In his latest ecosystem column, Antony Savvas charts a blockbuster first couple months of the year, involving both new companies and well-established ones. Internet of Things (IoT) network provider, Sigfox has launched the second edition of its Hacking House event in Paris. For six months, participants from seven different countries will bring IoT-based projects to life addressing issues as diverse as car theft prevention and bird protection. Microsoft and Amosense are the sponsors of the latest Hacking House, which will also be supported by technology partners such as LITE-ON, Wisebatt and STMicroelectronics. The participants are divided into four teams to develop their project at Sigfox in Paris from this month to early August 2020.

Swedish autonomous driving software developer Zenuity has become the first automotive company to team up with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in the development of fast machine learning for self-driving cars. A fundamental challenge in the development of autonomous vehicles (AV) is the interpretation of the huge quantities of data generated by normal driving conditions, such as identifying pedestrians and vehicles with the sensors on the car, including cameras, lidar and radars. Addressing these issues is crucial for the development of safe AVs and is a key part of Zenuity's long-term ambition to speed up the development of vehicles that will completely eliminate collisions and associated injuries and fatalities. Zenuity hopes that this collaboration with CERN will ultimately help it develop AV that can reach decisions and make predictions more quickly, thus avoiding accidents. One of the main quests at CERN is to study the standard model of particle physics by collecting large quantities of data originating from particle collisions produced by CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located at its laboratory on the Swiss-French border.

Autonomous driving software specialist Zenuity will team up with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to develop autonomous vehicles that can make predictions and decisions faster to help improve safety, the supplier said in a release. This is crucial to Zenuity as its long-term goal is to help automakers create AVs that have zero collisions and cause no injuries and fatalities. The safety of AVs has been questioned following a non-fatal accident last month in Vienna, Austria, involving a driverless bus and a pedestrian, and a fatal crash in 2018 in which an Uber Technologies self-driving test vehicle killed a pedestrian in Arizona. When asked whether those accidents were a wake-up call for Zenuity, CEO Dennis Nobelius said the supplier doesn't need to be reminded about the importance of safety. "Safety is in our bones. That's how we operate," Novelius told Automotive News Europe, adding that whenever an AV is involved in an accident it is a reminder of how high the stakes are in this sector.

World-renowned science institute, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (known as Cern), is working to develop "fast machine-learning" for use with autonomous driving. In an announcement Thursday, Zenuity -- a joint venture between Volvo Cars and Swedish firm Veoneer -- said it was working with Cern to speed up the decision making of self-driving cars, which would improve safety. It said the development of these next-generation cars faced a "fundamental challenge" when it came interpreting the vast amounts of data produced during normal driving conditions. This includes the identification of other vehicles and pedestrians. Based in Switzerland, Cern is known for its Large Hadron Collider, which is the biggest and most powerful particle accelerator on the planet.

Zenuity, the autonomous driving software company headquartered in Sweden, has become the first automotive company to team up with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in the development of fast machine learning for autonomous drive cars. A fundamental challenge in the development of autonomous drive (AD) cars is the interpretation of the huge quantities of data generated by normal driving conditions, such as identifying pedestrians and vehicles with the sensors on the car, including cameras, lidar and radars. Addressing these issues is crucial for the development of safe AD cars and is a key part of Zenuity's long-term ambition to speed up the development of vehicles that will completely eliminate car collisions and associated injuries and fatalities. Broadly speaking, it is hoped this collaboration with CERN will ultimately help Zenuity develop AD cars that can reach decisions and make predictions more quickly, thus avoiding accidents. One of the main quests at CERN is to study the standard model of particle physics by collecting large quantities of data originating from particle collisions produced by CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Volvo Cars joint venture has won approval to begin hands-free testing of its software for self-driving cars on Swedish highways, partner Veoneer said on Monday. Veoneer said the Zenuity joint venture's software for Level 4 autonomous driving - the second highest level - would be tested in a Volvo car by trained drivers with their hands off the steering wheel at a maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour). The venture is striving to keep up with larger rivals in the race to develop self-driving vehicles. U.S. companies are leading the pack, with Google's Waymo last year winning the first approval to test cars without safety drivers on Californian public roads. General Motors' Cruise has said it is ready to deploy a self-driving car with no manual controls, while Germany's BMW and Audi have also secured testing rights.

The Swedish Transport Agency Transportstyrelsen has given Volvo self-driving cars venture Zenuity approval to begin testing driverless cars on public roads. The cars will be tested at a maximum speed of 80km/hour (50mph) on three Swedish highways. Throughout all tests a trained driver will sit behind the wheel, although will keep their hands off it unless an intervention is required. Zenuity is a joint venture between car giant Volvo and Veoneer, a spin-off of vehicle safety company Autoliv specialising in autonomous driving software. The three roads that the self-driving cars will be tested on are the E4 between Stockholm and Malmö, the E6 between Gothenburg and Malmö and road 40 between Jönköping and Gothenburg.

Autonomous driving company Zenuity runs under the motto "Make it real." To achieve that goal, it began by solving one of the auto industry's biggest challenges: seamlessly managing enormous loads of data. Self-driving cars require enormous amounts of data to run in the real world. Zenuity is a joint venture between Volvo Cars and Veoneer, a new technology subsidiary spun out from auto supplier Autoliv. The company, which launched in April 2017, is developing software for advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving cars.

Henrik Fisker spent this year's CES at Booth 3315, standing next to a deep red, curvaceous, quirky electric sedan with doors that pivot like wings. The EMotion is the work of Fisker Inc, the car designer's latest venture. But the stage Fisker and the car stood on didn't say Fisker Inc. It said Quanergy--a Silicon Valley-based startup that makes lidar sensors for self-driving cars; it has plans to embed several of its units is discreetly into the new car. Fisker wasn't the only one shacking up at CES. Ford's display highlighted not cars, but its deal with Dominos to work on autonomous pizza deliveries. Pizza Hut announced a partnership with Toyota.

Volvo is forming a new joint partnership with Autoliv, called Zenuity, with a focus on developing self-driving automotive software. The plan is to eventually get to the point where they can field self-driving cars for sale, based on Nvidia's Drive PX in-car AI computing platform, by the not-so-distant target year of 2021. That's a tall order, but Nvidia's Drive PX is already being used to power self-driving vehicles in road testing today, including Nvidia's own demonstration vehicles. Volvo and Autoliv's Zenuity will use Nvidia's AI car compute groundwork as the basis for their own software development, with the hopes of speeding up the development progress of Volvo's commercially-targeted autonomous vehicles. The software that we're doing with them will be in some cases unique to Volvo," explained Nvidia's Senior Director of Automotive on call. "But Autoliv also has the rights to make the software available to other automakers.