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Why is Ford investing $1 billion over five years in a Pittsburgh startup chosen Argo AI? It's looking to gain an edge in self-driving machine applied science in the iv-year countdown to 2021. That'south when Ford has said information technology will be shipping cars with democratic driving. Several other automakers said in 2016 they'd have self-driving cars within five years, besides.

Ford CEO Mark Fields said, "With Argo AI's agility and Ford'southward scale, we're combining the benefits of a applied science startup with the experience and discipline we accept at Ford." Ford volition continue piece of work on the cocky-driving vehicle platform, including sensors, while Argo AI volition build the virtual driver organisation.

Ford (the guys with suitjackets, CEO Mark Fields, evolution principal Raj Nair) ponied upwardly $i billion to a pair of Carnegie Mellon alums who founded Argo AI: COO Peter Rander, ex of Uber, and Bryan Salesky, ex of Google.

Here's the bargain

Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh is one of the earth leaders in autonomous driving and bogus intelligence. Grads and professors take spun off or started several democratic driving startups, including Ottomatika which has since been purchased by Delphi, and at present Argo AI. 1 of Uber'south autonomous driving test fleets is in Pittsburgh considering of the CMU connection.

As for Argo AI, the startup reunites CMU grads from its National Robotics Engineering Center who've been working on other self-drive projects. Chief operating officer Peter Rander was a leader of the Uber democratic motorcar program. CEO Bryan Salesky had a similar part with Waymo, Google / Alphabet's cocky-driving program. Argo AI plans to ramp upward to 200 employees by year's end.

Ford will be the bulk stakeholder in Argo and some of Ford'south engineers may shift to Argo. As Ford notes, "Through their equity participation, Argo AI employees volition share in the startup's growth," which is a more polite fashion of saying "possibly get rich beyond their wildest dreams."

SAE International J3106 autonomous driving levels

AI to resolve the trickier issues of self-driving

Some rules of self-driving are cut-and-dry: Stay in the center of the lane. Maintain 10-distance from the car behind yous. Finish and wait Y-seconds for pedestrians on the sidewalk to see if they'll cross or not. Don't change lanes if other cars are coming upward in the adjacent lanes.

Other situations require higher-level reasoning, and that's where AI comes in: Determining the safer alternative when merging onto the crowded interstate. Deciding to enter a traffic circle now or wait for a bigger opening. Dealing with a correct-lane closure or blocked lane that isn't in the car's cognition base of operations (Audi and Nvidia showed an example of this at CES 2017).

It's this level of intelligence that Ford needs if it is to accept a car capable of SAE Level 4 democratic driving. That'southward one level below the top; in Level five, cars won't even need steering wheels. With both Levels 4 and 5, the arrangement (the car and its self-driving software), are in accuse of steering, acceleration, and braking; monitoring the driving surroundings; and being the fallback (not the homo) for tricky or unanticipated situations. The i departure is total automation (Level v) works in every driving mode.

There is talk of jumping from Level ii, where some cars are today — multiple driver assist features working to together, such as adaptive prowl control, lane departure warning, and blind spot detection — straight to Level iv. The challenge is that drivers in Level 3 cars would accept to be ready to take over at any moment. As a practical matter, some will take stopped paying attention, maybe even nodded off. That's not good enough if the car all of a sudden funds itself in a curvy construction zone, where every lane shifts suddenly and the lanes are 10 not 12 feet wide, or in a blocked-lane situation.

The race to ship self-driving cars

While Ford kicks a billion dollars, Argo AI has the correct to sell its intellectual property to other automakers and suppliers. With IPO visions dancing about, it may be the startups are hungrier to get democratic driving software into cars for testing and then customer delivery in four-5 years.

Ford is non alone. General Motors acquired Prowl, another startup using artificial intelligence for autonomous driving. Besides, the Tier 1 (biggest) automotive suppliers are rolling their ain self-driving, software-plus-hardware solutions, sometimes by ownership other startups. Delphi, as mentioned, has Ottomatika.

And so there'south Apple and Google. Apple appears to have scaled back its autonomous car project, possibly to be a major supplier of parts of the autonomous car. Just it'southward found the bodily manufacturing part, where automakers have had a 100-twelvemonth caput outset, is tough to master. When several European automakers said they wouldn't build cars for Apple tree (both sides wanted the star billing), Apple downsized its ambitions. Reportedly. Apple tree notwithstanding does a good task keeping its future plans secret.

Google'south self-bulldoze project, now called Waymo, continues to move forward. Google besides reported that disengagements, meaning when the driver decides he or she needs to have over, fell from 0.8 per 1,000 miles driver to 0.2, or once every 5,000 miles.

Ford explains democratic cars as if they were people.