To make self-driving vehicles a reality and to bring them on roads, they need to be able to safely and flawlessly navigate traffic without collisions or jams. Northwestern University researchers have made this possible by developing the first decentralized algorithm with a collision-free guarantee. The algorithm was tested in a simulation of 1,024 robots and in a throng of 100 real robots by the researchers in the laboratory. The robots carefully and efficiently followed to form a command shape. "If you have many autonomous vehicles on the road, you don't want them to collide with one another or get stuck in a deadlock," said Northwestern's Michael Rubenstein, who led the study. "By understanding how to control our swarm robots to form shapes, we can understand how to control fleets of autonomous vehicles as they interact with each other."

Kroger's efforts to play catch-up with Amazon in grocery delivery have taken it to the fringes of the "last mile" and a new partnership with an autonomous-driving startup that was hatched by guys who were involved in getting Google's driverless-car operation off the ground. It's the latest indication that the commercial logistics business is likely to have much more to do with shaping the early days of self-driven automotive transportation than the consumer side is. The Cincinnati-based supermarket chain, largest in the United States, said that it will begin piloting an "on-road, fully autonomous delivery experience" with Nuro, maker of the world's first unmanned road vehicle, in a city that the retailer hasn't yet announced, beginning this fall. The partnership will allow customers to place same-day delivery orders through Kroger's ClickList digital ordering system and Nuro's app. During the test, orders will be delivered by Nuro's fleet of autonomous vehicles, with human safety drivers to start out.

Self-driving car technology will face its toughest test in the United States on Wednesday with the House of Representatives set to vote on the proposal for getting autonomous vehicles on the American roads. The proposed legislation is expected to not just help companies in developing the technology further but it will also ensure speedy deployment of autonomous vehicles on the American roads with minimum state oversight. The vote for the legislation involving several stakeholders -- including ride-hailing companies, auto companies, and tech companies -- comes at a critical time when Russia and China are developing the technology at an accelerated pace. While major developments pertaining to the technology have taken place primarily in the United States, in the absence of proper laws, companies get mired in legal battle such as the Uber-California DMV spat where the state regulators asked the ride-hailing company to apply for a permit to test self-driving cars. The proposed "Self Drive Act" bars the state from setting regulations on the design, construction, and performance of the self-driven vehicles. A host of car makers and tech companies including the Google spin-off Waymo, Apple and Tesla, have previously opposed strict guidelines proposed by the states such as California.

Self-driving cars might not be seen on the roads yet, but behind the scenes, they are actually progressing at warp speed. The technology has attracted not just the likes of ride sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft, but even automotive companies such as General Motors (GM) and Ford and tech companies such as Apple and Nvidia. One of the veterans of self-driving, Tesla, is now aiming for a new venture -- its own fleet of self-driven electric semi-trucks, according to Reuters. It is developing technology which will allow transport trucks i.e. Tesla's electric semi-trucks to move around in a convoy formation and follow a lead vehicle which will provide them guidance.

Cars are becoming more connected and smarter with computer interfaces and internet connectivity. But the connectivity options also put them at a larger risk of getting hacked. Self-driving cars -- that have automated features -- are at a higher risk of hacking than the semi-autonomous vehicles, and this can even endanger the passengers' lives. A self-driven vehicle is mostly data dependent for maps and obstacles detection information, and this means that we need tighter protocols to ensure the safety of riders. Trending: Malia Obama, Former First Daughter, Spotted Enjoying Time With New'Mystery Guy' While fully autonomous cars may not be a reality in near future, semi-autonomous cars such as the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model 3 are already available in the market.

Germany, home to one of the world's largest automotive industries, passed a law Friday, which would allow autonomous cars to be tested on the country's public roads, Reuters reported Friday. The move could provide the country an advantage over the U.S., as it is still quibbling over self-driving legislation here. The German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt called self-driving, "the greatest mobility revolution since the invention of the car." According to the report, the new law would allow human drivers assigned to self-driven vehicles to remove their hands from the steering, giving vehicle makers a chance to get an accurate assessment of the functioning of self-driven vehicles. However, the law still requires human drivers to stay in the driving seat, in case they need to take control at any time during the self-driving trials.

It is no secret that human driving is erratic, inconsistent and highly prone to accidents. Not just that, the stop and go style of driving in traffic causes accidents and mars fuel efficiency. Even a few self-driving cars on the road could change the way traffic works according to a new research. "Our experiments show that with as few as 5 percent of vehicles being automated and carefully controlled, we can eliminate stop-and-go waves caused by human driving behavior," said Daniel B. Work, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a lead researcher in the study published Tuesday. According to the study, even if all cars on the road are not self-driven, just the presence of a few such cars will help in better traffic monitoring and control.

Recently, most industries are facing a significant change due to the improvement in technology. The automotive sector is one of the industries that are defined by the normal technological development. Various automotive companies have been working to release self-driving vehicles. The self-driving vehicles use the machine learning technology to substitute the human driver. The self-driving vehicle project is proving to bear fruit.