The auto industry is intensely competitive, but when faced with great technical challenges, automakers do sometimes work together. GM and Ford, for instance, have jointly developed a 10-speed automatic transmission, several firms are working together to develop hydrogen fuel-cell technology, and now a large group of companies is joining forces to research today’s most-intense technological push: Autonomous vehicles.
As reported by Automotive News, Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen, together with suppliers Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Panasonic, have all joined a program called DeepDrive to fund research at the University of California at Berkeley to apply artificial intelligence to development of autonomous cars.
The buy-in is $300,000 and, according to Berkeley professor Trevor Darrell who heads the initiative, “They’ve essentially pre-negotiated access to [the] software.” According to the report, that means they’re free to use the research results for commercial purposes without having to pay to license it.
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Automakers and their suppliers are keen to participate in the autonomous-driving revolution, and not be left behind by Silicon Valley?particularly Google with its much-publicized fleet of autonomous test cars. G...