Five Robotics Failures and What Developers Can Learn From Them

Ride-hailing giants sell off self-driving units

​For all the money flowing into self-driving vehicles, it’s easy to miss the delays and consolidation occurring during this high-stakes race. TuSimple raised $1 billion in April, Amazon acquired Zoox, and Cruise acquired Voyage.

At the same time, Uber sold its Advanced Technology Group to Aurora, and Lyft sold its Level 5 self-driving unit to Toyota.

Tesla even dropped its reliance on radar for its Autopilot and, like Waymo, has de-emphasized fully “self-driving” capabilities.

In addition, BMW and Mercedes ended their self-driving car partnership, and Toyota and others have focused more on mobility services than full autonomy. All of these changes also affect suppliers.

These aren’t necessarily failures, but all these deals suggest that, despite the advances in lidar and the autonomy software stack, more progress is needed in both AI and regulatory frameworks. Self-driving trucks may come sooner, but fully autonomous passenger vehicles that aren’t shuttle buses in constrained routes seem far off.