Dutch company Amber is going to offer self-driving cars in Eindhoven on a large scale. The self-driving cars should be on the road in Eindhoven by mid-2018. After that, the company plans to roll out the service in the rest of the Netherlands and Europe.
Amber is a company that has been offering the business car-sharing platform Amber Mobility for some time. Companies using this platform get electric BMW i3s at their disposal, from which employees can use the vehicles as they wish. They share these vehicles with their colleagues, for which their employer pays a fixed amount per vehicle and user per month. These electric BMW i3s Amber plans to equip with self-driving technology. Amber customers in the Eindhoven region who use Amber Mobility will be the first to get access to the company's self-driving vehicles.
Autonomous repositioning
The self-driving vehicles reposition themselves autonomously during the night to ensure that companies have the right amount of vehicles at their disposal when they need them. This uses known, predefined routes, on which the vehicles travel at low speeds. If a vehicle unexpectedly 'loses its way', it will stop and an Amber employee will come to pick it up.
Amber is working with several development partners for the development of the vehicles, including TomTom, KPN, TNO, NVIDIA, Microsoft and the Municipality of Eindhoven and Helmond. In doing so, each partner is providing part of the technology needed to make the vehicles drive autonomously. For instance, TomTom will supply digital maps, while KPN will provide the network used for both location determination and communication. TNO focuses on testing and implementing both sensors and cameras. In addition, the research institute supports the development of the necessary software. NVIDIA will provide hardware to process the visual data collected by the cameras and sensors. Microsoft will provide the Azure cloud platform, artificial intelligence and resources needed to process large amounts of data.
'Crucial for the future'
"Autonomous driving is crucial for the future of mobility," explained Steven Nelemans, CEO of Amber. "If we want to offer a mobility service that is more efficient, user-friendly and affordable than car ownership itself, we will need self-driving cars to ensure that people always have access to mobility."
"Autonomous driving is not as far in the future as many people think," Nelemans said. "We are a small company, which means we can achieve this faster than many others. I am very excited about the fact that we have so many experienced and influential partners working with us on this."
More information about Amber is available at ambermobility.com.
Amber One
Amber is also working on the Amber One, a self-developed autonomous vehicle whose concept was presented last year. This car weighs just 700 kg, has a range of 400 kilometres and features a modular design that can be customised. Amber claims that the Amber One has a long lifespan and can cover at least 1.5 million kilometres. The video below showcases the Amber One.
By: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Source: Amber
