The Swedish Transport Agency Transportstyrelsen has given Volvo self-driving cars venture Zenuity approval to begin testing driverless cars on public roads. The cars will be tested at a maximum speed of 80km/hour (50mph) on three Swedish highways. Throughout all tests a trained driver will sit behind the wheel, although will keep their hands off it unless an intervention is required. Zenuity is a joint venture between car giant Volvo and Veoneer, a spin-off of vehicle safety company Autoliv specialising in autonomous driving software. The three roads that the self-driving cars will be tested on are the E4 between Stockholm and Malmö, the E6 between Gothenburg and Malmö and road 40 between Jönköping and Gothenburg.

Autonomous driving company Zenuity runs under the motto "Make it real." To achieve that goal, it began by solving one of the auto industry's biggest challenges: seamlessly managing enormous loads of data. Self-driving cars require enormous amounts of data to run in the real world. Zenuity is a joint venture between Volvo Cars and Veoneer, a new technology subsidiary spun out from auto supplier Autoliv. The company, which launched in April 2017, is developing software for advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving cars.

New in-car artificial intelligence (AI) technology could help prevent distracted and drowsy drivers from causing accidents. Affectiva Automotive AI analyses the faces and voices of drivers and passengers to understand their emotional and cognitive states. Its developer, AI software specialist Affectiva, says the technology can identify complex driver impairment states caused by drowsiness, physical distraction or mental distraction from cognitive load or anger, while current systems rely on simplistic head pose and eye gaze measurements. The solution allows for in-cabin tracking of all occupants simultaneously, measuring critical facial expressions and emotions such as joy, anger and surprise, as well as vocal expressions of anger, arousal and laughter. This data can be used by manufacturers and suppliers to feed into advanced driver monitoring and vehicle safety systems, and to provide differentiated in-car experiences.

The Robotics Summit and Showcase is just a couple months away. Find out all about our agenda here and register by April 20 for a 20% discount to learn from the best in the robotics industry. Affectiva Automotive AI hopes to improve driver safety. Artificial intelligence (AI), to date, has helped autonomous vehicles mainly by monitoring the world around them. As we learned from the fatal Uber self-driving car crash, unfortunately, the technology is not perfect.

Volvo is forming a new joint partnership with Autoliv, called Zenuity, with a focus on developing self-driving automotive software. The plan is to eventually get to the point where they can field self-driving cars for sale, based on Nvidia's Drive PX in-car AI computing platform, by the not-so-distant target year of 2021. That's a tall order, but Nvidia's Drive PX is already being used to power self-driving vehicles in road testing today, including Nvidia's own demonstration vehicles. Volvo and Autoliv's Zenuity will use Nvidia's AI car compute groundwork as the basis for their own software development, with the hopes of speeding up the development progress of Volvo's commercially-targeted autonomous vehicles. The software that we're doing with them will be in some cases unique to Volvo," explained Nvidia's Senior Director of Automotive on call. "But Autoliv also has the rights to make the software available to other automakers.

Imagimob will exhibit with Autoliv at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. Imagimob will demonstrate how the driver can interact with the car and how the car can learn and adapt from the driver using sensors and artificial intelligence. The demo is developed in a partnership between Imagimob and Autoliv. CES 2018 (Consumer Electronics Show) is the largest tech event in the world. In 2017 there was 4 000 exhibitors and more than 180 000 industry professionals visiting the show.

Smartphone chipmaker Nvidia has partnered with automotive safety company Autoliv and automotive company Volvo to develop self-driving software and hardware. "This cooperation with NVIDIA places Volvo, Autoliv, and Zenuity at the forefront of the fast-moving market to develop next generation autonomous driving capabilities and will speed up the development of Volvo's own commercially available autonomous drive cars," Håkan Samuelsson, President and Chief Executive of Volvo Cars, stated in the press release Tuesday. The press release further stated the companies will work together to create artificial intelligence-based deep learning solutions for object detection, recognition the anticipation of threats and safe navigation. The self-driven car developed by Nvidia, Volvo, Autoliv, and Zenuity, will use the Nvidia Drive PX2 artificial intelligence based self-driving system which was first showcased at Consumer's Electronic Show (CES) 2016.

When Ford executives started dropping in on Silicon Valley startups a couple of years ago, they were met with less than warm receptions. The stalwart car company was looking for help and fresh talent to help it in the fast-paced development of driverless cars--but it was a stranger in a new land. "We've learned a lot," says CEO Mark Fields. "Simple things like, if you're going to have a purchasing agreement with a startup, you can't walk in with an 80-page legal document. It's got to be two or three pages, saying OK here's how we want to do business."

Volvo Cars today announced a partnership with Swedish-American vehicle safety systems supplier Autoliv Inc. to form a new jointly-owned company to develop autonomous driving software. The planned company, which has yet to be named, will have its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden and an initial workforce of about 200 taken from both firms. The new company is expected to start operations in early 2017, and then grow to more than 600 employees. Autoliv develops and sells automotive safety systems for all major automotive manufacturers around the globe; it has 80 facilities with 60,000 employees in 29 countries. The new Volvo/Autoliv company will develop advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous drive (AD) systems for use in Volvo cars and for sale exclusively by Autoliv to other car makers globally.

Volvo is sticking by its over-the-top claim that by 2020 nobody will be killed or injured in a new Volvo. This vision was first announced back in 2012, and now, halfway to the self-imposed deadline, Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive officer of Volvo Cars, has reaffirmed it during a press conference on Tuesday. Volvo, together with automotive safety systems provider Autoliv Inc. announced plans to launch a new jointly-owned company to develop autonomous driving software. Samuelsson said, "This is very crucial for Volvo to meet our vision for the future." He continued, reiterating that "by 2020 nobody should be killed or seriously injured by Volvo."