Can Bike Riders and Self-Driving Cars Be Friends? Some cycling advocates are on board with robotaxis. Others see the self-driving car boom as perpetuating auto dependency. Los Angeles is a car city, and it's rarely more obvious than from a vulnerable perch on top of a bicycle . Among big cities in the US, LA has a middling-to-bad reputation for bike riding.

Six years ago, I sat in the Google self-driving project's Firefly vehicle -- which I described, at the time, as a "little gumdrop on wheels" -- and let it ferry me around a closed course in Mountain View, California. Little did I know that two of the people behind Firefly's ability to see and perceive the world around it and react to that information would soon leave to start and steer an autonomous vehicle company of their very own. Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu aren't the only Google self-driving project employees to launch an AV startup, but they might be the most underrated. Their company, Nuro, is valued at $5 billion and has high-profile partnerships with leaders in retail, logistics and food including FedEx, Domino's and Walmart. And, they seem to have navigated the regulatory obstacle course with success -- at least so far.

Amazon's autonomous vehicle company, Zoox, unveiled its self-driving car that brings it one step closer to unleashing a fleet of robotaxis. The electric, fully driverless vehicle is designed as a'carriage-style car that sits four passengers facing each other and is the first in the industry that is capable of operating up to 75 miles per hour. It is equipped with two battery packs that provide the vehicle with up to 16 continuous hours on a single charge. Zoox plans to soon launch an app for its future ride-hailing service in major cities across the US including San Francisco and Las Vegas. Amazon's autonomous vehicle company, Zoox, unveiled its self-driving car that brings it one step closer to unleashing a fleet of robotaxis Aicha Evans, Zoox Chief Executive Office, said: 'Revealing our functioning and driving vehicle is an exciting milestone in our company's history and marks an important step on our journey towards deploying an autonomous ride-hailing service.' 'We are transforming the rider experience to provide superior mobility-as-a-service for cities.' 'And as we see the alarming statistics around carbon emissions and traffic accidents, it's more important than ever that we build a sustainable, safe solution that allows riders to get from point A to point B.' The four-wheeled vehicle is just 11 feet long, features four seats inside the carriage-style design and has one of the smallest footprints in the industry, claims Zoox.

In its first report on its autonomous vehicle operations in Phoenix, Arizona, Waymo said that it was involved in 18 crashes and 29 near-miss collisions during 2019 and the first nine months of 2020. These crashes included rear-enders, vehicle swipes, and even one incident when a Waymo vehicle was T-boned at an intersection by another car at nearly 40 mph. The company said that no one was seriously injured and "nearly all" of the collisions were the fault of the other driver. The report is the deepest dive yet into the real-life operations of the world's leading autonomous vehicle company, which recently began offering rides in its fully driverless vehicles to the general public. Autonomous vehicle (AV) companies can be a black box, with most firms keeping a tight lid on measurable metrics and only demonstrating their technology to the public under the most controlled settings.

This ebook, based on the latest ZDNet / TechRepublic special feature, examines how driverless cars, trucks, semis, delivery vehicles, drones, and other UAVs are poised to unleash a new level of automation in the enterprise. Imagine: After a long flight home from a conference, you walk outside to the airport's ground transportation and are met by an airport shuttle, which takes you directly to your car. Here's the plot twist: The shuttle is operating without a human driver. This hypothetical scenario will most likely become reality within the next five years, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies autonomous vehicles. "At the societal level, self-driving cars have the potential to save millions of lives, reshape our cities, reduce emissions, give back billions of hours of time and restore freedom of movement," said Mo ElShenawy, vice president of engineering at GM Cruise.

The burgeoning autonomous vehicle (AV) revolution seems to crank up a notch every other week, with Waymo recently unveiling its first commercial driverless car service, Volvo announcing its first commercial autonomous truck, and countless companies working on the underlying technology that will bring self-driving transport to the mainstream. But full autonomy that involves millions of cars traversing busy thoroughfares completely devoid of human oversight will likely be some time away. With that in mind, one Israeli startup is setting out to serve as a bridge to 100 percent autonomy. Founded this year, Tel Aviv-based Ottopia is pitching itself as a teleoperation platform for autonomous vehicles. The startup was cofounded by CEO Amit Rosenzweig, formerly head of product management at Microsoft's Advanced Threat Analytics, and CTO Leon Altarac, who previously set up the robotics and AV branch of the Israeli army.

Welcome to the robot on the road revolution.