Cruise is sharing a software platform with roboticists that was initially created to give its own engineers a better understanding of the petabytes of data generated every month from its fleet of autonomous vehicles.
The platform is a data visualization tool called Webviz, a web-based application aimed at anyone working in robotics, a field that includes autonomous vehicles. Researchers, students and engineers can now access the tool and get a visual insight into their data by dragging their robotics data into a ROSbag file.
Robots and, specifically autonomous vehicles, capture loads of data from various sensors like lidar, radar and cameras. The tool is supposed to make it easier to take that data and turn it from binary code into something visual. The tool lets users configure different layouts of panels, each one displaying information like text logs, 2D charts and 3D depictions of the AV’s environment.
The tool is a product of a Cruise hackathon that was held a couple of years ago. It was apparently such a hit that engineers at the self-driving car company now use it daily to calibrate lidar sensors, verify machine learning models and debug test rides. Webviz now has 1,000 monthly active users within the company, according to Cruise.
As engineers developed Webviz they found it could have applications outside of Cruise. The company decided to open source it as general robotics data inspection tool. For this initial release, Cruise settled on a suite of general panels that any robotics developer can leverage to explore their own data, with minimal setup, the company said in a Medium post Tuesday.
A demo video provided by Cruise is posted below.
Prior to Webviz, Cruise engineers who wanted to turn binary AV data into something more visual would have to access a suite of tools within the ROS open source community. While the system worked well, setting up the platform and then replicating it on a co-worker’s machine was time consuming effort. It also required manually positioning windows running separate tools such as logging message or viewing camera images.
The tool created out of the hackathon essentially helped lower the barrier to entry for engineers to explore and understand its autonomous vehicle data.
Cruise shared a piece, or an application, of Webviz earlier this year called Worldview — a library that can turn data into 3D scenes. Cruise has also developed and open sourced rosbag.js, a JavaScript library for reading ROS bag files. Both of these projects were developed as engineers created and built out Webviz, according to Cruise.
Cruise isn’t the only robotics-focused company (or autonomous vehicle company for that matter) to open source datasets or other tools. For instance, Aptiv released last year nuScenes, a large-scale dataset from an autonomous vehicle sensor suite.
And it likely won’t be the last. Not only are moves like this part of the engineering culture, there are other benefits as well, including recruitment. Plus, by releasing it into the world, it’s likely that other outsiders will build upon the tool and improve it, or use it to make engineering breakthroughs in robotics.
Startup SafeAI, powered by a founding talent team with experience across Apple, Ford and Caterpillar, is emerging from stealth today with a $5 million funding announcement. The company’s focus is on autonomous vehicle technology, designed and built specifically for heavy equipment used in the mining and construction industries.
Out the gate, SafeAI is working with Doosan Bobcat, the South Korean equipment company that makes Bobcat loaders and excavators, and it’s already demonstrating and testing its software on a Bobcat skid loader at the SafeAI testing ground in San Jose . The startup believes that applying advances in autonomy and artificial intelligence to mining and construction can do a lot to not only make work sites safer, but also increase efficiencies and boost productivity – building on what’s already been made possible with even the most basic levels of autonomy currently available on the market.
What SafeAI hopes to add is an underlying architecture that acts as a fully autonomous (Level 4 by SAE standards, so no human driver) platform for a variety of equipment. Said platform is designed with openness, modularity and upgradeability in mind to help ensure that its clients can take advantage of new advances in autonomy and AI as they become available.
“We have seen and experienced deploying autonomous mining truck in production for last 10 years,” explained Safe AI Founder and CEO, Bibhrajit Halder in an email. “Now it’s time to take it to next level. At SafeAI, we are super excited to built the future of autonomous mine by creating autonomous mining equipment that just works.”
While SafeAI doesn’t have product in market yet, it is running its software on actual construction hardware at its proving ground, as mentioned, and it’s working with an as-yet unnamed large global mining company to deploy SafeAI in a mining truck, according to Halder. The company’s plan is to focus its efforts entirely on deploying fully, Level 4 autonomy as its first available commercial product, with a vision of a future where multiple pieces of mining equipment are working together “seamlessly,” the CEO says.
Today’s $5 million round includes investment led by Autotech Ventures, and including participation from Brick & Mortart Ventures, Embark Ventures and existing investor Month Vista Capital.
YouTuber Simone Giertz, celebrated DIY inventor, roboticist and general maker of cool stuff decided not to wait for Tesla’s forthcoming pickup truck. Instead, she bought a Tesla Model 3 direct from the company new and then used elbow grease, ingenuity, some help from friends and power tools to turn it into a two-seater with a flatbed.
