Dean Apostolopoulos is the man behind Uber's autonomous robots, but his goal of a driverless delivery is about more than food.

It's a heady time to be a car executive. Lawmakers worldwide are pushing the auto industry to electrify, and fast. US companies are under pressure to do that without giving a boost to rival nations, primarily China. Reengineering decades of internal combustion-centric technology, business models, and supply chains should be easy, right? Meanwhile, another revolutionary technology is also approaching: self-driving vehicles.

Mustafa sits motionless behind the wheel, upturned hands in his lap, as his taxi drives itself, bringing the United Arab Emirates closer to an autonomous future. The "safety officer" is part of a trial for driverless cabs in the capital Abu Dhabi, where customers can be picked up and dropped off at nine pre-determined spots on Yas Island. It's been a "smooth ride" so far, said Mustafa, with no incidents that required any major intervention. Passengers' view of monitor showing road navigation, from the interior of a self-driving taxi being used in a tech demonstration in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi Photo: AFP / Giuseppe CACACE "In the past few days, we've had most customers order taxis from the mall or hotel," he told AFP. Bayanat, a branch of the Abu Dhabi-based Group 42 tech company, last month launched the trial of four driverless vehicles, two electric and two hybrid, under the name TXAI.

There is a difference between autonomous and automated vehicles. The main differentiator is the degree of human intervention. A fully Autonomous Vehicle (AV) is classified as either level 4 or 5 according to SAE classification. Such a vehicle completely depends on the machine for driving tasks. An automated vehicle employs technologies that fall into levels 3 and below, where the driver is responsible for the final vehicle's controls.

As the United Kingdom's largest automobile manufacturer and investor in research and development in the UK manufacturing sector, Jaguar Land Rover is the combination of two iconic British car brands--Jaguar that features luxury sports cars and sedans and Land Rover, maker of premium all-wheel-drive vehicles. These brands began in the middle of the 20th century and gained a reputation for innovation. The company plans to continue the tradition of innovation as they pave the way to the future through AI and machine learning investments and applications. The inaugural Jaguar Land Rover Tech Fest was held in 2017. Along with discussions on how to live in a more connected world, exhibits and electric vehicles that allow you to maintain the pleasure of driving even in an autonomous future, Jaguar Land Rover unveiled Sayer--the company's voice-activated intelligent steering wheel.

Tesla's full self-driving autonomous vehicle feature is coming. An image leaked on Tuesday apparently shows the new user interface of a test-car. The image shows how the autopilot software/system views and interprets the world. The view has strong similarities to previous autonomous driving videos released by Tesla, there is now an option called "full self-driving" indicating a more advanced mode suggesting complete autonomy of the car. Tesla engineering car leaked picture shows what Autopilot sees live with settings for'Full Self-Driving' https://t.co/3qmia3XqHy

Video: Yandex's autonomous car hits Moscow's streets. Transportation is about to get a technology-driven reboot. The details are still taking shape, but future transport systems will certainly be connected, data-driven and highly automated. With harsh winters, drivers who constantly switch lanes, traffic jams and occasional crashes, the Russian capital of Moscow provides a challenging setting for testing autonomous cars. "In Moscow, the guys behind you honk the horn even before the traffic lights turn green," says Dmitry Polishchuk, head of Yandex's driverless car project.

Can AI-enabled automation replace your company's entire labor force? How much will technology change affect labor? According to research informing our 2017 research report, "Reshaping Business with Artificial Intelligence," not as much as one would expect. Less than half of more than 3,000 survey respondents expect AI to reduce their organization's workforce in the next five years, and just 30% are fearful that AI will automate their own jobs. But as technology relentlessly improves, significant changes may still be on the horizon.

What makes Netflix so good at predicting movies you'll like? A recommendation algorithm based on your viewing history, and the viewing histories of others like you, of course. While consumer technology is rife with such technology, HarrisData president Lane Nelson sees a future when ERP applications augmented with machine learning algorithms can automate nearly all of the back-office decisions currently made by people. Machines have been taking over the back-office since the days of the typewriter. But the next wave of innovation occurring around big data analytics and machine learning will likely make the transition to a people-less office nearly complete, according to Nelson, who's also holds the title of chief evangelist at HarrisData, the Brookfield, Wisconsin-based provider of enterprise software that runs on IBM i. "Automation is coming at the back office. It has been for 10 years at least," Nelson tells IT Jungle.

Rolls-Royce and Google on the same boat with navigating a path towards an AI driven autonomous future. Google is shipping out its Cloud Machine Learning Engine to Rolls-Royce to help make autonomous ships a reality. The hope is that the Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine will be able to train Rolls-Royce's intelligent awareness systems, an AI-based classification system for detecting, identifying, and tracking the objects that a vessel could come across at sea. Signed at the Google Cloud Summit in Sweden, the agreement will help the company to create bespoke machine learning models that'll be able to uncover valuable insights from data sets that are created by Rolls-Royce. Karno Tenovuo, Rolls-Royce, SVP Ship Intelligence said: "While intelligent awareness systems will help to facilitate an autonomous future, they can benefit maritime businesses right now making vessels and their crews safer and more efficient. By working with Google Cloud we can make these systems better faster, saving lives."