Speaking at the LA Auto Show, which is currently taking place, Intel executive director Brian Krzhanich announced that over the next two years his company will invest $ 250 million to develop unmanned vehicles. The amount is quite impressive and it makes clear the desire of the manufacturer of computer chips to play a large role in the future of automotive industry.
However, this statement does not mean that Intel itself is going to create its own fleet of unmanned vehicles. In the end, the process of creating a car from scratch is an incredibly complex and expensive event. Intel is more interested in technologies that make cars unmanned than in the construction of these cars.
In a statement, the company points out that its investments will help "push the boundaries of a new generation of technologies for interconnection, communication, informativeness, in-depth training, security, and much more." In other words, Intel wants to become a company that will provide computing power for self-driving cars that will be assembled by automakers such as BMW. Earlier, the German automaker had already announced that it had signed an agreement with Intel and Mobileye (an Israeli company and one of the largest suppliers of electronic driver assistance systems, as well as various sensors) and said that this cooperation would enable the company to begin production of fully autonomous vehicles by 2021.
It is on the word "completely" that Intel is banking today. The current generation of cars already uses numerous technologies, which somehow allow to achieve partial autonomy. This, of course, is primarily about adaptive and dynamic cruise control, assistance systems for keeping cars within their own lanes, as well as more advanced systems like Tesla's autopilot. However, fully self-contained cars — something like Google’s cars — are a completely different level of opportunity in which you can literally call your car, get in and order it to go where you want, without being distracted from your business.
It is worth noting that Intel is not the only technology company that plans to make serious investments in unmanned vehicles. Almost every automaker and technology startup is currently working on this technology. Examples include the GPU manufacturer, NVIDIA, and the Chinese search giant Baidu. They are also working on developing a platform for self-driving cars.
The article is based on materials .
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