Cruise Automation, the self-driving car wing of General Motors, wants people to know about its rigorous training process for the human safety drivers behind the wheel of its autonomous Chevy Bolt EVs.
After submitting a safety report to the US federal government describing how its AI and vehicle design promote safety, Cruise released an addendum today that lays out the month-long training drivers must undergo before sitting behind the wheel of one of its self-driving car.
Cruise’s “autonomous vehicle testers”, or AVTs, train to monitor the Bolts’ operations, spot and record any unreliable AI behavior and be prepared to take control at any time. AVTs behind the wheel reportedly must keep both hands on the steering wheel at all times.
Before riding on public roads, AVTs start in a classroom, then practice actions in a stationary car, and finally practice scenarios (like a flat tire or someone else hitting them) on a private track.
Like every self-driving car company except Uber, Cruise requires two AVTs in the car at all times, with the person not behind the wheel responsible for monitoring and reporting data. The driver seat AVT can only provide verbal feedback while driving, so his or her eyes never have to leave the road.
Cruise Automation has various methods to ensure its drivers are constantly prepared | Credit: GM
To ensure that operators don’t become lax due to boredom or sleepiness, Cruise mandates breaks and maximum driving hours per day. It also monitors the DMV records of its employees, in case an AVT demonstrates reckless driving after he or she is hired.
If a self-driving car disengages, Cruise analyzes the footage and “escalates” the scenario, figuring out what would have happened if the human operator hadn’t taken over. After isolating the cause of the problem, Cruise teaches new and current AVTs to look out for similar potential scenarios until it’s able to upgrade the AI to prevent the disengagement from happening again.
“We will operate our self-driving vehicles with AVTs until they are capable of safe, fully driverless operation,” Cruise states in the report. Eventually, GM hopes to release its Cruise AV driverless car, which has no steering wheel or pedals that humans could operate in an emergency.
Cruise, which was purchased by GM in 2016, just received a $2.2 billion investment from SoftBank to fast-track its self-driving production.
Plus, GM announced today that it hopes to sell shares in Cruise, Bloomberg reports, which suggests the company wants even more partners or investors to back its self-driving venture.
Driving transparency
After the March incident where an Uber self-driving car struck and killed a pedestrian, during which the human safety officer looked away from the road to monitor equipment, Cruise’s report emphasizes how its operators may be better prepared to avoid such an incident.
More importantly,the company is openly describe its training methods for safety drivers, allowing for public transparency.
Many driverless developers haven’t been this clear. We couldn’t find training methods public for Waymo, which has already begun sending out self-driving cars without any safety drivers, choosing instead to focus on detailing its AI training methods.
Both Waymo and GM hope to start their own self-driving taxi services within the next couple of years.
Compared to any other lightweight, bargain drone, the DJI Mavic Air has, up until now, hovered well above its rivals.
Its compact frame, robust 4K camera and impeccable obstacle avoidance AI make for a near-flawless choice for drone enthusiasts and newcomers alike.
Last week, French drone maker Parrot decided to come for DJI’s throne. The new Parrot Anafi, which ships next month, dazzled us with an equally skinny body, dynamic 4K HDR camera and excellent battery life.
If you’re trying to decide whether to pre-order promising newcomer Anafi or purchase the tried-and-true Mavic Air, you face a tough choice.
We’re refereeing the lightweight championship bout between these two scrappy foldable drones, to see how they shape up in specs like speed, camera, price, AI tricks and more.
Plus, keep your eyes out for our full review of the Parrot Anafi later for a more comprehensive look at how it flies.
Camera
Both the Mavic Air and Anafi sport powerful cameras that sit on maneuverable 3-axis gimbals.
While the Mavic Air beats Anafi in a couple of key areas, overall Anafi’s innovative new camera defeats DJI’s camera in design and power.
