Autonomous

Uber’s self-driving cars returned July 24 to Pittsburgh’s streets four months after one of its autonomous SUVs hit and killed a woman crossing a street in Tempe, Ariz.

University of Nevada-Las Vegas is joining German research company Fraunhofer IVI to develop an autonomous delivery truck, the university announced.

Autonomous truck developer Embark Trucks raised $30 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Embark has raised $47 million since its 2011 founding, according to Crunchbase, a platform for finding business information on public and private companies.

GM Cruise is running neck-and-neck with Waymo, a subsidiary of Google, to be first to bring fully autonomous cars to market. The two companies are considered the leaders in a crowded field, and San Francisco is the proving grounds to refine the technology.

The utilization of automated technology in trucks could prevent thousands of fatalities along the highways and offer benefits to the national economy, the chief federal trucking regulator said July 12.

As the race to create robot cars intensifies, a secondary race is underway: a high-stakes competition to develop the sensors that serve as the cars’ “eyes.” Lidar, a light-sensing form of radar, provides vision for the vast majority of autonomous vehicles being developed, but now there are dozens of companies with different twists on it.

Uber laid off its team of self-driving car safety drivers in Pittsburgh on July 11, the company confirmed.

WASHINGTON — As Silicon Valley and automakers attempt to steer the nation toward a future of driverless vehicles, a group of influential lawmakers remains concerned that bipartisan legislation now moving through Congress could leave consumers at risk by preventing states from demanding tighter safety regulations.

A former Apple Inc. engineer was arrested on charges of stealing driverless car secrets for a Chinese startup after he passed through the security checkpoint at San Jose International Airport to board a flight to China.

As self-driving vehicle experiments are launched in a few cities around the United States, Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler AG and a prominent auto supplier are launching a new one in the place that would seem most receptive: Silicon Valley.