Intel Entering The Self-Driving Car Race
How will these self-driving cars do?
Intel and its subsidiary Mobileye have started testing self-driving cars in Jerusalem. The fleet includes 100 cars.
These cars are equipped with 12 cameras to create a 360 view of its surroundings. Eight of those cameras are for long-range viewing purposes while the other four are for parking. In later weeks, Mobileye will complement that with radar and lidar. The goal is to eventually have several viable systems, each of which Mobileye says “can support fully autonomous driving on its own,” interweaved to create “true redundancy” — if one system fails, the others simply pick up the slack.
(Credit: Intel Corporation)
Mobileye is based in Israel, but the company and parent Intel also want to demonstrate that self-driving cars can work in all driving conditions, CEO Amnon Shashua said in a press release. Jerusalem’s aggressive drivers, poorly-marked streets, and complicated merges will require autonomous cars to develop a new set of skills, he said.
Intel said the environment has allowed the company to test the cars and the technology while refining the driving planning or decision-making of its autonomous vehicles.
Mobileye, bought by Intel last year for $15.3 billion, says there are some 27 million cars on the road from 25 automakers that use some sort of driver assistance system and Mobileye has a market share of more than 70 percent.
“By the end of 2019, we expect over 100,000 Level 3 cars with Mobileye installed,” said Shashua.
In Level 3, the car is self-driving but the driver has about 10 seconds to take over if the system is unable to continue.
Intel and Mobileye plan to test the cars elsewhere in the coming months, including in the US, and they aim to have high-automation and completely automated cars in full production by 2021.
