WMG at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, Aurrigo and Milton Keynes council have conducted research that has made the concept of swarming autonomous pods a reality.  Researchers envision a scenario where passengers would be able to use an app to hail a pod, and if they are traveling in a group, they could hail a platoon of pods. Designed for pedestrian areas and shared spaces to enable first and last mile service, the pods have been equipped with swarming skills typically used by birds and insects.

Aptiv’s self-driving vehicles have been selected to pick up and drop off a select group of passengers at the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Described as the “first-of-its-kind airport access to autonomous vehicles,” this access will help Aptiv in its development of a production-ready Level 4 autonomous driving platform in 2022, the company says. Aptiv adds that this access will also help it and McCarran learn more about the utilization and deployment of robotaxis, and how they can be used to make ground transportation in and out of the airport more efficient.

With a goal of giving automakers the ability to deliver “unprecedented vehicle safety,” FLIR Systems Inc. has partnered with ANSYS to deliver “superior hazard detection capabilities” for assisted driving and autonomous vehicles (AVs). FLIR says that it will equip ANSYS’ leading-edge driving simulator with a fully physics-based thermal sensor to facilitate the modeling, testing and validation of thermal camera designs within an “ultra-realistic virtual world.” By optimizing thermal camera placement for use with various tools such as automatic emergency braking (AEB), pedestrian detection, and within future AVs, the new platform is expected to reduce the development time of original equipment manufacturers, the companies say.

Self-driving truck technology company Plus.ai has announced that it successfully completed the first coast-to-coast commercial freight run with an autonomous truck on behalf of Land O’Lakes Inc. Considered the first L4 U.S. cross-country commercial pilot, the hub-to-hub trip covered 2,800 miles from Tulare, California to Quakertown, Pennsylvania in less than three days, hauling a fully-loaded refrigerated trailer of perishable cargo.