Unmanned vehicles were unleashed on the snow-covered roads of the Moscow Region earlier this month “for the first time in history,” claims Yandex.Taxi, the taxi hailing service of the Russian Internet search company, which held the experiment.
Yandex.Taxi wanted to check how their automatic cars fare during the winter when snow can obscure road markings, making it hard for the vehicle’s cameras to navigate.
Yandex used two Toyota Prius cars and according to company employees it’s still early days regarding the testing process – more research is needed. Eventually, the company hopes to roll out a fleet of driverless taxis.
“We need to cope with all kinds of challenges if we want our automatic cars to become a mass product. Right now, we’re working on it,” a company representative told TJournal.
The Russian taxi company unveiled the prototype of its autonomous car project in June of this year, touting it as “a step towards a comprehensive set of driverless technologies for application across a wide range of industries.”
The driverless car incorporates Yandex’s own technologies, such as mapping, real-time navigation, computer vision and object recognition. The company’s proprietary computing algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning “ensure the self-driving vehicle’s ability to ‘make decisions’ in complex environments, such as busy city traffic,” the company explained.
Yandex.Taxi is in the process of merging its activities in Russia and neighboring countries with Uber, as part of a transaction which has just been approved by the Russian antimonopoly authority.
This story is partly based on an article which first appeared in Russia Beyond The Headlines, a partner of EWDN.
