After less than two years of development Volvo has already announced plans to bring its self-driving project to the roads of Sweden’s second-largest city, Gothenburg.

Volvo’s autonomous vehicle project DriveMe aims to put 100 self-driving cars in the hands of customers by 2017, a step that is being heralded as a landmark by Dr Peter Mertens, the company’s senior vice president of research and development.

“We are entering uncharted territory in the field of autonomous driving,”...

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There is widespread discussion that driverless cars, and more broadly autonomous vehicles, will monumentally change the landscape of the automotive industry, arguably creating the biggest transformation of society’s view of the vehicle in the last 150 years.

Public acceptance of the vehicle began following the ‘Red Flag Act’ of 1865 when, by the 1890s, it became the ‘norm’ to see motor vehicles mingling, albeit uncomfortably, with the horse and...

Rewind to 2009 when I was visiting Professor Alberto Broggi and his team at the University of Parma. Using hours of footage from cameras mounted on the front of cars, they had trained computer systems to recognise kerbs, white lines, parked cars and even pedestrians.

Sitting in the back of his demonstration car, I was concerned to see my driver climb into another car and drive off. What I had not expected was for my car, the driver’s seat still empty, to follow it; steering itself and maintaining...

Driverless cars are a hot topic at the cutting edge of automotive developments. To date, much of the focus on driverless cars has been in the USA who appear to be in “pole position” in relation to the testing and development of this technology. For example, it has been reported that Google’s driverless vehicle has driven 300,000 miles in the US without any accidents.

The UK is keen to come on board to become a global leader in the development of autonomous vehicles, with plans to invest...

Automated vehicles in the UK are clear to begin testing on public roads after the Department for Transport released a report stating that the country was in a “unique position” to make these trials a success.

Most European countries have signed the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, requiring every moving vehicle to include a driver. However the UK has signed, but not ratified the convention meaning it can give the green light to

Ford has put the finishing touches on an agreement that will see it supply driverless vehicles to the UK government-backed Autodrive initiative.

During 2015 Ford will hand over two prototype cars with vehicle-to-vehicle communication features to Autodrive that will help the organisations study the contribution driverless and connected cars can make to society.

Since the turn of the year Ford has come out all guns’ blazing with its investment in upcoming technologies. Just last month it unveiled a new...

Taxi app Uber has revealed its intention to build the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburg, after announcing a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

In a blog post on Uber’s site, the firm revealed that its primary focus would be in “mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology”. The company clearly sees driverless as the next big evolution of its product.

Uber’s plans appear to be in direct competition with Google’s own autonomous vehicle...

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Automated vehicles are just one aspect of the driving experience Google is investigating, with news emerging that the company has won a patent where gestures can manipulate in-car controls.

The idea is to help drivers remain focused on the road because as in-car technology increases, so does the amount of controls required to use it. Even speech-to-text solutions can cause their fair share of...

Palo Alto’s Silicon Valley will be the location of a new Ford research centre, which the company hopes will drive innovation, connectivity, mobility and autonomous vehicles.

By the end of the year, Ford wants its new project to be one of the largest automotive manufacturer research centres in Silicon Valley with 125 researchers, engineers and scientists.

Ex-Apple man Dragos Maciuca, who has a background in consumer electronics, semiconductor manufacturing, aerospace and automotive, will take up the...

Driverless vehicles are the talk of the automotive industry after busy CES and Detroit motor shows, but testing them in a safe environment, that can accurately replicate the challenges of road navigation, has been a challenge until now.

US education establishment, the University of Michigan, has released more information surrounding M-City, its ambitious project to create a detailed urban test area for driverless...

Back-seat drivers can be a real annoyance to drivers and Jaguar Land Rover appears to be drawing on this bothersome trait for its latest bicycle safety system.

Jaguar Land Rover has launched an array of new features to help reduce the 19,000 cyclists killed or injured on UK roads every year, with one solution likely to prove divisive among drivers.

Bike Sense, Jaguar’s new system for cyclist detection, can detect when a bike is coming up the road behind the car. Depending on whether the cyclist...

As the doors closed at the Las Vegas Convention Centre and its countless exhibitors tidied away their wares, it is clear that the connected car is at the forefront of the most compelling developments in the technology industry.

Technology firms have earmarked automotive as a sizable growth area and are investing heavily in developing products for car manufacturers to implement in one or all of their models.

Nuance, a company best known for its voice-transcribing software for desktop PCs, is a prime example of this strategy...

Picture credit: Denis Bocquet

The number of people living in cities is expected to double by 2050, meaning congestion and pollution will increasingly be a problem for city dwellers. As a result the cities of the future will demand smarter traffic management solutions and more intelligent vehicles.

Experts say that the car industry will develop more in the next decade than it has in the last fifty years due to the rise in connectivity and mobile technology. The industry is gearing itself up for the age of the...

Graphics chipset designer Nvidia has launched the Drive PX and Drive CX products, its first foray into the world of production road vehicles.

Based on architecture that can also be found in modern supercomputers, each of Nvidia’s new products houses all the hardware that a vehicle manufacturer might need to get its in-car software running.

While there are many companies already developing hardware for cars, Nvidia is trying to stand out from the crowd by drawing on its background in personal computing...

Google has unveiled a new version of its self-driving vehicle prototype, six months after its original mockup materialised.

The car is still in its early stages of development as Google continues to run tests on its private track. However, the search firm does plan to trial the vehicle on the streets of Northern California in the new year.

Safety drivers currently oversee the vehicle, using manual controls to ensure all the car’s features are given Google’s stamp of approval before it considers...

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Cyclists’ helmets may soon be able to communicate with cars if Volvo’s collaboration with sports gear manufacturer POC and Ericsson goes on general sale.

Working with the two companies, Volvo has developed a helmet prototype that is capable of communicating with a connected car to provide proximity alerts to driver and cyclists in a bid to prevent accidents from occurring.

Collisions between cars and cyclists is a global concern. In Europe, 50% of all cyclists...

Picture credit: BMW

Smartwatches have only started hitting the mainstream consumer market this year, but German car manufacturer BMW is already coupling the technology with its vehicles.

BMW is dreaming of a world where people can get out of their car on the ground floor of a multi-story car park, tap their smartwatch and let the car drive through the levels to an available space on its own.

This technology currently only exists in the company’s BMW i3 research vehicle, equipped with the fully automated...

Picture credit: Catapult

Starting 1 January, driverless cars will become a common sight in four English cities as government quango Innovate UK announces £9 million of extra funding for the technology’s development.

The news came as part of the government’s autumn financial statement, with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne green lighting the funding himself.

Formal trials are expected to occur in Greenwich, Milton Keynes, Coventry and Bristol for the duration of 18 to 35 months....

Telecommunications company Huawei has announced that it will be investing heavily in future infrastructure technologies as it prepares for the era of autonomous cars. Fifth generation mobile internet (5G) has been discussed as a solution to the substantial bandwidth requirements that vehicles are likely to require when communicating with other road-based objects. In a recent article on the Financial Times, Huawei CEO Eric Xu, revealed that talks with car manufacturers were already on the agenda. However, the discussions must still be at an early stage as Xu failed to disclose any specifics. Bandwidth capacity There is a worry that even...