Both Volkswagen Group and Hyundai are partnering with Aurora Innovation, a US company focused on technology for autonomous vehicles. With this collaboration, both companies aim to accelerate the development of self-driving vehicles.
Aurora Innovation is a company founded by Alphabet's former chief technology officer for self-driving cars Chris Urmson, Tesla's former head of the Autopilot team Sterling Anderson and former member of Uber's Advanced Technology Center Drew Bagnell. The company focuses on developing technology for self-driving cars and was granted a licence to test self-driving vehicles in the US state of California in August 2017. Many details about Aurora Innovation's activities are not known; the company hardly provides any information about its technology on its website.
Cooperation with Volkswagen Group
Volkswagen Group reports it has been working with Aurora Innovation for some time. Specialists from Volkswagen Group and the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab at US Stanford University have been working with Aurora Innovation for the past six months to integrate Aurora's self-driving system into Volkswagen Group vehicles. This self-driving system consists of sensors, hardware, machine learning technology and artificial intelligence.
Now Volkswagen Group is closing an official strategic partnership with Aurora Innovation. As part of this collaboration, the companies plan to make self-driving electric vehicles available in cities. Volkswagen and Aurora will focus on a service that Volkswagen calls Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). This service should allow users to order a self-driving electric vehicle that can take them to any desired location. Users will therefore not have to purchase a vehicle themselves and pay for its use.
Ordering a vehicle at the touch of a button
Volkswagen Group wants to offer users different methods of ordering a vehicle. A mobile app, a digital assistant and a device called Volkswagen OneButton should become available for this purpose. Volkswagen OneButton is the size of a key and allows users to order a vehicle at the touch of a button. The user's location is found out using a built-in GPS module.
"Our priority at Aurora is to make self-driving cars a reality quickly, widely and safely, and we know that we can achieve this faster by partnering with innovative carmakers like Volkswagen Group. This partnership creates a close collaboration based on Aurora's self-driving technology and together we will bring self-driving vehicles to market at scale," said Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora.
Hyundai's self-driving car
In addition to Volkswagen Group, Hyundai also announced it is entering into a collaboration with Aurora Innovation. Hyundai plans to launch a Level 4 self-driving car by 2021 using Aurora's technology. Level 4 means the vehicle can drive on autopilot in almost all conditions, with the exception of bad weather. The driver can engage autopilot himself and then no longer have to pay attention to the car's steering.
Level 4 is the second highest level of a self-driving car. Knowledge centre CROW uses the following definitions for these levels:
- Level 0 - no automation: The driver performs all driving tasks, but may be supported by warning systems or systems that intervene in the driving task, such as adaptive cruise control.
- Level 1 - driver support: A system partially takes over operational driving tasks such as steering, braking and accelerating. All other dynamic driving tasks are the responsibility of the driver.
- Level 2 - partial automation: A system takes over all operational driving tasks such as steering, braking and acceleration from the driver. In addition, tactical driving tasks are taken over from the driver to a limited extent. Thus, at this level, the driver is still closely involved in driving the vehicle.
- Level 3 - conditional automation: A system takes over all operational driving tasks and some of the tactical and strategic driving tasks from the driver. If necessary, the driver should be able to take control of the system directly.
- Level 4 - highly automated: A system takes over all operational tasks and some of the tactical and strategic driving tasks from the driver. At this level, the driver can focus his attention on other things, as the system does not assume that a driver will react adequately to take control of the vehicle at all times.
- Level 5 - fully automated: A system takes over all operational driving tasks, all tactical driving tasks and some of the strategic driving tasks from the driver. This level is suitable for all conceivable road and environmental situations, which means, among other things, that the driver can hand over control to the system in all weather conditions.
K-City
The Level 4 self-driving vehicle Hyundai is working on is due to hit the market in 2021. The vehicle will be based on a new hydrogen car that Hyundai will launch in 2018. The autonomous vehicle will be developed and tested in, among other places, K-City, an 80-hectare state just outside the South Korean capital Seoul.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Source: Volkswagen Group
Source: Hyundai (pictured)
Source: Aurora Innovation
