FPT, Yamaha, and Ecopark have entered into a memorandum of understanding on Thursday to develop self-driving electric vehicles through FPT’s autonomous technologies
The trio has set to improve the autonomous vehicle’s capabilities over time. On its first demo April, the vehicle will hit the road with original features such as traveling on a predetermined route; identifying lanes, returning to the starting point to complete a journey; stopping, parking, dropping off passengers as requested; or detecting and avoiding obstacles on the way. By the end of 2019, having been integrated with FPT’s autonomous technologies, the vehicle should be able to detect objects and vehicles on the road, slow down at sight of obstacles ahead, or handle the auto-parking function without passengers on board. At this stage, the users could also book autonomous vehicles via mobile apps.
Self-driving vehicles
According to the MoU, FPT will develop autonomous driving software on a Yamaha electric vehicle based on a golf car, powered by Artificial Intelligence and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technologies. Yamaha will provide technical support and vehicle consulting during the road tests while Ecopark provides logistics and efficient infrastructures. The collaboration seeks to accelerate the adoption of autonomous vehicles technologies and realize the vision of smart public transportation in Vietnam.
FPT Software’s Chairman Hoang Nam Tien stated, “This partnership reflects our commitment to make a positive impact on the community through innovation. We announced the launch of autonomous technologies in 2017, based on our in-depth research and capabilities in Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Internet of Vehicles, Cloud computing, and Image Processing, etc. The past two years has seen made-by-FPT autonomous technologies integrated into vehicles and successfully tested at high-tech zones. We hope this collaboration could bring us to the day where autonomous cars using our technologies could be adopted across urban areas, luxury resorts, factories and warehouses.”
