For some odd reason, search companies feel the need to get involved in the self-driving car industry. Google is doing it, Baidu is doing it and Microsoft is also doing so to a degree. Now we have the top Russian search company making similar moves.
Yandex is the number one search company in Russia, surpassing both Google and Bing for the top spot. Like Google, Yandex has dabbled outside of search. The company has its own email service and its own cloud hosting business, but now, it's seriously looking into the world of self-driving vehicles.
According to a report from Fortune, Yandex has decided to partner with truck maker Kamaz, Daimler and government-sponsored researchers at NAMI in a bid to create a fleet of self-driving minibus shuttle. This could be the first step to something more interesting if it works out as planned.
The report claims the self-driving minibus shuttle should be able to carry up to 12 people, and travel up to 124 miles on a single charge. Yandex will be contributing its expertise in artificial intelligence, voice recognition and computer vision to the project. Furthermore, the company will create the user interface of the app.
NAMI plans to test the first set of self-driving buses on closed circuit roads come 2017. Due to the type of vehicle, it will likely take a number of years before any of these buses ever see the light of day on public streets.
Seeing as other companies in other parts of the world have been testing self-driving vehicles for a number of years now, Yandex and NAMI might find themselves behind the curb when these self-driving vehicles begin to trickle out to the public's domain.
If everything goes according to plan, we should look out for Yandex making moves to get its technology into other vehicles.
Driverless cars have become a worldwide phenomenon, despite no such vehicles making it to public streets yet.
Delphi and Mobileye have recently teamed up to bring self-driving cars to the market by 2019. Mobileye is known for providing the autonomous tech behind Tesla's fleet of vehicles, and was recently released by the company after a fatal crash.
As for what's happening in China, search giant Baidu is working on its own fleet of driverless cars. The company recently unveiled an all-electric, self-driving car. Tests will begin soon, and if all goes well, the vehicle should hit public streets in a matter of years.
Photo: Automobile Italia | Flickr
