Watch PAVE Members in Action

We at PAVE love to partner with our members to host vehicle demonstration events, which give the public an opportunity to ride in an autonomous vehicle and learn about the technology firsthand. These events prove that there’s no better way to get past anxieties and misconceptions of AV technology than personal experience riding in a self-driving vehicle. 

Since we can’t get a chance to go for a ride with everyone, we want to share some amazing videos our members have made that provide a glimpse of what it’s like to ride in an AV. Some of this footage takes you on a ride in an AV and some provides an up-close look at the technology involved. 

Come along for a ride….

AImotive

AImotive takes us for a ride in the domain where every AV developer first starts: simulation.  These simulators don’t just build worlds with accurate physics; they create intelligent traffic, model real-world sensors and much more. Watch more AImotive videos here.

Algolux

Algolux takes us on a night ride to show off their robust perception capabilities in low-light conditions. The rectangles around objects are called “bounding boxes;” the colors show the categories of objects with labels for precise classification. Watch more Algolux videos here.

Argo

In this video, Argo AI explains the step between perception and path planning: prediction. In busy downtown Pittsburgh, Argo shows how it runs up to ten predictions each second to tell the car where people and things are… and where they WILL be. Watch more Argo videos here.

Aurora

This video from Aurora shows off some of the tricky situations its system can handle. Notice how engaged their test operators are throughout the drive: having two well-trained professionals in the vehicle is an important safety measure.

AutoX

This video from AutoX provides an opportunity to compare a Chinese AV with those in the U.S., with this look at how its new AV fleet service operates in Shenzhen. From the user experience to road conditions, there’s a lot to take in here

Carmera

Carmera provides a critical piece of the automated driving puzzle: the map layer, which it builds from cameras placed on fleet vehicles. In this video, we get a look at a mapping vehicle and Carmera’s backend dashboard. Watch more Carmera videos here.

Cruise

Cruise uses the busy streets of downtown San Francisco to test its vehicles, which seek to safely handle any and all conditions. This video compresses 75 minutes of autonomous driving into 25 minutes – with interesting commentary from Cruise’s Kyle Vogt. Watch more Cruise videos here.

Daimler

Daimler is working on a wide variety of driving automation applications for big-rig semi trucks, from driver assistance to the SAE Level 4 autonomous driving shown here. Think about some of the unique challenges that are presented by this vehicle class and operating domain as you watch this Freightliner Cascadia drive itself on scenic freeways. Watch more Daimler videos here.

Dataspeed

Dataspeed is one of the companies that PAVE and others partnered with to offer AV rides to the public, and we can’t wait to get back out there with them. This video shows another demo opportunity for first-time riders, from a 2019 SAE Demo Day, where Dataspeed gave more than 1,000 people an early opportunity to ride autonomously. Watch more Dataspeed videos here.

Deepen AI

We head back inside the perception stack for this video from PAVE member Deepen, who provides multi-sensor data labeling tools to power the AI that allows AVs to get around. Showing both the real-world camera view and sensor-generated “point clouds,” this video shows instance and semantic segmentation from a variety of viewpoints. This shows how AI turns a host of data points into meaning in real time, taking you inside the “magic” of an autonomous driving stack. Watch more Deepen videos here.

DeepMap

Rather than a single ride, this video from DeepMap is a “highlight reel” from the mapping company’s last year of work and a fantastic view inside machine-readable maps. Seamlessly blending real-world visual imagery with the critical road data that AVs need, this video provides a vivid illustration of how maps are so much more than just navigation aids for self-driving vehicles. Whether localizing the vehicle in bad weather or helping negotiate a complex intersection, you can see how critical a good map is to any autonomous driving system. Watch more DeepMap videos here.

FLIR

This video from FLIR shows how they use thermal imaging in the automated driving space to improve the safety of AVs and ADAS in low light and bad weather — this technology can enhance detection, classification, and just about any perception task. 

Watch more FLIR videos here.

Ford

As Ford works toward its upcoming AV deployment in Miami, in partnership with Argo AI, it has started to show off the vehicle that will make this critical first step happen: its fourth-generation self-driving test vehicle. Based on the popular Escape Hybrid crossover, this advanced AV is bristling with sensors, redundant actuators and a bunch of other things that you won’t find on just any Ford Escape. Ride along on the latest Ford-Argo collab and learn more about how it works in this introduction video. Watch more Ford videos here.

