The autonomous tech firm operated by the previous head of Google’s self-driving car department, Aurora Innovation, just landed a round of funding worth half a billion dollars from a huge bunch of investors, including Amazon.
It is the newest sign that the online retail behemoth is pushing hard into the realm of self-driving cars. Late previous month, media found that Embark (self-driving truck startup) has been transporting Amazon cargo on some of its trials. A week before that, Amazon declared that it had designed Scout (small autonomous delivery robot).
“We are always working and innovating with new firms to enhance the user experience and security of our team,” an Amazon spokesperson claimed to the media in an interview. “We think that autonomy will make more secure roadways and an enhanced work environment for users.”
Amazon has poked at a lot of different segments of the automotive sector, as well. It launched a dashboard product using Alexa, and has incorporated the voice assistant into a lot of vehicles. The firm also declared a service in 2018 where it permitted users to accept deliveries in their car’s trunk.
On a related note, Amazon earlier rolled out AWS RoboMaker. The cloud-supported service uses ROS (Robot Operating System)—the broadly used open-source software—to provide developers a place to test and develop robotics apps. RoboMaker importantly serves as a platform to assist pace up the time-eating development process in robotics. Amongst the equipments provided by the service are Amazon’s ML techs and analytics that assist making a simulation for development of real-world robotics.
The system can also be employed to assist manage a series deployment for warehouse-akin robotics developed to operate in bikes. “AWS RoboMaker automatically supplies the required infrastructure and it compiles, downloads, and configures the OS, ROS, and development software,” the firm claims.