SAN FRANCISCO: Silicon Valley is creating a crash course in self-driving car technology to address a shortage of engineers with help from a startup in a different field: online education. Self-driving truck startup Otto, recently acquired by Uber Technologies Inc, automaker Mercedes-Benz and chip maker Nvidia Corp contributed to Udacity's curriculum. "If you go through this curriculum you are on the bleeding edge of self-driving cars," said Thrun. Varden Labs, a company of fewer than 15 people working on self-driving car technology, is "hiring aggressively" although the field is "very competitive," said co-founder Alex Rodrigues. GM in March purchased Cruise Automation, a three-year-old autonomous vehicle startup with about 40 employees, for about US$1bil (RM4.13bil).

Source: The Star September 14, 2016 04:41 UTC