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Volkswagen

Volkswagen will tap into Microsoft’s cloud computing for developing self-driving software

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Volkswagen dropped the hint of developing self-driving software in the future when the company decided to use Microsoft’s Azure software back in 2018. The two companies made a deal three years ago that Volkswagen will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service and link it to the cars. And, from the announcement made on 11th February 2021, the software updates will be developed in this cloud from where they will be directly downloaded in the cars.

The technology behind developing self-driving cars has been a hot topic for quite some time now. Yesterday’s announcement was all about making it public that Microsoft’s cloud computing service will be used to streamline the software development updates for self-driving cars.

Volkswagen Position in the Automobile Industry

The two brands Audi and Porsche that are owned by Volkswagen are working on developing self-driving cars. Though these brands are under the same parent company, they are working independently to give their brands an exclusive presence. Self-driving cars are the future of the automobile industry and that future is not very far. Both Audi and Porsche are working on self-assisting driving features like adaptive cruise control. But these features will not be designed for every self-driving model of the companies.

Volkswagen
Image Source: gccbusinessnews.com

In an effort to make the designing process smooth, Volkswagen brought all these development efforts together into a subsidiary last year. The name of the subsidiary is Car. Software and this was an initiative taken by the company to establish proper coordination among all the makers. Though each company was responsible for handling its own work, design, and visual prototype, all of them needed to work on some features together as they were common for all cars, for example, obstacle detection. All these groups in spite of working within a common group used different systems for developing the software for self-driving cars.

So finally, the company decided to put all the updates on a common cloud server, and hence the deal was announced yesterday in collaboration with Microsoft. This information was given to Reuters by Dirk Hilgenberg, Chief Executive of Car. Software. Every brand will have an opportunity to examine the work of others and modify their software accordingly.

Work to be done

The deal between Microsoft and Volkwagen also included deploying software updates to the car so that any new feature can be instantly downloaded into the care system. This is one such practice that helped Tesla to move far ahead of the competition and ahead of time as well. Along with mentioning the reason why Volkswagen decided to update all new features in one place, Dirk also mentioned that “over-the-air updates are paramount: without which the company might lose the firm ground in the self-driving automobile field.

The main objective behind this entire practice of software updates for self-driving cars is that today you are hitting the road with a car with little self-driving assistance in it. But, subsequently, new features will come along and in no time you will be able to access them thus taking you one step towards a more flexible world of autonomous driving. In response to this new deal, Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Cloud and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft, said that. “That ability to start to program the vehicle in richer and richer ways, and in a safe way, transforms how the experience works.” while explaining how to receive updates in our mobile phones within very short intervals.

How Self-driving cars will change the future?

The main theory behind building a self-driving car is to design sensors that can track all objects around the car and embedding the technology on how to react if it is about to bump into one. But, it is easier said than done. The idea of self-driving technology is keeping almost every leading car company out there. But, with the pace of advancement taking place, the ones who won’t be able to keep up with this drastic change will face severe business problems. At the same time, experts predict that with the amount of brainstorming put into developing self-driving car technology, the next decade might bring enormous opportunities for automakers and technology developers. Evolution is the only means to survive whether they are mankind or machines.

Anthony Levandowski

Anthony Levandowski Admits to Having Stolen from Google

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Former Google employee and a pioneer of the self-driving car concept, Anthony Levandowski, yesterday pled guilty to stealing trade secrets from Google. He had left the tech giant in 2016, with dreams to start his self-driving truck manufacturing company, which Uber went on to acquire for $680 million. This led to Google’s division for self-driving automobiles, Waymo to sue Uber for using its technology. The lawsuit was finally settled in February, with Uber having to pay Waymo $245 million. Here’s a look at how the saga unfolded and what impact it can have on the industry, and both companies involved.

Indictment and Trial

The prosecutors chose to indict Levandowski last year, in August for 33 counts involving theft, theft of trade secrets and attempted theft from Google. All these allegations are said to have happened when he decided to leave the tech giant way back in 2015. While he had denied these allegations for a long time, Levandowski finally pleaded guilty to the charge that accuses him of trade secret theft. The Federal deal, as per reports, will lead to the other charges against being dropped, thanks to his confession. As per the US District Court of California, this plea carries a sentence that could lead up to 10 years in prison with a fine of $250,000.

