In another step towards autonomous driving, Skoda Auto has partnered with VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic, to develop new technologies for driving assistance systems. The collaboration between the two parties involve a'Follow the Vehicle' project that aims to have autonomous cars follow a manned lead vehicle. The technology, currently being tested on two correspondingly configured Skoda Superb iVs, has potential for car-sharing service providers, car rental companies or fleet operators. The'Follow the Vehicle' project follows the principle of'two cars, one driver' where the lead vehicle is driven by a human, determining route, speed, lane and other parameters. The autonomous car follows the lead vehicle at a distance of up to ten metres.

'Physiological changes are correlated with these biological preparations to protect one-self from danger.' According to the researchers, teaching the algorithm when a person might feel more anxious in a given situation could serve as a guide to help machines avoid risks. 'Our hypothesis is that such reward functions can circumvent the challenges associated with sparse and skewed rewards in reinforcement learning settings and can help improve sample efficiency,' the team explains. The researchers put the autonomous software through a simulated maze filled with walls and ramps to see how they performed with fear instilled in them. And, compared to an AI that was trained based only on wall proximity, the system that had learned fear was much less likely to crash. 'A major advantage of training a reward on a signal correlated with the sympathetic nervous system responses is that the rewards are non-sparse - the negative reward starts to show up much before the car collides,' the researchers wrote. 'This leads to efficiency in training and with proper design can lead to policies that are also aligned with the desired mission.'

The Internet of Things is expected to grow quickly to tens of billions of connected devices, from smart refrigerators to smart showers to smart cruise ships. And pretty soon, it's going to extend to smart cars, Intel demonstrated at its recent autonomous cars event in San Jose, Calif. But Intel knows that we'll have to get data in and out of those cars at rates that are much faster than today's LTE mobile networks can handle. And that's why Rob Topol, general manager of Intel's 5G business and technology, believes that 5G wireless networking will be like the "oxygen" for self-driving cars. Intel is making 5G modem chips to transfer data at gigabits a second over wireless networks in the future, perhaps as early as 2020. Topol believes this wireless networking will enable self-driving cars to communicate with connected infrastructure. That infrastructure will help the cars process sensor, safety, and information for the car and return the results quickly to the cars.