Issei Yamamoto became one of Japan's best-known developers of artificial intelligence when his algorithm defeated the top-ranked player of shogi. The 38-year-old is returning to the public eye with the backing of some of Japan's biggest businesses, including a unit of Mizuho Financial Group and NTT Docomo Ventures, which have invested in his startup, Turing.

Manufacturers are working to figure out how fully automated driving systems could safely work in cities across the country. That's where the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) comes in. Gibran Ali, a senior research associate, says VTTI was approached by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create an online database to help answer those questions. VTTI researchers used publicly available data on weather patterns, roadways and even fatal crash statistics in 30 U.S. cities to create the operational design domain element quantification tool. The goal is to help automated vehicle manufacturers and governments identify the best cities to roll out self-driving cars.

Self-driving car technology is currently limited to test programs and specialized vehicles, but Mobileye thinks it can play a key role in making driverless vehicles you can actually buy. The Intel-owned company has unveiled an EyeQ Ultra system-on-chip designed with consumer self-driving cars in mind. The SoC can juggle all the computing needs of Level 4 autonomy (full self-driving in most conditions), but it's reportedly the world's "leanest" such chip -- car brands won't need to use more complex, power-hungry parts that could hike costs or hurt battery life. The EyeQ Ultra is built on a more efficient 5-nanometer process, but the architecture is the key. Mobileye's design revolves around four task-specific accelerators tied to extra CPU cores, graphics cores and image processors.

Volkswagen is lifting the lid, ever so slightly, of its future electric car plans. Project Trinity is VW's next-generation of electric car technology, similar to the MEB platform that currently underpins the all-electric ID.3 and ID.4, but cheaper to build, able to support a greater range of vehicles, and crucially - from VW's point of view - able to undertake more of the driving for you. Project Trinity is distantly related to Audi's Project Artemis, in that both are focused as much on the software that controls the car, and that communicates with you the driver (or is owner, even user, now a better word?) and other road users. "Trinity is going to be a time machine," said VW brand boss Dr Ralf Brandstatter. "Trinity gives people time, and takes away the stress. So, after a long motorway drive for example, they are relaxed when they arrive at their destination. "You switch on the system when you enter the motorway, and then the system will take over, and let you know when you need to leave the motorway.

Self-driving cars have gotten so advanced in recent years that many proponents believe humans should be banned from driving altogether. But the boss of Google's Waymo, which is widely considered to be the leader in autonomous vehicle testing, doesn't agree. At a media event in New York City, Waymo CEO John Krafcik was asked whether he believed the rise of self-driving cars would eventually remove the need for human drivers. 'Good heavens, no,' Krafcik told Jalopnik. John Krafcik, the CEO of Waymo, stands with the Jaguar I-Pace vehicle on Tuesday.

German automaker Audi (audvf) will use U.S. chipmaker Nvidia's (nvda) artificial intelligence computing platform to bring autonomous vehicles to the road by 2020, the companies announced Wednesday night at CES, the annual consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The partnership is just one of a half a dozen announcements Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made that leverages computing power to apply artificial intelligence to a variety of products, including the home and the car. Nvidia also announced a partnership with mapping company HERE (hrte), truck and commercial supplier ZF, and automotive supplier Bosch. ZF and Bosch are adopting Nvidia's computing platform to bring AI to autonomous vehicles. Audi and Nvidia have been working together for nearly a decade, although in the beginning the focus was on using Nvidia's computer graphics chips in Audi's virtual cockpit and navigation.