Trial till Now

Levandowski said in his plea that he had downloaded the files in question intending to use them personal benefit, knowing fully well that he had no right to do so. However, no date has been set for sentencing him yet. At the beginning of March, the court had ordered him to pay Google $179 million for unlawfully terminating his contract with them. A couple of hours after this sentence was finalized on Wednesday, he filed for bankruptcy protection, under Chapter 11. Once the arbitration panel ruled that he owed Google $179 million, he filed for bankruptcy while in September, a lawyer had said he owned assets worth $72 million.

The case Waymo filed against Uber focused on lidar, which is a laser scanning technology that helps vehicles maintain their autonomy. However, Levandowski pleaded guilty to stealing a weekly update regarding the project. This document is said to have contained information regarding quarterly goals, metrics, technical challenges and recommendations on how to overcome challenges. Him pleading guilty has prevented him from now seeking a trial to appeal for conviction. He has also admitted that he downloaded around 14,000 files from the Google server to his laptop.

In 2018, Levandowski had announced that he had founded a new company called Pronto to focus on computer vision rather than lidar. However, when he was indicted on several criminal charges by the prosecutors, he had no choice but to leave this company.

Fall from Grace

Levandowski was once a heavily lauded engineer who had headed Google’s self-driving automobile division, earning it a lot of praise and recognition. Levandowski had been a significant player in the field of AVs since his early 20s, by entering the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge. He then helped Google set up their AV team in 2009, growing within that team and even heading it at one point. However, by 2015, he had been removed from his position of ultimate power, due to power struggles with teammate Chris Urmson, which led to him quitting.

Shortly before leaving the giant, he stole highly confidential documents which contained crucial information regarding the project. Most prosecutors agree that the plea will warrant a sentence which will put him behind bars for around 24 to 30 months. The charges were levelled against him because right after he left Google, he founded his own company Otto which focused on self-driving trucks. It was this company that Uber acquired for $680 million. Waymo sued Uber in 2017, alleging that Uber bought Otto to gain access to their confidential records which Levandowski had stolen. In the 2018 settlement, Uber agreed to pay Waymo $245 million. However, while handling the case, the judge advised the prosecutors to file a criminal lawsuit against Levandowski for theft, leading to his indictment in August last year. The trial for these was to happen in January 2021, with Levandowski planning to plead innocent. Yesterday evening, he stated that while he was planning of fighting against the case, he decided it wasn’t worth it. He also said that he hopes to put all this behind him and move on.

George Hotz : The First Person to Unlock the iPhone & the Founder of AI Startup comma.ai

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iPhone indeed is the most loved smartphone and was one of the first keyboard-less mobile phones available in the market. iPhone is not only known for its unique features, but also for the high security it provides to its users. But there was a 17 years old hacker, George Hotz, from New Jersey, who unlocked the newly launched iPhone, allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers and became the first person to do so. He is not only a famous hacker but has also founded his vehicle automation machine learning company named comma.ai. Also known as Geohotz, even having hacked major security programs, Hotz has always said that he never support hacking into someone else’s server and stealing databases of user information.

Early Life

Hotz was born on 2 October 1989 in Glen Rock, New Jersey, as George Francis Hotz Jr. He completed his high school from Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, New Jersey and attended the Academy for Engineering and Design Technology. Hotz also attended the Rochester Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University for a brief time.

Being a brilliant student and always ahead in every competition in science and technology in middle and high school, he even won the $15,000 scholarship at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2007.

Hacking Career

Hotz was always interested in programming and had developed his interest in hacking. In August 2007, only after two months of the launch of the iPhone, Hotz was able to unlock the iPhone. After doing so, he became the first person to unlock an iPhone. Also in 2009, he released a jailbreaking tool for the iPhone 3GS on iPhone OS 3.0. Though in 2010, he discontinued the jailbreaking software.

George Hotz
Image Source: spectrum.ieee.org

In December 2009, he started working on a new program to breach security on the Sony PlayStation 3. by January 2010, he was able to create a thesis on the hack, but soon in July 2010, he abandoned the idea of entering the security of PS3. But another hacking group fail0verflow also started working on the same, generating the root signing and encryption keys for PS3.

