Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Saturday 3 November 2018

Google spinoff to test truly driverless cars in California

in the Phoenix area by the that has repeatedly raised
end of this year. doubts about the safety of
But California has a much self-driving cars.
larger population and far Those concerns escalated
more congestion than Ari- in March after fatal colli-
zona, making it even more sion involving a self-driving
challenging place for ro- car being tested by the
botic cars to get around. leading ride-hailing service,
Waymo is moving into its Uber. In that incident, an
next phase in California Uber self-driving car with a
cautiously. To start, the fully human safety driver struck
autonomous cars will only and killed a pedestrian
give rides to Waymo’s em- crossing a darkened street
ployees and confine their in a Phoenix suburb.
routes to roads in its home Waymo’s cars with safety
town of Mountain View, drivers have been involved
California, and four neigh- in dozens of accidents in
boring Silicon Valley cities California, but those have
— Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los mostly been minor fender
Altos Hills, and Palo Alto. benders at low speeds.
If all goes well, Waymo will All told, Waymo says its
then seek volunteers who self-driving cars have col-
In this Dec. 13, 2016, file photo, a skylight is reflected in the rear window of a Waymo driverless want to be transported in lectively logged more than
car during a Google event in San Francisco. fully autonomous vehicles, 10 million miles in 25 cities
Associated Press similar to its early rider pro- in a handful of states while
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE traveled millions of miles engineer still must monitor gram in Arizona . That then in autonomous mode, al-
AP Technology Writer on the state’s roads since the fully autonomous cars could lead to a ride-hailing though most of those trips
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Waymo began as a secre- from a remote location service like the one Waymo have occurred with safety
The robotic car compa- tive project within Google and be able to steer and envisions in Arizona. drivers. Waymo contends
ny created by Google is nearly a decade ago. But stop the vehicles if some- But Waymo’s critics are not its robotic vehicles will save
poised to attempt a major a backup driver had been thing goes wrong. convinced there is enough lives because so many
technological leap in Cali- required to be behind the California, however, won’t evidence that the fully au- crashes are caused by hu-
fornia, where its vehicles will wheel until new regulations be the first state to have tonomous cars can be trust- man motorists who are in-
hit the roads without a hu- in April set the stage for the Waymo’s fully autonomous ed to be driving through toxicated, distracted or just
man on hand to take con- transition to true autonomy. cars on its streets. Waymo neighborhoods without bad drivers.
trol in emergencies. Waymo is the first among has been giving rides to a humans behind the wheel. “If a Waymo vehicle comes
The regulatory approval dozens of companies test- group of volunteer passen- “This will allow Waymo to across a situation it doesn’t
announced Tuesday allows ing self-driving cars in Cali- gers in Arizona in driverless test its robotic cars using understand, it does what
Waymo’s driverless cars to fornia to persuade state cars since last year. It has people as human guinea any good driver would do:
cruise through California at regulators its technology pledged to deploy its fleet pigs,” said John Simpson, comes to a safe stop until
speeds up to 65 miles per is safe enough to permit of fully autonomous vans privacy and technology it does understand how to
hour. them on the roads without in Arizona in a ride-hailing project director for Con- proceed,” the company
The self-driving cars have a safety driver in them. An service open to all comers sumer Watchdog, a group said Tuesday.q

IBM’s $34B Red Hat deal is risky bid to boost cloud business

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN accounted for nearly a Ives said there’s still plenty
and MATT O’BRIEN quarter of IBM’s total rev- of room for growth as fi-
Associated Press enue over the past year. nancial services, retailers
IBM’s plan to buy Red Hat But the company has and industrial firms increas-
is both the biggest acquisi- been overshadowed by ingly migrate their work-
tion in IBM’s century-long top cloud rivals Amazon, loads into the cloud.
history and a risky effort to Microsoft and Google in IBM’s Red Hat acquisition
position itself as a major competing to sell its inter- follows Microsoft’s recently
player in cloud comput- net-based computing ser- completed $7.5 billion pur-
ing. The $34 billion stock vices to businesses. chase of computer cod-
deal translates to $190 “This is about resetting the ing hangout GitHub. Both
per Red Hat share — a 63 cloud landscape,” IBM deals will allow the larger
percent premium to the Chairman and CEO Virgin- companies to tap into a
closing price Friday for the This undated photo provided by IBM shows IBM Chairman and ia Rometty said Monday in broader community of
Raleigh, North Carolina, CEO Virginia Rometty, right, and Red Hat president and CEO Jim a conference call. open-source software de-
company. Red Hat Inc.’s Whitehurst. The hybrid cloud — when velopers. Red Hat, found-
stock soared about 45 per- Associated Press companies use a mix of ed in 1993, has built a soft-
cent in trading Monday. Hat over the weekend. tially forward,” Wedbush on-site, private and third- ware platform using the
The path for revitaliza- “It’s a big bet but ultimate- analyst Daniel Ives said. party public services — is open-source Linux operat-
tion for IBM may be found ly they’re in a situation Cloud computing, in an emerging $1 trillion op- ing system that’s become
in cloud technology, a where they needed to which services are de- portunity that the compa- “one of the key paths for
driving force behind the make a significant acquisi- livered over the internet nies want to be prepared enterprises in their moves
blockbuster deal for Red tion to move them poten- from remote computers, for, Rometty said. to the cloud,” Ives said.q