The amazing thing is, unlike some of the robots Giertz is famous for making, the final product looks terrific – both in terms of the detail work, and in terms of its functionality. Giertz also installed a cage over the truck bed, and a tailgate that can double as a work bench. Plus, as you can see from this fake commercial for the so-called “Truckla,” the thing still rips both on and off-road.
Along with her crew, Giertz rented a dedicated workshop to do the build, which took around two weeks and a lot of sawing at the metal chassis. The team had to rebuild crucial components like the roll cage to ensure that the finished product was still safe.
Volvo and Nvidia announced a new partnership today aimed at developing the next-generation decision-making engine for Volvo Group’s fully autonomous commercial trucks and industrial service vehicles. The partnership will use Nvidia’s Drive artificial intelligence platform, which encompasses processing data from sensors, perception systems, localization, mapping and path prediction and planning.
Volvo already has some freight vehicles with autonomous technology on board in early service, but these are deployed in tightly controlled environments and operate supervised, as at the Swedish port of Gothenburg. The partnership between Nvidia and Volvo Group is intended to help not only test and deploy a range of autonomous vehicles with AI decision-making capabilities on board, but also eventually ensure these commercial vehicles can operate on their own on public roads and highways.
Transport freight is only one target for the new joint effort – Nvidia and Volvo will also seek to build autonomous systems and vehicles that can handle garbage and recycling pickup, operate on construction sites, at mines, and in the forestry industry, too. Nvidia notes on its blog that its solution will help address soaring demand for global shipping, driven by increased demand for consumer package delivery. It’ll also cover smaller-scale use cases such as on-site port freight management.
The agreement between the two companies will span multiple years, and will involve teams from both companies sharing space both in Volvo’s HQ of Gothenburg, and Nvidia’s hometown of Santa Clara, California.
A little more than a year ago, Waymo surprised the industry and announced that its next big move in the world of autonomous vehicles would be a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to add the automaker’s new all-electric I-Pace crossover to its fleet of self-driving cars.
Now, it appears self-driving Jaguar I-Pace vehicles are finally being tested on public streets around Waymo’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., TechCrunch has learned. A self-driving Jaguar I-Pace, with a safety driver behind the wheel, was spotted Monday morning. Waymo has confirmed that testing has begun.
Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, received its first three I-Paces in July 2018. Those vehicles have been driving around the San Francisco Bay Area collecting road data, but they were not operating in autonomous mode. Waymo plans to roll the I-Pace vehicles into its self-driving ride-hailing fleet in 2020.
The deal between Waymo and JLR is for up to 20,000 modified I-Pace vehicles to join the robotaxi service in the first two years of operation. The partnership is structured similarly to Waymo’s relationship with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which supplied the tech company with its Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans.
Those minivans have become synonymous with Waymo’s testing and its Waymo One ride-hailing service in the suburbs of Phoenix.
Domino’s really emphasizes its commitment to ‘innovation,’ but even if it’s a marketing tactic, the global pizza brand does indeed walk the walk. Case in point: It’s launching a new pilot for self-driving pizza delivery in Houston in partnership with Nuro.
Autonomous driving tech startup Nuro was founded by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, two veterans of Google’s self-driving car project (which became Waymo), and now includes a team of self-driving engineers with experience at Waymo, Apple, Uber, GM and Tesla. The company’s ability to book such tremendous talent as a startup probably has a lot to do with the nearly $1 billion investment from SoftBank it announced in February. Or vice versa, I suppose.
Domino’s will make use of Nuro’s felt of autonomous test vehicles to deliver pizzas to people in Houston who order through their app or online, and the pizzas will be delivered using Nuro’s R2 vehicle, a second generation of its fully autonomous electric test car which will go into service later this year. Participating will be opt-in, with customers presented the self-driving option at check-out, and they’ll be given a PIN to unlock the doors and get at that sweet, sweet pizza once it rolls up to their delivery address.
This isn’t Domino’s first foray into self-driving pizza, as weird as that sounds: Ford ran a limited pilot with the pizza company in 2017, which was designed as a test to figure out the basics around consumer expectations for interacting with such a service.
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Bounce, a Bangalore-based startup that offers more than 5,000 electric scooters for rent in India, has raised $72 million to accelerate its bid to impact how people navigate India’s traffic-clogged urban areas.
This new money means that the startup has raised $92 million to date. The current round valued it at more than $200 million, a person familiar with the matter said.