Hotz too published those root signing and encryption keys over his website that led to a serious lawsuit from Sony for both Hotz and fail0verflow. After many court sessions, Sony and Hotz settled the matter outside the court on the condition that Hotz will never try to do any hacking work on Sony products.

Career with Facebook and Google

Hacking had always been his hobby, and his early achievements and knowledge of security algorithms landed Hotz a job with Facebook in 2011 for an unknown role.

Later in July 2014, Google hired Hotz to work with its security auditing team on Project Zero. He stayed in the team for five months and developed an open source program, for dynamically analysing application binaries, named Qira.

In January 2015, he joined Vicarious.com where he worked for 7 months and developed AI algorithms for the company.

Founding Comma.AI

In September 2015, Hotz founded comma.ai, that works on building AI based vehicular automation technology. In 2016, the company built a working self-driving Acura ILX. Later, the company started working on Comma One, a $1,000 software kit that could allow some cars to operate semi-autonomously. But after receiving a special order from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the further production of the software was cancelled.

During the same time, he was also in talks with Elon Musk to sell his autonomous software for Tesla cars, but the talks never met any conclusion.

On 30 November 2016, the company open sourced its self-driving car software. The open source driving agent from the company runs on some of the car models from companies like Honda, Toyota, and GM, making those models semi-autonomous. Reportedly in 2018, the company served over 4,500 drivers.

Personal Life

Hotz aka Geohotz has been always a keen learner for AI and software development. In 2004 he participated in the ISEF competition in Portland where he demonstrated “The Mapping Robot”. He was among the finalists and got featured on the Today Show and Larry King. He also developed another project named The Googler in 2005 and participated in the ISEF competition with the project, here too, he was one of the finalists.

In 2008, he was among the top 10 Overachievers under 21 listed in the March edition of PC World magazine. In 2014 he won the DEF CON CTF tournament for the second time in a row.

On 14 September 2018, Hotz stepped down from the post of the CEO of the company and became the Head of Research Team.

Aren’t we ready for self-driving cars?

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Letting an AI control your car while you are chilling in the back seat or making last moment changes in the final presentation sounds really great in every sense. Even better, who doesn’t want a quick nap in the rides back home after a tiring day at office. A bit scary! Believe it or not, but that’s how we are going to travel in near future. Autonomous driving or self-driving is the next big thing and with some successful implementations already on the road, it’s no more a sci-fi dream. Every auto manufacturer and tech firms like Google, Uber are working for a piece of the pie.

Few months back in last year, Uber launched its first fleet of self-driving Volvo XC90s in Pittsburgh. You could almost hear the auto industry’s collective jaw drop after that. Suddenly, a company providing taxi service was offering a vision of future autonomous transportation.

Following its almost perfect execution in Pittsburgh, Uber decided to expand its territory of self-driving taxis to Arizona. And that’s where things went wrong. On 24th March, one of the Uber’s self-driving car got involved in an accident in Tempe, Arizona. The news spread like wildfire accompanied by an image showing one of the Uber’s Volvo flipped on one side and a dented Honda CV-R. The authenticity of news and image was confirmed by an Uber spokesperson.

“We saw the [Honda] car, it was coming fine on her end, but the other person just wanted to beat the light and kept going,” a witness wrote in the police report. “All I want to say is it was good on the end of the [Honda] driving toward us, it was the other driver’s fault [Uber] for trying to beat the light and hitting the gas so hard.”

Was it actually the car’s fault? Surprisingly, no! It performed in the way it was programmed for the situation. It was cruising at 38mph as it should do over a Yellow signal when Honda’s driver decided to take a turn 3 lanes across shielded by a fleet of cars in 2 of the lanes blocking the sensors of Uber taxi. Although the Uber employ behind the wheels saw the car in last moments, but it was too late and the collision took place.

The whole incident raises an interesting thought: a real driver might have approached the yellow light differently seeing someone troubling with directions. He might have slowed down, way before, seeing a crowded road.

Joshua Brown was killed last year when his Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode collided with a truck. Although Tesla came out clean showing it was more of Brown’s fault for not using brakes although he had 7 seconds to do so. Probably, he grew confident about Autopilot’s ability.

That’s the problem here, the self-driving technology is not yet completely developed. At present, it’s more of an assistance than a completely reliable alternative to manual driving. But the major question still remains; will a computer ever be able to completely replace a seasoned driver?