Oxbotica, the British-based autonomous vehicle software developer, today announced a new strategic collaboration with Google Cloud that will help accelerate the deployment of its autonomous software platform to customers around the world. The partnership will combine Google Cloud's expertise in cloud infrastructure with Oxbotica's market-leading autonomous vehicle software to create scalable, safe, and reliable autonomous driving solutions for any business with transportation in its value chain. These businesses include last-mile logistics, light industry, and public transport. Oxbotica plans to use Google Cloud products--compute, storage, networking, and leading data and analytics products like Vertex AI--to help develop, test, validate, and verify its self-driving technology. It will also leverage Google Cloud's proven cyber-security technologies to help ensure secure use of autonomous mobility technology.

Are you a Senior Data Engineer interested in or currently working with autonomous vehicle technology? If so, we are looking to talk with you about your Python software development skills (including exposure to working with vast volumes of data) in line with the opportunity to join Oxbotica as a Senior Data Engineer. At Oxbotica, we're fuelled by a bold purpose: to make the Earth move. From passenger shuttles to industrial vehicles; from congested city streets to mines, our industry-leading autonomy software platform enables any vehicle to operate itself safely, securely and efficiently. We call it Universal Autonomy.

This will include assessing safety issues and the perception of safety, considering the relationship with other road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and users of conventional vehicles. The committee will analyse the progress of research and trials into autonomous and connected vehicles in the UK and overseas, and the likely uses of them for private motoring, public transport and commercial driving. Required changes to regulations such as the vehicles' legal status, insurance and authorisation processes will also be investigated. Fully driverless cars are not yet legally permitted in the UK, but autonomous features are being developed by car makers. The Highway Code will be updated on Friday to state that users of self-driving cars will be allowed to watch television programmes and films on built-in screens, but using a phone will remain illegal. The code, which contains advice and rules for people on Britain's roads, will also state that users will not be responsible for crashes, with insurance companies liable for claims.

How would you build a vehicle that perceives what is happening in an off-road environment? A system that learns to navigate a solar farm, a mine, or refinery - all without GPS? And can then do the same on-road, delivering shopping in urban areas, or shuttling people around a city centre? We are building Universal Autonomy, we think differently, and would welcome you, if you would like to make the Earth move. Are you a machine learning engineer, who is a deep learning expert working in perception?

We'd all be whizzing round in automated taxis by now if Elon Musk had been right. Instead, fully self-driving cars are struggling to get away from the starting grid and some investors are betting that driverless trucks will reach the checkered flag first. Only a year ago, startups developing self-driving taxis were pulling in eight times more funding than firms working on autonomous trucks, buses and logistics vehicles, but the gap has narrowed dramatically in 2021. With fewer regulatory and technological hurdles, trucks operating on major highways, fixed delivery routes or in environments far from cyclists and pedestrians such as mines and ports are now being seen as a faster way to generate returns. In the year through Dec. 6, total investment activity for self-driving logistics vehicles leapt fivefold to $6.5 billion from $1.3 billion in the same period in 2020, according to startup data platform PitchBook.

Bridgeworks CEO, David Trossell features in and gets the cover of TaaS Magazine to discuss the importance of WAN acceleration in the industry of autonomous vehicles and planning for the future of data management in the automotive industry. Self-driving cars still have a long way to go before they become commonplace on public roads around the world. However, in the meantime all kinds of businesses are having to adapt to using artificial intelligence. David Hughes, founder and CEO of Silver Peak writes in an Information Age article: "While self-driving cars still have some way to go, AI is already having a significant impact on the way IT runs enterprises. Businesses are making the transition from being automated to autonomous, where machine learning and AI make it possible to create a'self-driving' wide area network (WAN)."

In its announcement, Ocado tempered expectations and said that getting permission from regulators to operate autonomous vehicles on public roads - allowing driverless deliveries to customers' homes - may take some time.

By 2021, according to various Silicon Valley luminaries, bandwagoning politicians and leading cab firms in recent years, self-driving cars would have long been crossing the US, started filing along Britain's motorways and be all set to provide robotaxis in London. Indeed in the last weeks of 2020 Uber, one of the biggest players and supposed beneficiaries, decided to park its plans for self-driving taxis, selling off its autonomous division to Aurora in a deal worth about $4bn (£3bn) – roughly half what it was valued at in 2019. The decision did not, Uber's chief executive protested, mean the company no longer believed in self-driving vehicles. "Few technologies hold as much promise to improve people's lives with safe, accessible, and environmentally friendly transportation," Dara Khosrowshahi said. But more people might now take that promise with a pinch of salt.

Self-driving cars have begun being trialled on the streets of Oxford. Tests of six autonomous vehicles have started as part of a government-backed research scheme called "Project Endeavour". The trials were described as a "landmark" moment by Oxbotica, an Oxford-based company pioneering self-driving technology in the UK. Oxford is believed to be the first city to hold trials in the UK ahead of tests in London and other unconfirmed cities. The aim of the trials is to test out "level four" vehicle autonomy, which is part of a US-created system to determine how much driverless control a vehicle has.

UK-based autonomous vehicle (AV) software company Oxbotica reports it has'mastered' driving on the right-hand side of public roads in Germany after securing AV permit recommendation from the independent inspection body TÜV SÜD. According to Oxbotica, having completed numerous trials on the left-hand side of the road in the UK, including on the complex streets of London, the German AV permit means its AV software has proven itself capable of following the rules of the road and driving on the right in real-world conditions. The official trials started last month on public roads near Friedrichshafen, southern Germany, with a fleet of self-driving vehicles navigating a complex urban environment. To gain the AV permit recommendation, the software company said it had to meet a rigorous assessment framework including detailed hazard analysis and the combination of physical real-world tests and scenario-based simulations. Around two-thirds of the world's population live in countries where cars drive on the right-hand side, including mainland Europe, the US and China.