Bounce, formerly known as Metro Bikes, operates in Bangalore. Its app allows users to pick up a scooter and, when their ride is finished, drop it off at any parking spot. It charges customers based on the time and model of electric scooter they choose. An hour-long ride could cost as little as Rs 15 (21 cents). The startup claims it has already clocked two million rides.
Vivekananda Hallekere, co-founder and CEO of Bounce, told TechCrunch in an interview that the startup plans to use the fresh capital to add over 50,000 electric scooters to its fleets by the end of the year. Additionally, Bounce, which employs about 200 people, plans to enter more cities in India and invest in growing its tech infrastructure and head count.
“We have about ten metro and non-metro cities in mind. Starting next quarter, we will start to expand in those cities,” he said. The startup also aims to service one million rides in the next one year.
Hallekere said Bounce, which currently offers IoT hardware and design for the scooters, is also working on building its own form factor for scooters.
The rise of Bounce comes as it bets that shared two-wheeler vehicles — already a common mode of transportation in the nation — will play an important role in the future of ride-sharing, with electric vehicles replacing petrol ones.
Their adoption, though still in their nascent stages, is increasingly proving that for millions of people rides from Uber and Ola are just too expensive for their wallets. Besides, in jam-packed traffic in Bangalore and Delhi and other cities in India, two wheels are more efficient than four.
American Airlines, the world’s largest airline by fleet size and passenger traffic, has finished rolling out satellite-based broadband Wi-Fi to its entire mainline narrowbody fleet of over 700 aircraft (that is, the Boing 737s and Airbus A319 and 320 that typically fly the company’s domestic routes). All of these satellite-equipped planes also offer access to 12 free channels of live TV that you can stream to your personal device, including on international flights where this hasn’t traditionally been an option.
Unless you are comfortably sitting in business class and sipping on your pre-departure champagne, modern air travel isn’t exactly a fun or relaxing experience, no matter the reason for your travel. If you need to get work done on a flight, though, having access to fast and reliable Wi-Fi can often make a huge difference.
Today’s announcement from American follows a similar announcement from last year, after the airline finishing bringing the same system to all of its widebody fleet. At this time last year, though, American had only brought this same system to a meager 13 percent of its narrowbody planes.
One thing worth noting is that it’s my understanding is that American isn’t counting some of its oldest MD-83s in this count. These will never get a Wi-Fi upgrade because they are currently being phased out for more modern jets.
As for the technology that powers all of this, American Airlines is betting on satellite-based systems that use either Gogo 2Ku or ViaSat Ka. Unlike some of the earlier ground-based systems, satellite systems have the obvious advantage of offering a larger coverage area (including over oceans) and more consistent connectivity. These new satellite-based systems also allow for significantly faster connections. Among American’s competitors, Delta is currently in the process of updating most of its fleet to satellite-based systems, too, while the situation at United remains a bit complicated.
“Elevating the travel experience is one of our top goals at American and we’ve been working hard to provide our customers with the same level of entertainment and connectivity options they enjoy in their own living rooms,” said Kurt Stache, Senior Vice President for Marketing, Loyalty and Sales for American. “In less than two years, we completed broadband internet installation on our entire mainline fleet and we will continue setting new standards in the industry to show our customers we value the time they spend with us.”
Soon, American will also bring power outlets to every seat in its mainline fleet, as well as its two-class regional fleet. Since American, just like most of its competitors, is also removing most of its in-seat entertainment systems in favor of personal device entertainment that is streamed to your phone or tablet, it is also now bringing tablet holders to most of its narrowbody fleet as well.
Unlike some of its competitors, American doesn’t offer free Wi-Fi access to chat apps — or even free Wi-Fi in general. Still, if you are an American loyalist, you’ll be happy to see that the airline now offers a consistent Wi-Fi product that is clearly a step up from some of the legacy systems that are still in use by some of the other carriers.
Some of the best real-time insights into Tesla and its global fleet of electric vehicles — outside the confines of its Silicon Valley headquarters — might be through the lens of TezLab, a tiny upstart in Brooklyn.
Now, a little more than two years after its founding, TezLab is on the verge of hitting what its founders believe is a tipping point of users, a milestone that could finally trigger a path to monetization. And it’s adding lots of new features to help accelerate that plan.
For the non-Tesla owner, the name TezLab is likely a foreign one. In certain circles though, namely Tesla owners obsessed with understanding how their electric vehicle performs, TezLab is a familiar friend.