Gatik

PAVE member Gatik is pursuing an electric, autonomous solution for what’s called the “middle mile” of logistics: bringing goods from “hub” warehouses to “spoke” distribution centers. This video from Gatik’s first pilot program with WalMart, near the retailer’s Arkansas headquarters, provides a general sense of its electric trucks, autonomous drive system and unique use case. We’ll be keeping an eye out for more videos from this fascinating company, as its progress continues.

General Motors

General Motors is committed to both an autonomous, electric future and, as this video shows, the STEM education we’ll need to get there. Using its Cruise division’s Chevy Bolt test vehicles as an educational tool, GM’s autonomous engineering manager explains how an AV’s perception stack perceives the world around it in this video. Watch more GM videos here.

Humanising Autonomy

Humanising Autonomy’s mission is well-communicated in both the company’s name and this video from 2018. Highlighting the complex and random environments that dense human cities present, Humanising Autonomy shows how it hopes to bring real insights into human behavior to the AI inside automated driving systems. Only by understanding humans and humanity can AVs hope to successfully navigate the very human worlds that they occupy. Watch more Humanising Autonomy videos here.

Kodiak

Next up we have another lengthy, unedited (besides being sped up 10x for obvious reasons!) video, this time from the autonomous trucking company Kodiak Robotics. Depicting a real 829 mile autonomous delivery with zero disengagements, this 13 hour journey is still more than an hour long at 10x speed. Watch as day turns to night, the Kodiak truck arrives at its destination in Houston, Texas and then returns to Dallas, all under the watchful eye of a safety operator. Watch more Kodiak videos here.

!important

AVs may not feel the same stress you do driving through a busy, pedestrian-filled area but high-volume pedestrian traffic is one of the greatest safety challenges a self-driving vehicles will ever face. But if those pedestrians are using Important Safety Technologies’ free app, which turns their smartphones into safety beacons, an AV will always where they are… even if it can’t actually “see” them. You can find more videos from Important here.

Mobileye

If you just want to watch raw, unedited footage of an AV navigating public roads, and you want to spend hours learning from it, Mobileye has you covered. This hour-long video is just that: pure, uncut footage of the exterior, interior and system visualization of a Mobileye AV driving in and around Munich. Just keep in mind as you watch: this was recorded just two weeks after Mobileye started testing in Munich! Watch more (lengthy, unedited) Mobileye videos here.

INRIX

Parking is the part of driving that nobody thinks about, probably because it’s usually just a hassle. But thanks to INRIX’s access to massive amounts of data, they’ve enabled a parking experience that makes the end of your journey little more than an afterthought. Find out about this end-to-end parking solution by watching this video, and find more videos from INRIX here.

May Mobility

Founded in Ann Arbor by a University of Michigan professor (among others), May Mobility is one of Michigan’s hometown heroes in the autonomous driving technology space. In this video, May celebrates the return of its low-speed self-driving shuttles to Grand Rapids Michigan in early 2020, outfitted with a variety of new features to keep rides safe during the pandemic. If you’re curious about how AV companies have responded to COVID-19, particularly in terms of shared ride applications, you’ll want to check this out. Watch more May Mobility videos here.

Navya

Autonomous vehicles aren’t just for the open road, and until the technology is fully developed, a lot of the early AVs will operate in closed conditions like this NAVYA shuttle. This video introduces us to the French AV developer’s driverless deployment at the National Sport Shooting Center in Châteauroux, France, where NAVYA’s shuttle ferries visitors around the sprawling site. Watch more NAVYA videos here.

Nuro

Nuro’s autonomous delivery vehicle is a unique AV for one simple reason: it never has a human on board. Designed to be not just driverless but occupantless as well, the Nuro R2 is designed to bring groceries and other goods to you instead of the other way around. Of course, this means that its developers needed to have a high level of confidence in its safety before this public road test video was launched, since there’s no steering wheel or human to grab it if things go wrong. Watch more Nuro videos here.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA’s hardware and software powers many autonomous driving systems in a wide variety of functions across the stack, so this video is a great way to get a better sense of how all the different parts of an automated driving system work. Filmed on public roads near the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, this video brings together real-world footage, the system view and functionality, and expert insight from Neda Cvijetic of the NVIDIA DRIVE Lab. Watch more NVIDIA videos here (and try saying that five times fast!).

