Yandex Introduces its Fourth-Generation of Self-driving Cars
Since announcing our partnership with Hyundai Mobis, we’ve worked closely with the automotive supplier to enhance our self-driving technology, including revealing a prototype of our first self-driving 2020 Hyundai Sonata last July. We’ve continued working with Hyundai Mobis engineers to advance our autonomous vehicles, and we’re excited to announce the next milestone in our collaboration.
Today, we unveiled our fourth-generation self-driving cars, jointly developed with Hyundai Mobis. The latest generation platform operates on the 2020 Hyundai Sonata, joining our existing fleet of over 100 self-driving Toyota Priuses.
The initial set of fourth-generation self-driving Sonatas are now operating on the streets of Moscow. By the end of 2020, we will add 100 more Sonatas to our fleet. The vehicles will be integrated into our robo-taxi program in Innopolis, Russia, as well as joining our fleet in Michigan.
Together, engineers from Yandex and Hyundai Mobis contributed their respective expertise to design our most advanced self-driving vehicle yet. The Hyundai Mobis team modified the vehicle’s electronic control units to interface more effectively with Yandex’s driverless control technology.
Yandex engineers significantly improved the vehicles’ sensor set from the third-generation cars. For the cameras, the team added three additional units with a variety of different focal lengths bringing the total to nine. Our engineers also moved the radar system from beneath the bumpers to the roof, to help the system distinguish more objects around the vehicle. The front fender lidars have also been moved to a better location, providing them with a wider, overlapping field of view. The new placement enables the front fender lidars to better “see” pedestrians and vehicles in situations with limited side visibility, such as when leaving an alley or driveway to turn onto a busy street. The updated cameras, radars, and lidars work together to detect objects around the car and receive a more highly detailed and reliable view of the car’s surroundings in a variety of conditions.
“We’re excited to reveal the great progress we’ve made in the first year of our collaboration with Hyundai Mobis,” says Dmitry Polishchuk, Head of Yandex Self-Driving. “In one of the first projects to come from our work together, we assembled our first self-driving Hyundai Sonata prototype last summer in just a month. With the fourth-generation of our self-driving car, we were able to more closely integrate our technology into the traditional automotive systems and enhance our platform by applying our learnings from completing over 2 million autonomous miles. Further expanding the fleet with our fourth-generation vehicles will allow us to improve the technology even faster.”
Our partnership with Hyundai Mobis helped us create our most advanced self-driving car yet. We look forward to advancing our self-driving technology even further through our collaboration, and we thank the Hyundai Mobis team for their continued support.
Written and published by Yulia Shveyko
