Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant, and Hyundai Mobis, a global manufacturer of automotive components, have agreed to jointly develop control systems for Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles.
In the first phase, according to the memorandum of understanding announced yesterday, the partnership will focus on “developing a driverless prototype vehicle based on standard Hyundai or Kia production model cars.”
In futher steps, Yandex and Hyundai Mobis plan to “build a new autonomous driving control system as an out-of-the-box solution intended for car manufacturers, car sharing services and taxi fleets.”
The partnership may expand into other areas, as Hyundai Mobis is interested in Yandex technologies including speech, navigation and mapping, in its own products. The company is developing its own driverless vehicle, M. BILLY.
Tests in Russia, Israel and the USA
Yandex’s unmanned car was unveiled in May 2017. The 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 vehicle’s ability to ‘make decisions’ in complex environments, such as busy city traffic,” the company explained at that time.
The “fully-fledged autopilot functionality” of this car is described as Level 5, according to the international classification system for automated vehicles. (In this system, Level 0 means that a person has full control over the vehicle, and Level 5 involves no human intervention.)
In November 2017, these self-driving vehicles were unleashed on the snow-covered roads of the Moscow region. 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.
The robotaxi service now operates in Skolkovo and Innopolis, two Russian tech hubs on the outskirts of Kazan and Moscow, respectively.
The self-driving vehicle has also been tested in Israel in late 2018 and demonstrated at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (See more detailed information on Yandex’s self-driving cars on the company’s blog.)
