We’ve gotten used to major car manufacturers as well as corporations with deep pockets, such as Google, testing out autonomous vehicles. In certain parts of the country, such as California, they’re frequently spotted in the streets. Google alone has logged millions of miles of data in the Golden State.
Across the pond and outside of Oxford, you’ll find Oxbotica, a company that branched off from the ancient university. Business Insider reports that this group is developing its own little self-driving car. The company is currently displaying Selenium, the robotic brain that will control the car.
Besides building the usual components needed to guide the car, such as lasers, cameras, and sensors, Oxbotica also designs the software that brings everything together. This same software uses data to learn from its mistakes and have the car perform better on public roads.
Beyond cars, the group’s tech has made its way into forklifts, mining trucks, and even NASA’s Mars Rover. This versatility should help it to compete with rival giants such as Google, according to founder Paul Newman.
“We love those guys [Google], because they made the market possible,” Professor Newman said. “They introduced this brilliantly into the public’s conception of what’s coming in the future.”
The company has seen steady profit since its inception two years ago, and aims to see the fruits of its labor used in “all things that move.”
“…First to the market does not equal first for all time,” Newman said. “People say to us, ‘why would you do this if Google is out there?’ That’s like saying to Dell, ‘why would you make computers when there’s IBM?'”
Newman lists cars, taxis, driverless pods, and forklifts as possible recipients of the technology, all learning from each other. Accidents themselves might be learning experiences for us humans as individuals, but a machine caught in an incident could share the new knowledge with other machines, so each is the better for it the next day.
Oxbotica has received millions in funding and will be releasing driverless pods controlled by its systems onto the streets of Greenwich and Milton Keynes as part of a program partly funded by the U.K. government. The goal is to encourage homegrown companies to develop autonomous vehicle technology.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.