Israeli tech company debuts incredible footage at CES of self-driving car navigating heavy traffic and maze-like streets in Jerusalem
- Mobileye shared an impressive demo of its newest self-driving car technology
- The car uses 12 cameras to generate a live 3D model of the road to help it drive
- The video shows a variety of major traffic obstacles, including roundabouts, construction zones, blind turns, and more
An Israeli tech firm focused on autonomous driving systems shared an impressive new video of one of its vehicles navigating the cramped and crowded streets of Jerusalem.
The Ford sedan called Autonomous Driving Test Vehicle is shown navigating an amazing array of obstacles, including ‘roundabouts, unprotected turns, narrow streets, close maneuvers, lots of pedestrians, and pretty much anything you can think of.’
The car was developed by Mobileye, a recent Intel acquisition that develops a wide range of mobility devices and software for motor vehicles.
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Mobileye’s impressive new Autonomous Driving Test Vehicle (pictured above), was able to navigate a wide variety of traffic complications in Jerusalem
Unlike many other self-driving cars, the Mobileye vehicle doesn’t use any LIDAR or RADAR sensors and instead creates a detailed three-dimensional map of its surroundings using 12 different video cameras mounted on the car body.
The camera feeds are analyzed by software running on two of the company’s proprietary EyeQ 5 chips, according to a report by The Verge.
The chips render a live 3D simulation of the environment on a dashboard screen that lets passengers see what the computer sees, or thinks it’s seeing.
The journey shows the car easily navigating through a number of unexpected obstacles and traffic events, including a parked car pulling out in front of it and a construction zone where two way traffic is forced to take turns passing through a narrowed road.
The car is also shown navigating through a multi-vehicle backup on a residential block where someone had double parked, blocking one of the lanes.
Even with all the obstacles, Mobileye’s autonomous car finished the trip in just under 21 minutes, quite a bit faster than the original 25-minute estimate.
Previously, the company’s self-driving cars have traveled from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv and back again, though that circuit, a roughly 80-mile roundtrip, was comparatively less complicated highway driving.
The company says it’s working on a future driving system that will incorporate both RADAR and LIDAR systems, which will be used independently to generate their own isolated environmental models.
The car’s navigation systems will compare those separate models against the model generated by the video cameras to get an even more accurate sense of space.
Mobileye’s current self-driving vehicle uses nothing but cameras, 12 of them, to create a live digital model of its environment