Both drones sport a Sony CMOS camera sensor for photo and video, but the Mavic Air uses a 1/2.3” sensor capable of 12MP (4,056 x 3,040) stills, while Anafi employs a superior 1/2.4” sensor that shoots 21MP (5,344 x 4,016) stills.
Comparing lenses, the Anafi has a superior aperture (F2.4 vs F2.8) and can hit faster shutter speeds (1/10000s vs 1/8000s).
Plus, Parrot implemented a dynamic new feature in its lens that no other drone, including the Mavic Air, has today: lossless digital zoom. You can magnify up to 2.8x without a reduction in image or video quality, making it easier to film your subject without having to get so close. Still, Mavic Air does just win for camera FOV, at 85-degrees versus 84-degrees.
While Anafi wins as the choice for photographers, filmmakers have a trickier choice.
Both drones can film in 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) at up to 30 FPS, good enough for some impressive home videos.
Anafi can even go a step further and film in 4K Cinema mode (4,096 x 2,160), though only up to 24 FPS. Mavic Air can’t do that, but it can film at up to 120 FPS in Full HD or HD. So, while Anafi wins for image quality, Mavic Air could win out for filming fast-moving objects.
Mavic Air also arguably exhibits slightly steadier camera support for non-shaky filmmaking. Both have a 3-axis gimbal, but Anafi’s is a hybrid: roll and tilt are mechanically controlled, but the yaw (panning left and right) is digitally controlled, making it potentially less steady.
Anafi’s camera does compensate for its less-stable mechanics with an incredible vertical tilt range: it can point straight downwards (-90º) and straight upwards (90º), while Mavic ranges from -90º to only 17º up. Creative drone owners could benefit from Anafi’s ability to easily shoot a full range of up and down.
Both drones sport the same max bitrate—100Mbps—but only the Mavic Air comes with any internal storage (8 GB). The Anafi comes with a 16GB microSD card in the box, good enough for about 20 minutes of 4K filming. So, for either drone, you’ll likely want to upgrade your micro storage.
We know the Mavic Air supports up to a 128GB card; an Anafi engineer told us that the drone could support 128GB as well, but we don’t know if it can go higher. We’ve asked Parrot for clarification and will update this article when we hear back.
Design and portability
If you’re looking for a portable, lightweight drone to stick in your jacket pocket or backpack without feeling the weight, then you really can’t go wrong with either option.
Parrot Anafi weighs in at a mere 320g (11.3oz), while the older Mavic Air sits at 430g (15.2oz)—noticeably heavier to carry, but still lighter than most other competitors.
Both drones have foldable propeller arms, though with different configurations. With the Mavic Air, you fold the front arms back alongside the drone body, then the back arms fold forward on top of the front arms.
With the Anafi, all of the arms flatten outwards, and can be pulled out or pushed in independent of one another.
Because of this, the Anafi is much longer, but less wide, than the Mavic Air. Parrot Anafi measures at 9.6 x 2.6 x 2.5 in (244 x 66 x 63.5 mm), while DJI Mavic Air scales at 6.61 x 3.26 x 1.92 inches (168 x 83 x 49 mm). For real-world context, Anafi is shaped like a tall water bottle, while Mavic Air is about the size of a really thick iPhone X.
While Mavic Air is easier to carry around, Anafi’s unique design could make up for it for some buyers. Both drones mount their cameras in the front, but Mavic Air’s camera, like most drones, is embedded in the frame to save space. By contrast, the Anafi camera sits by itself, like an insect head.
This allows for its 180 degrees of vertical filming mentioned above, since nothing blocks its FOV. Even better, its placement ensures that the rotors never enter your photo or film, while they hover around the edges of your Mavic Air shots.
Flight and control
Despite its lighter frame, the Anafi comes built with speed and battery life designed to beat the Mavic Air. But, beyond pure specs, the Mavic Air benefits from DJI AI tech that Parrot arguably hasn’t caught up with yet.
