The English startup Wayve that teaches the autonomous cars was the great winner of the technological event Web Summit 2018. It was created by students in the engineering department at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Wayve aims to use algorithms and reinforcement learning to get autonomous cars to drive on the roads, without having to program them with road maps of various cities. And since January 2018, there are some cars being tested on UK roads.
Unlike other programs for autonomous driving, Wayve does not bet on “cameras and sensors” because this “can confuse the car”, instead it focuses on “knowledge” to make the vehicle “able to recognize its environment and the decisions you have to make ”.
Today's technology uses sensors and rules to power self-propelled cars in some cities, but our project allows us to take autonomous driving to all, said Alex Kendall, co-founder of Wayve, at the Web Summit venue.
Wayve continues to need sensors that pick up road data, but uses the intelligence borrowed from the humans who teach them, with the many corrections being made. It is this paradigm shift that promises to create a shortcut in technological evolution - and give cars the ability to drive in places they have never visited.
We are developing an autonomous driving solution that focuses more on intelligence than on throwing a number of sensors at this problem ”. According to the academic, “if you have 100 laser sensors in a car, the system can be confused” and what you want is for “the car to understand the problem”.
The choice was made by the jurors of the pitch, investors Tom Stafford, Bedy Yang and Holly Liu, this verdict that was 75% against the 25% of the public's choice, which had placed this company in third place, after the startups LvL5 and Factmata .
