Roughly a year ago, Scale and NuTonomy released a driverless data set called NuScenes that they claimed at the time surpassed corpora like KITTI, Baidu's ApolloScape, and the Udacity Self-Driving Car library in size, scale, and accuracy. Since then, new and more diverse corpora like the Waymo Open Dataset, the Ford Autonomous Vehicle Dataset, and Lyft's autonomous vehicle data set have emerged, but Motional -- whose CEO founded NuTonomy -- is looking to take back the crown with the release of an expanded NuScenes. Data sets like NuScenes can be used to improve the robustness of self-driving cars in environments from cities to back roads. The Rand Corporation estimates that autonomous cars will have to rack up 11 billion miles before we'll have reliable statistics on their safety, but as headwinds slow real-world testing, simulated miles have become the next best thing. This expansion of NuScenes includes NuScenes-lidarseg, which improves the semantic segmentation of 1,000 Singapore and Boston scenes, making it one of the largest publicly available lidar segmentation data sets.

There's a time in a self-driving car company's life where a minivan is just more sensible than a sleek, European city car. NuTonomy, the autonomous vehicle startup spun out of MIT that's putting its systems through their paces on the streets of South Boston, says it has "decommissioned" its fleet of five-door, "supermini" electric cars manufactured by French automaker Renault under the brand name Zoe, according to a quarterly update the startup filed with the city of Boston. NuTonomy has been testing the vehicles on the city streets since January 2017. "The Zoe vehicle platform, with significant customizations, has performed all of our autonomous testing in Boston to date," the company writes. "However, as our engineering and design teams evaluated the technology requirements and customer needs in a fully autonomous vehicle, it became clear that the Zoe could not meet all of the criteria."

Self-driving vehicles, dating apps which give out relationship advice, humanoid robots that crack jokes and get upset... With a global market that is expected to reach US$35,870 million by 2025 from its direct revenue sources, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just the subject of science fiction books. According to a study carried out by IDC, in the ASEAN region, AI adoption rates are currently on the rise and growth has almost doubled in comparison to last year. When it comes to adopting this emerging technology, Indonesia is leading the way, with 24.6% of companies already embracing AI in some capacity. Thailand comes in second and the bronze medal goes to Singapore. This is somewhat surprising, considering the city state is normally something of a trailblazer in the region when it comes to embracing new technologies.

OK, tell me if you've heard this one before. A trolley, a diverging track, a fat man, a crowd, a broken brake. Let the trolley continue to speed the way it's going, and it will smash into the crowd, obliterating the people in its way. Hit the switch, and the trolley will careen into the fat man, KOing him--permanently--on impact. That is, of course, the classic trolley problem, devised in 1967 by the philosopher Philippa Foot.

Lyft has completed more than 5,000 self-driving rides through its ride-hailing app, the company said, as it aims to become a serious competitor in autonomous driving while its biggest rival, Uber, retrenches. Lyft launched its self-driving service in January in Las Vegas, where passengers can take a ride in an autonomous BMW to and from some 20 different pick-up and destination spots around the city's casino-laden Strip. The autonomous driving system is not built by Lyft, however, but by high-tech auto-parts supplier Aptiv Plc, which Lyft partnered with earlier this year. When you first get in, it's not all that different from getting into a typical Lyft, as someone is sitting in the driver's seat. But, the backup driver keeps their hands off the wheel except in situations where it's required they take over.

On July 4, swarms of sugar-happy children, sparkler laden teens, and buzzed, burger-full adults crowd the streets in cities across the US. They stagger in packs, waving flags and wearing flags, acting, and let's not mince words here, like very patriotic fools. Many have the day off, and maybe the day after off, too. Add fireworks, and you have the makings of a very good time. Unless you're a self-driving car developer, in which case you have the makings of a nightmare. See, on most days of the year, walkers act fairly predictably.

Self-driving vehicles, dating apps able to give relationship advice, humanoid robots that crack jokes and get upset... With a market expected to reach $35,870 million by 2025 globally from its direct revenue sources, artificial intelligence (AI) is not just the subject of science fiction books but a very real possibility for everyday life. In the ASEAN region, AI adoption rates are currently on the rise and growth has almost doubled in comparison to last year, according to a study carried out by IDC. Top AI uses in Southeast Asia include algorithmic market forecasting and automated asset and infrastructure management. Indonesia and Thailand are the undisputed regional leaders at the time of adopting AI.

Autonomous cars will now be allowed on all public Boston roads. The city has played host to nuTonomy for some time now, allowing the company to test its self-driving Renault Zoes at the Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park in January of last year, later expanding its testing zone to the Seaport District. And for the past few months, nuTonomy and Lyft have teamed up on a pilot program, transporting passengers in the autonomous vehicles within the Seaport area. Now, Boston will allow nuTonomy to test its vehicles city-wide. "Continuing to test autonomous vehicles in a careful and methodical manner represents another step forward in helping us to achieve the vision for improved mobility that was established by residents during the Go Boston 2030 Transportation Plan public process," Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said in a statement.

Autonomous cars have been around for a while. Everyone from Tesla and Volvo to Google car and Uber have rolled out automated-driving vehicles. But it has not been a smooth ride so far. Just last week in Arizona, Uber Technologies' self-driving car was involved in an accident, killing a woman -- it was the first pedestrian fatality involving an automatic vehicle. Following this, Toyota has suspended US tests of driverless cars on public roads.

NuTonomy and Optimus Ride have agreed to suspend their self-driving car tests in Boston in the wake of Sunday's tragedy in Arizona, where an autonomous Uber vehicle killed a pedestrian. "We are working with City of Boston officials to ensure that our automated vehicle pilots continue to adhere to high standards of safety," a nuTonomy spokeswoman said in a statement. "We have complied with the City of Boston's request to temporarily halt autonomous vehicle testing on public roads." Karl Iagnemma, chief executive of nuTonomy, said the response to the crash will be vital for the future of driverless cars and whether passengers are willing to ride in them. "The reality is we may work very hard as technology developers and end up with a technology that members of the public are uncomfortable with," Iagnemma said, speaking at an event in Cambridge last night.