In Sport mode, DJI’s drone can hit a top speed of 42.5mph (68km/h), while Parrot’s drone can only hit a max of 33mph (55km/h). Still, keep in mind that Mavic Air only hits 17mph (29km/h) in Normal mode, which you would primarily use for filming and photos.
However, Parrot Anafi does beat the Mavic Air in wind resistance. While Anafi can stay hovering in place at up to 31 mph winds (50 km/h), Mavic Air loses stability when winds hit the 19-24mph (29-38km/h) range. Keep in mind that while Anafi can handle bad weather better, neither drone is waterproof, so don’t try testing either drone’s muster in the middle of a storm.
As for battery life, the Mavic Air’s 2,375mAh battery allows for 21 minutes per flight, though our reviewers discovered 18 minutes to be a closer number for “true flight time”. Parrot claims that the Anafi hits 25 minutes in factory settings, which is closer to what high-end drones like the DJI Mavic Pro are capable of. Once all of our testing is complete, we’ll see how much flight time we get in the real world.
If you plan on sending your drone out of visual range, neither drone should cause you any control issues. Both register commands up to 2.5 miles away from your remote controller, via Wi-Fi frequencies at either 2.4 Ghz or 5.8 Ghz, and both can also respond to commands from a dedicated phone app.
Once we get into the topic of intelligent flight modes and AI features, Anafi puts up a valiant fight, but Mavic Air looks to clearly be the superior choice.
A screencap of what your Mavic Air drone sees as it circles around you
Both drones feature standard flight options like “follow-me” tracking, a return home feature, and smart shot modes where the drone films you while performing dedicated flight paths like boomerangs or dramatic pans upward. Both can film in slow motion, though the Mavic Pro enables this in 2.7K, while Anafi can only hit FHD.
Anafi does benefit here from its unique zoomable lens to perform the famous Hollywood dolly zoom, and can even create 3D maps of objects or buildings. Yet Mavic Air has its own exclusive camera gimmicks to compensate for it, including its 32MP sphere panoramas of its surroundings.
More importantly, Mavic Air has motion control functionality built in, using its sensors to respond to gestures. You can have it take off, land, capture a still, begin or end filming, fly towards or away from you, or follow you, all through hand gestures. Anafi can’t do any of this. If you put your hand close to it, it won’t even notice.
Using its sensors, Mavic Air can also sense and avoid obstacles in three directions—forward, backward and downward. When performing intelligent flight modes like circles, it will automatically dodge around things in its path without manual input. By contrast (as far as we know) the Anafi isn’t capable of any of this sophisticated functionality. You have to be cautious of potential collisions before you begin any automated flight modes.
Finally, it’s unclear whether the Anafi supports the FPV accessory headset you can purchase for the Parrot Bebop 2. We’ve asked Parrot for clarification and will update once we hear back.
We do know you can purchase FPV DJI Goggles for your Mavic Air for $349 (about £260 / AU$470), while the FPV upgrade pack for Bebop 2 sells for $449 (about £338 / AU$600).
Price and accessories
The DJI Mavic Air began shipping out in January of 2018 for $799 (£769 / AU$1,299). For that, you received the drone, three batteries, a remote controller, a travel bag, two pairs of propeller guards, six pairs of propellers, a battery-to-power-bank adapter and battery charging hub.
By contrast, the Parrot Anafi, scheduled for distribution on July 1, 2018, is priced at $699 / £649 (about AU$910). Aside from the drone, the kit contains the remote controller, one battery, the carry case, 16GB microSD card, eight spare propeller blades, a USB-A to USB-C charging cable and mounting tool.
Anafi’s lower starting price point certainly makes it an appealing option. The lack of propeller guards or charging hub could frustrate some buyers, but at least Parrot’s USB-C cable makes it easy to charge the battery with any portable or home chargers you may already have.
More vexing is that Parrot charges $99 for one spare battery and doesn’t include a spare in the box. Without a backup battery, you’ll be stuck waiting for two hours to recharge before getting airborne again. Anafi may beat Mavic Air’s flight time by five minutes, but Air owners can bring their two spares and extend flight time to an hour before having to head home.
