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TECHNOLOGY A23
Thursday 7 January 2016
Autonomous car breakthroughs featured at CES gadget show
TOM KRISHER cover the final version of its self-driving cars had bulky ficial intelligence to decide Today’s luxury cars have
AP Auto Writer Chevrolet Bolt electric car globes on the roof with how to handle the mil- about 50 computers and
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Powerful with a 200-plus-mile range. spinning Lidar sensors, cost- lions of situations a car will run more than 100 million
computers that can drive Upstart electric car maker ing around $70,000. Quan- encounter. On Monday, lines of software code,
better than people, high- Faraday Future unveiled a ergy’s Lidar eliminates the the company unveiled a more than a large pas-
definition road maps and futuristic concept race car. globe and cuts the cost to lunchbox-sized automo- senger jet. But the wiring
low-cost sensors are about Details will come later, but about $1,000 per car. Lidar tive supercomputer with in cars is already strained
to remove some big barri- and won’t transfer data
ers to self-driving cars. BMW board member Klaus Froehlich introduces the BMW i Vision Future Interaction concept car fast enough for advanced
Some breakthrough fea- during a news conference at CES Press Day at CES International, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Las safety devices. Delphi will
tures will come to your Vegas. show off a new wiring ar-
dashboard quickly, while chitecture to handle 1,000
others will take a few years. (AP Photo/John Locher) times more information,
But companies from Silicon so cars won’t be obsolete
Valley to Detroit will use the here are five areas to be works with three-dimen- the processing power of as soon as they leave the
CES gadget show in Las featured at the Las Vegas sional mapping to help 150 MacBook laptops. The dealer. The technology will
Vegas this week to dem- show: steer cars. Announcements company says Volvo will be come to Audi vehicles first
onstrate that autonomous about sophisticated map- the first automaker to work this year and handle radar
car technology is heading THE SEEING CAR ping also are expected, with the computers. Nvidia and cameras for automat-
for prime time. Radar, camera sensors and including one from Detroit- says the computers will be ic emergency braking. But
“It can happen today. a remote-sensing technol- area auto parts supplier able to see images, read it also can integrate Lidar.
The technology is more or ogy called Lidar will help Delphi. street signs, spot pedestri- Jeff Owens, Delphi chief
less ready,” said Amnon cars see their surroundings ans and process informa- technical officer, says data
Shashua, chief technical and decide what actions SENSOR FUSION tion better than humans. “It travels slowly on car net-
officer of Mobileye, an Is- to take. One of the more A self-driving car really shifts the game then works now — inadequate
raeli company that makes important announcements needs technology that can to a software-defined ve- for safety and other critical
computers to process infor- will come from Quanergy, make sense of the thou- hicle,” said Daniel Shapiro, functions. “Literally every
mation from car-mounted which will unveil low-cost sands of camera images Nvidia’s director of auto- nanosecond counts,” he
cameras that are increas- solid-state Lidar, or lasers, and data from radar and motive marketing. said.
ingly sophisticated. that can see 360 degrees Lidar. Companies such as
Legal and government regardless of weather. Early Nvidia are working on arti- THE BONES CYBER SECURITY
policy issues remain, and When benevolent hackers
computer controls haven’t took over a Jeep Chero-
quite been perfected. Still, kee through its radio last
Shashua and others say it’s year, the auto industry got
reasonable to expect cars nervous. At CES, parts mak-
to take over more driving er Visteon is among com-
tasks from humans on the panies that will show off
way to full automation in infotainment systems that
about five years. are better protected from
In addition to the building hacking attacks. Visteon
blocks of autonomous driv- CEO Sachin Lawande says
ing, at least three automak- radios today don’t even
ers are rolling out new vehi- have a minimum level of
cles at CES, which is rapidly security. His company’s ra-
becoming a showcase for dios have codes in chips
the auto industry. Volkswa- and use encryption to stop
gen will show off a battery- unauthorized applications.
powered Microbus that Yet the chips boot up in un-
could go on sale in 2017, der 10 seconds, a require-
and General Motors will un- ment in autos. q
Can you download me now? NY payphones become Wi-Fi hot spots
JENNIFER PELTZ ing, ports to charge person- that apps and web-surfing eyed the future hot spot. providing Wi-Fi from a few
Associated Press al phones and a no-cost take out of cellular data Payphones may seem like payphones in 2012, then
NEW YORK (AP) — Opera- windfall for the city. service, which is capped telecom relics when 68 hatched the current, eight-
tor, won’t you help me re- With some cities nationwide in many consumers’ plans, percent of Americans own year “LinkNYC” plan.
place this call? making renewed pushes for Jack Thomas said this week smartphones, according A consortium of compa-
A 9-foot-tall, narrow struc- public Wi-Fi after an earlier while texting near the dor- to the Pew Research Cen- nies, including wireless
ture installed this past week wave of enthusiasm faded, mant kiosk. ter on Internet, Science & technology player Qual-
on a Manhattan sidewalk New York officials say their But others have qualms Technology. comm Inc., is to pay the
is signaling a plan to turn project is democratizing about New Yorkers linking But about 8,200 payphones estimated $200 million in-
payphones into what’s data access while mod- their devices to a public still dot New York streets. stallation cost and take
billed as the world’s biggest ernizing outmoded street network as they stroll down Some were pressed into half the revenue from the
and fastest municipal Wi-Fi phones. the street, though the city service amid outages after kiosks’ digital advertising,
network. For now, the first hot spot is has said data will be en- 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, projected at $1 billion over
The first of at least 7,500 still being tested and sits un- crypted and any informa- but their numbers and us- 12 years.
planned hot spots are due der a gray cover. But some tion harvested for advertis- age have declined overall, The city gets the other half,
to go online early next passers-by like the sound of ing will be anonymized. and 37 percent of those more than doubling the
year, promising superfast what’s in store. “I think it makes us all more inspected last year were in- $17 million a year it gets
and free Wi-Fi service, new “It’s always helpful” to have vulnerable to wrongdo- operable. from payphones now.q
street phones with free call- Wi-Fi to reduce the bite ers,” Bee Mosca said as she The city experimented with
