Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:Yandex says it caught an employee selling access to user email accounts for personal gains, and is in process of notifying 4,887 affected mailbox ownersThe Russian company said the employee sold access to 4,887 user email accounts.Russian search engine and email provider Yandex
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Inside Yandex self-driving car: Right here’s what it resembles to ride on Moscow’s crazy roadways
With harsh winter seasons, drivers that constantly change lanes, traffic congestion as well as occasional accidents, the Russian resources of Moscow offers a difficult setup for screening autonomous autos.
” In Moscow, the individuals behind you honk the horn even before the traffic lights turn green,” says Dmitry Polishchuk, head of Yandex’s driverless automobile job.
Polishchuk is taking me on a ride along Moscow’s active roads to show me exactly how far the firm’s self-driving technology has actually progressed in the year and a half given that it was officially revealed.
Given that regional regulation does not enable unmanned automobiles on public roadways, one of his coworkers, Alex, is resting behind the wheel wishing not to have to touch it. In the past 24 hours, I’ve seen no less than three auto accident on the city’s insane roadways.
See: Our self-governing future: How driverless vehicles will be the first robots we discover to depend on (cover story PDF).
It’s virtually twelve noon, as well as the streets of Moscow are active with cars and trucks driving close to each other, bikes, as well as pedestrians. Yandex’s self-driving innovation, installed in a Toyota Prius nicknamed Teddy, hits the road heading towards Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Road, where Mikhail Bulgakov wrote his unique The Master as well as Margarita.
The automobile is driving at a little over 40km/h, or 25mph. There are 3 parks nearby, and also children with kick scooters are eager to cross the street, no matter the traffic lights.
On a computer screen that I’m not permitted to film, Polishchuk shows me just how the self-driving auto perceives the environment. It identifies things such as cars, pedestrians or bikers utilizing information from different kinds of sensors, video cameras and also lidar– a technology that measures the range to targets making use of lasers.
Between the lidar dimensions, the car makes use of odometry, determining just how much the wheels have actually transformed as well as in which instructions, Polishchuk says. Yandex overlaps this information on its detailed maps of the city, which consist of all the lanes and limitations such as rate limitations.
” We have something that’s called localization,” he claims.
” The number one job: the automobile needs to recognize where it lies on the map with centimeter accuracy, and also it ought to understand the direction [in which it’s heading]”.
Then, it ought to understand what’s about, detecting other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic signal, road noting, and road indicators, and also comparing them with the objects on the preloaded map.
” Following is prediction: when you understand what’s around you, you should understand what occurs next,” Polishchuk claims. The list below stage is planning: the vehicle decides what to do as well as implements the strategy.
” [In website traffic] the hardest thing to recognize is intent, due to the fact that no one is in fact complying with the policies, every person is damaging the website traffic rules a bit,” Polishchuk tells me.
In this area of Moscow, one can not drive without obtaining near to other cars. Sometimes, passing automobiles miss us by no greater than 15cm or 20cm, six to 8 inches.
” The auto is not terrified of obtaining near to other automobiles,” the Yandex engineer claimed. When it runs into pedestrians, it’s configured to quit.
When the laser beam of light stops working to work, the system utilizes the International Navigation Satellite System, however GNSS is not very trusted in the Russian resources.
” In Moscow, there are certain areas where they spoof the satellite signal. We’re not scared of that, we know the place,” Polishchuk says.
He’s particularly happy regarding the map his team created, which can be utilized regardless of changes in the setting: “We had a snow map, when we tested [the auto] in wintertime, as well as when we drove after the snow thawed, it was still extremely reputable.”.
Problems like snow and rain are challenging for the lidar due to the fact that there’s a lot of noise, but Yandex utilizes formulas to clean it up. On the race course located on the borders of Moscow, the auto rises to 70km/h, or 44mph.