Tezlab is a free app that’s like a Fitbit for a Tesla vehicle. Tesla owners who download the app can track their efficiency, total trip miles and use it to control certain functions of the vehicle, such as locking and unlocking the doors and heating and air conditioning. There’s even a gamification piece that lets users earn badges for hitting milestones or completing tasks.
The company has started to add new features as part of a longer term plan aimed at monetization.
One of these features, which crowdsources data like Waze to give insights and ratings on Tesla Supercharger stations, is rolling out now. The video below shows how this supercharger feature will function.
The Waze for supercharger feature is considered “phase one” of the company’s plans to broaden its crowdsourcing and social community.
Origin story
The six-person team behind TezLab was born out of HappyFunCorp, a software engineering shop that builds apps for mobile, web, wearables and Internet of Things devices for clients that include Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, as well as an array of startups.
HFC’s engineers, including co-founders Ben Schippers and William Schenk, were attracted to Tesla largely because of its techcentric approach and one important detail: the Tesla API endpoints are accessible to outsiders.
The Tesla API is technically private. But it exists, allowing Tesla’s own first-party app to communicate with the cars to do things like read battery charge status and lock doors. When reverse-engineered, it’s possible for a third-party app to communicate directly with the API. (Tesla CEO Elon Musk has talked recently about opening up the API to third-party developers)
“Essentially, the plumbing is already built to connect to the server,” Schippers told TechCrunch recently. “This was the catalyst for us.”
A Tesla vehicle buying trend was triggered at HFC. Schippers, Schenk and a number of other software engineers and staffers at HFC bought, and still own, Tesla vehicles like the Model 3. The company’s HFC fund provided the initial $350,000 to build the first version of TezLab.
Repository of data
TezLab hasn’t captured anywhere near every Tesla owner. But Schippers believes they’re getting close to reaching a critical mass of users. More than 200 owners are downloading the app each week, and that rate is accelerating, he said.
TezLab has 16,000 total installs on the Apple App Store and Google Play, according to Sensor Tower . The figures are all unique, new installs. The firm doesn’t count re-installs or downloads to multiple devices belonging to the same user. However, that total install number is likely closer to 18,000 because many are listed under TestFlight, an online service used to test apps.
In comparison, Tesla delivered 245,506 vehicles globally in 2018. TezLab doesn’t expect every Tesla owner to download the app. Instead, Schippers is initially aiming for 10% of owners — a target he believes is within reach — and eventually higher.
Even at its current numbers, TezLab has become a massive repository of Tesla data. The company is storing between 850,000 to 1 million events a day, and that volume is growing. That translates to more than 1 GB of data a day, according to Schippers.
“We now have enough data in our system to start making large assumptions of what the fleet is doing and why,” said Schippers, who is CEO of HappyFunCorp and head of product at TezLab.
The data is aggregated and anonymous and isn’t shared publicly. And there are no plans to sell that data.
“I think we can create something really meaningful, without getting into the business of selling data,” Schippers told TechCrunch.
Of course, what Schippers and others at TezLab have built could, theoretically, end overnight if Tesla were to change access.
Tesla could do to us what Facebook did to Zynga, and we don’t want that,” Schippers said.
What TezLab does provide publicly on its website are insights based on that crunched data. For instance, anyone visiting the site can get a breakdown of model ownership, the average trip length and average time between plugging in.
As the company adds more features to the app, an understanding of how people use their Tesla vehicles should deepen.
In the background, of course, TezLab knows more than what it shows on its website. It can quickly spot phantom drain issues, if the Tesla API goes offline or chart spikes in charging use. For instance, Tezlab was able to determine that visits to Tesla Supercharger stations were 84% higher on Memorial Day than on an average day in 2019.
The Strava model
Capturing and storing that data is at the core of TezLab’s plan to make money. The app will remain free even as more features are added.
The company plans to follow the business model of the social fitness network Strava, which is charge for storage, not features. That data could become a lot more valuable to owners as new features are added. TezLab is looking at tracking Autopilot miles and is looking into doing “interesting stuff with Sentry mode,” the security feature now live in Tesla vehicles.
This summer, the app will introduce clubs that Schippers hopes will build up the community. The feature will let Tesla owners join a specific club, say in Norway, Brooklyn or San Francisco. It will be designed so owners can easily find and converse with other owners. And Schippers added, only people who own Tesla are allowed in.
TezLab’s staff puts itself squarely in the “protector of the realm” category when it comes to Tesla. In the end, all of this is to help Tesla succeed, said Schippers.
“We look at what Fitbit did for walking and exercise and motivation,” he said. “And we’ll bring that to the space of electric vehicles.”
