The automobile industry has been evolving rapidly if seen through the technological advancement viewpoint. The evolution of the electric cars, development of autonomous technology, and innovation of various efficient accessories that smoothens the functioning of the car are some of the trending progressions accomplished by the market players.
Yandex.Taxi, an on-demand taxis service based in Moscow managed by Russian Internet giant Yandex, has introduced its car in the race of autonomous cars. It has unveiled a working self-driving car technology. The company released a video that showed a prototype version of the vehicle avoiding pedestrians and moving through a certain obstacle course. The company is in plans to roll out it on public roads in the coming years.
Yandex is basically an internet service-based company and also a renowned search engine in Russia. Though it belongs to another background it didn’t get into procuring hardware for the automobile from other manufacturers. The company said it has been using real-time navigation, mapping, object recognition, and computer vision in the Internet products and services such as Yandex.Navigator and Yandex.Maps.
The vehicle made by the company concludes a decision by utilizing artificial intelligence, machine learning, and a set of proprietary algorithms. The company also clarified that the car used for the prototype is the Toyota Prius, the radar comes from Velodyne, and processor installed in the boot is developed by Nvidia.
Yandex has developed this vehicle with an aim to offer a Level 5 autonomy vehicle, which in the layman language means the car will be fully autonomous with no necessity of human intervention. Though, in the video it can be seen that the car dribbles the obstacles, avoids a truck, and identifies pedestrians but it never exceeds the speed limit of 15km/h. The steering wheel never remains still, which makes it feel like a new nervous learner driving on a narrow street.
For now, the company is beta-testing its vehicles in a controlled and secured location with artificial obstacles, but the actual intention is to have a sensor wrapped Toyota Prius V roaming around on streets full of people and real time obstacles.###
