Odds and Ends 

Self-driving car engineer Anthony Levandowski files motion to force Uber into arbitration

Anthony Levandowski, the star self-driving car engineer who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit, has filed a motion to compel Uber into arbitration in the hopes that his former employee will have to shoulder the cost of at least part of the $179 million judgment against him. The motion to compel arbitration filed this week is part of Levandowski’s bankruptcy proceedings. It’s the latest chapter in a long and winding legal saga that has entangled Uber and Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that is now a…

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Headlines 

A Safety Board Faults Tesla and Regulators in a Fatal 2018 Crash

A federal watchdog panel ripped into Tesla and the federal agency that regulates it on Tuesday after concluding an investigation into a fatal 2018 crash involving the carmaker’s driving assistance feature, Autopilot. The investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that Tesla hasn’t done enough to prevent drivers’ misuse of Autopilot, which Tesla says can “drive” on highways in some situations but must always be monitored by those behind the wheel. The probe also concluded that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s hands-off, voluntary approach to regulating new vehicle…

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Headlines 

Snow and Ice Pose a Vexing Obstacle for Self-Driving Cars

In late 2018, Steven Waslander, a professor at the University of Toronto, compiled a data set of images from snowy and rainy Canadian roads. It includes footage of foggy camera views, blizzard conditions, and cars sliding around, captured over two winters. The individual frames are annotated so that a machine can interpret what the scene conveys. Autonomous driving systems typically use annotated images to inform algorithms that track a car's position and plan its route. The Canadian data should help researchers develop and test algorithms against challenging conditions. But the…

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Odds and Ends 

Discount student tickets available for TC Sessions: Mobility 2020

“Revolutionary” may be an over-used adjective, but how else to describe the rapid evolution in mobility technology? Join us in San Jose, Calif., on May 14 for TC Sessions: Mobility 2020. Our second annual day-long conference cuts through the hype and explores the current and future state of the technology and its social, regulatory and economic impact. If you’re a student with a passion for mobility and transportation tech, listen up. We can’t talk about the future if we’re not willing to invest in the next generation of mobility visionaries.…

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