Perceptive Automata

Perceptive Automata brings behavioral psychology together with machine learning to create powerful insights into human behavior, with the goal of improving the safety of autonomous systems. This video shows how these capabilities are being applied to one of the hottest spaces in autonomous driving: big-rig semi trucks, where the startup is collaborating with Volvo Trucks North America. Find out how Perceptive’s unique technology will help you feel safer the first time you see an autonomous semi truck in the real world. Watch more Perceptive Automata videos here.

Plus

With so much focus on robotaxis, it’s easy to forget that AVs might first impact your world in ways you don’t actually see as a consumer. Autonomous trucking is one great example of this, and in this video Plus AI casts light on its self-driving semi trucks, the routes they are training for, and some of the challenges they face on the open road. Ride along and learn how your next delivery might make its way toward your door in a real-life robot truck. Watch more videos by Plus AI here.

Pony AI

Pony.AI has been testing its self-driving technology on public roads from California to China since 2017, so its sensors have seen a thing or two. In this video, Pony brings together some interesting road scenarios and shows how its autonomous driving system handles them. Be sure to watch both the camera view and the system view to compare what an AV sees with what a human sees, and you’ll start to understand how Pony handles so many tough scenarios. Watch more Pony.AI videos here.

Oxbotica

AVs come in all shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common: their design is intimately tied to the domain in which they operate. Oxbotica takes us inside their latest deployment at one of BP’s refineries, revealing some of the unique challenges and jobs to be done in this brand-new application for autonomous vehicles. As you watch, think about the kinds of attributes that a refinery has as an operating domain and how they may have influenced some of Oxbotica’s design decisions. Watch more Oxbotica videos here.

Ouster

A lot of the autonomous driving videos we watch show the “car’s eye view,” displaying the fused output from the vehicle’s entire sensor suite. What we see less often is the raw output of a lidar sensor, allowing the viewer to compare it to camera footage and thus understand some of the differences between these two modalities. Luckily that’s precisely what Ouster has done with this video, showing off its OS0-128 ultra-wide field-of-view lidar on an urban drive that highlights lidar’s ability to perceive pedestrians, cyclists vehicles and the surrounding city in remarkable detail. Watch more Ouster videos here.

STEER

We may be a ways away from everyone owning their own AV, but automated parking could be an option on new cars sooner than you think. STEER Tech is one of the companies developing a system that will allow your vehicle to safely park itself completely autonomously, and you can see it in action in this video demonstration.

Torc Robotics

Edge cases are the boogeyman of AV development. Just when you’ve developed a system that seems capable of handling every kind of normal traffic, something shows up that you never would have expected and you have to hold your breath and find out how the system handles it. This video, from a Torc Robotics test in Las Vegas way back in 2018, shows just that: a driver going the wrong way and missing its turn, directly in front of a Torc AV…. which passes the test with flying colors. Watch more Torc Robotics videos here.

Toyota

Everyone knows that autonomous vehicles offer the potential for far safer roads, but what about just having fun? As it turns out, the two are more closely linked than you might expect. Here the Toyota Research Institute teaches autonomous Toyota Supras to hoon and drift like a professional stunt driver… for safety! Adding to Toyota’s understanding of automation at the edges of vehicle control, these drifts and donuts will make future AVs better at recovering from sudden evasive maneuvers. Watch more Toyota Research Institute videos here.

Velodyne

Automotive lidar technology was, for all practical purposes, invented by Velodyne during the DARPA Grand Challenges that birthed modern autonomous driving systems. Today, Velodyne’s lidar is found not only on a wide variety of AVs but on a host of other automated systems of all shapes and sizes. From baggage handling to beverage delivery, from trucks to transit, lidar is enabling a rainbow of new vehicles, systems and functions. Watch more Velodyne videos here.

Waymo

This video shows America’s first truly driverless public-road robotaxi service in action, taking a real person to real destinations around the Phoenix, Arizona area. Joel Ricks Johnson is a huge Waymo fan, riding the developer’s driverless minivans whenever he can, and his videos are a fantastic way to experience what driverless mobility however he can. Watch more Waymo videos here.

Zoox

Think of the toughest cities in the United States to drive in, whether you’re a human or a robot. If you’re from the West Coast, there’s a good chance that San Francisco was somewhere on that list. Zoox has leaned into that challenge, developing its robotaxis in the heart of San Francisco’s brutally challenging downtown area, and as a result they have some amazing footage of their AVs handling driving conditions that would challenge plenty of human drivers. There are many more Zoox videos available to watch here.