complete lane changes on its own. But independent testing by consumer-focused non-profit Consumer Reports has uncovered a few shortcomings in the technology.

​The US Postal Service (USPS) and its mail delivery operations are set to gain a helping hand courtesy of self-driving startup TuSimple, with the agency enlisting the company's autonomous trucks for a two-week trial.

As work on self-driving cars continues, Ford is making use of a new self-driving factory robot that can deliver parts quickly and efficiently, modify its routes based on obstacles in its path, and free up about 40 hours of time per day for employees to get on with other tasks.

ESA has now detailed the side mission it’s planning for the asteroid-visiting spacecraft Hera. After the main work is complete, the probe will test out some new autonomous navigation systems, which should help future spacecraft get around without relying on ground control all the way back on Earth.

MIT spin-off Optimus Ride has announced today that its autonomous shuttles will shortly be transporting workers around geofenced areas of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and ferrying residents along defined routes in the 80 acre private community of Paradise Valley Estates in Fairfield, CA.

​Imagine if instead of paying for downtown parking, you could just have your car cruise the streets by itself while you attended to your business, and then return to pick you up when summoned? A new study suggests that's exactly what driverless cars could do – and it may cause a big problem.

​Perhaps quite understandably, many pedestrians still don't trust self-driving cars to know that they're there. Jaguar Land Rover has developed what could be at least a partial solution to that problem, in the form of projected light bars that announce what the automobile is about to do.

​It was six years ago that we first heard about Makr Shakr, a robotic bar that can reportedly mix one Googol (the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes) drink combinations. Now, its designers are planning on installing the tech in an autonomous vehicle that users can hail whenever they want a bevvy.