Permit was granted it May as the company looks for better
bad weather driving
SAMSUNG IS the latest company to get the go-ahead to test
self-driving cars in California.
The company is focusing on technology with an algorithm
specific to navigating safely in adverse weather conditions.
Despite this, the company says it has no ambitions towards
the car market. More likely it will be looking at the value of its components
for wholesale to the growing number of autonomous driving manufacturers.
This may take the form of an in-car driving experience to
rival the likes of Android Auto, leveraging its recent purchase of Harman, manufacturers
of audio for a wide variety of use cases.
The roads of California are becoming more clogged with
experimental self-driving cars. As well as Waymo, the offshoot of
Google/Alphabet, there’s Uber, currently under threat of legal action over espionage
from Waymo and most recently Apple finally outed its intentions in the
connected car space.
Then there’s the car manufacturers themselves of course, may
working with the likes of Nvidia on their own version of the technology.
The company told Reuters it wanted to act “in pursuit of a
smarter, safer transportation future.”
One thing that Samsung will be keen to capitalise on is
Bixby, the company’ AI assistant, which thanks to endless issues with understanding
English, rather than Korean, is now languishing way behind Alexa, Siri and
Google.
It is thought that the Samsung Galaxy S9 will premiere as
early as January, as it seems that the fight for flagship devices is moving
towards the fight for complete ecosystems.
We’re still a long way from fully autonomous roads in any
case. Aside from the lack of clarity over whether or not there needs to be a
driver to take over, technical problems continue.
There’s not that many crashes to speak of, but both Tesla
and Land Rover have had their cars hacked, while Volvo’s currently testing in
Australia are having trouble recognising kangaroos.
