U.S. self-driving trucking company Plus and Italian vehicle maker Iveco are starting public road testing of their jointly developed highly automated trucks in Germany, with plans to expand tests to Austria, Italy and Switzerland in coming months.

After California’s approval last week, the company’s robotaxi can transport employees on a public route between its two main office buildings, traveling up to 35 mph, and handling left-hand and right-hand turns, bi-directional turns, traffic lights, cyclists, pedestrians, vehicles, and other road users on the route.

The Pittsburgh Robotics Network’s partnership with Innovation Works-led Robotics Factory funded by Build Back Better Regional Challenge grants is just the latest of the non-profit’s efforts aimed at boosting the region’s robotics and autonomy technology leadership and new business opportunities.

In addition to supplying lidar for Polestar 3 and its sister model Volvo EX90, the Polestar partnership extends to future cars including the upcoming Polestar 5, and at CES the lidar maker unveiled its new software-based mapping product developed after secretive acquisition of Civil Maps.

Its CAVstar automated driving systems for two UK-funded test projects, with one for an HVS-led effort to deliver a world-first, autonomous hydrogen-electric heavy good vehicle for the UK market, and the other looks at accelerating autonomous bus development complex traffic flows in Scotland.

Founded in 2017 by two Korean-born technologists who met in Tesla’s cafeteria a year earlier, the company is looking to unlock the potential they saw in early ADAS technology with a full-stack solution to enable a Level 2 ADAS feature set with three core products for vision, sensor fusion, and AI driving.

The company’s lidar design win with SAIC’s Rising Auto adds to many other applications for its long-range AT128 and combined with the short-range FT120 unveiled at CES 2023 forms a complete automotive grade lidar perception solution.

The Drive Pilot system was self-certified in Nevada for conditionally automated driving and will be available in the U.S. on the 2024 S-Class and EQS, with the system adding lidar, a rear-window camera, microphones for detecting emergency vehicles, and road wetness sensor.

The software startup’s top execs talked to Inside Autonomous Vehicles about how their new Hammerhead devkit shown at CES enables its customers to rapidly integrate the company’s game-changing stereo-vision technology for autonomous vehicles and other machines.

The computing efficiency of autonomous vehicles must rise to prevent a major rise in their carbon footprint.