Intel-owned Mobileye announced that it has successfully run three autonomous vehicle tests in New York City, North America’s busiest city.
The test is a crucial step in Mobileye’s plans to commercialize its autonomous technology, because of New York‘s rich variety of scenarios and high density of vehicles. If an autonomous vehicle can make it in New York, the company’s reasoning goes, it can make it anywhere.
The company ran two daytime tests and one nighttime test in the city using its camera-first approach to drive alongside cabs, buses, horse-drawn carriages, cyclists, and jaywalkers. Mobileye‘s AV technology primarily uses computer vision to navigate, only using LiDAR/radar and mapping subsystems for redundancy’s sake.
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With 15 tunnels and 21 bridges, New York posed a particular challenge for Mobileye’s car, since “narrow lanes framed with bollards or cones [are] the Achilles heel of many an AV,” per the company.
In a press conference, Mobileye‘s CEO Amnon Shashua said that “it’s really a huge headache to test here in New York City,” according to Reuters. But despite that, the company reports that all tests were successful.
Mobileye is currently the only company testing autonomous vehicles in New York City. GM’s subsidiary, Cruise, had received a testing permit in 2017 but ended up abandoning its plans to test in the city after its mayor, Bill de Blasio, expressed safety concerns.
To show off its autonomous technology, Mobileye released an unedited 40-minute video of its test car driving around the Big Apple.