Watch Drive.ai's car drive itself on a dark, rainy night
In this video, Drive.ai shows how its sophisticated self-driving technology handles a dark, rainy night in a suburban neighborhood.
Solving self-driving means taking into account not only cars, pedestrians and bicycles on the roads, but also the wide range of weather conditions that human drivers deal with every day. Start-up Drive.ai aims to demonstrate that its self-driving technology works well enough to handle a dark, rainy night in this newly released video.
The video, shot from inside the car's cabin, shows how it handles driving through a suburban neighborhood in Mountain View, California. The car appears to maintain its lane position and take turns while negotiating stop lights and other traffic, with the added wrinkle of a dark, rainy night. The video has been sped up in order to show a longer drive time in under 4 minutes.
That rain means wet roads and a more reflective road surface, which seems likely to throw off some of the car's sensors. A display on the car's console shows its sensor imagery, including lidar data.
This video follows one released the previous week by GM's Cruze Automation. In that earlier video, a Chevrolet Bolt fitted with Cruze Automation technology takes a drive through San Francisco on a sunny day, successfully dealing with traffic, traffic signals and even a double-parked truck.
Both videos show how far self-driving technology has come, and its great promise for the future.