So, if you decide that a backup battery is necessary, then the price of these two drones becomes pretty much exactly the same. In other words, we recommend you make your choice based primarily on the specs we outlined above.
Conclusion
We weren’t being hyperbolic when we said Parrot Anafi is a legitimate contender to challenge DJI Mavic Air’s dominance. Its superior camera and battery, comparable tight design, speed and price, and fun features make it a worthy choice of any first-time drone buyer.
We do, however, worry about its ability to keep itself out of trouble. DJI’s obstacle avoidance can’t prevent every potential disaster, but it’s certainly better than nothing at all.
If you trust your drone piloting skills to keep it from any crashes, and want to reach the next level of drone photography and filmmaking, then Anafi could be the drone for you. But, for a potentially safer, smarter (in terms of AI) choice, you can’t go wrong with our current favorite.
When shopping for the perfect web hosting for you (not the best web hosting for everybody else), you will be bombarded with terms and features that you will have seldom encountered in your everyday life. From FTP to backup, we will explain to you the jargon used and what to look for when you are in the process of acquiring a new web hosting package.
These days, hosting providers offer the tools you need to create a great website, whether you’re a coding guru or a total beginner. Modern website builders – such as Boldgrid – offer templates with a drag-and-drop function, to allow you to create a slick-looking professional website without the need to hire a web designer.
Bear in mind though that a lot of popular website builders such as WIX or Weebly, are proprietary in nature. They are not, strictly speaking, web hosting entities in the traditional sense. You will be limited in what you can do and that lack of flexibility can be detrimental if you want a bit more pizzazz.
2. Solid state drives
Although SSDs are more expensive than standard HDDs, this is for a good reason; they are much faster than the traditional spinning disk drives, are more reliable and consume less power. Depending on the technology used, the transfer rate is an order of magnitude or more compared to their mechanical cousins.
SSDs don’t come with any moving parts and so they run reliably, silently and make for a durable and energy efficient option for data storage. Expect hard disk drives to remain popular for a long time though especially in the value part of the market where “free” and “unlimited” still rule the roost.
3. Bandwidth
Bandwidth describes the quality and level of traffic and data allowed to travel and transfer between your site, users and the internet. Each hosting company will offer different levels of bandwidth. This can be an indication of which hosting company has the best networks, connections and system.
If you have a small business with 5,000 or less visitors per month, you don’t need to worry too much about bandwidth. Most major hosting companies will provide all the bandwidth you require on their cheapest hosting account, from as little as $1/month.
4. Storage
Most hosting plans will offer “unlimited” storage capacity, but that is bound to come with restrictions. However, for most small business websites, a low-cost shared hosting plan will serve all of your storage needs. It is unlikely you will need more than 1GB of space, unless you have lots of videos or music files on your website.
Most web hosting companies will not accept that users use them only as a file server service. For that you can use online services like Dropbox or even Google Drive (we’ve got a list of the best cloud storage services) where your files will be hosted usually for far less than you’d expect.
5. Scalability
The importance of scalability is two-fold: Firstly, you need your website to be able to handle huge spikes in visitor numbers. Secondly: You need a hosting provider you can organically grow with, as your business and subsequent web traffic increases. When you’re choosing a hosting provider, look at how easy it will be to upgrade should you need to.
Can your web host move you from an entry-level shared hosting plan to an intermediate VPS when traffic reaches a certain level, without any down time for your website? It may be that your business experiences seasonal fluctuations in web traffic. That needs to be supported seamlessly.
For example, a Christmas Tree retailer is likely to experience a substantial influx of web traffic in December. Scalability from a hosting provider will enable the website to handle the traffic fluctuations without failing.
It’s important for yourwebsite to be able to handle growth and any sharp spikes in visitor numbers. Ensure you choose a host that offers the opportunity to upgrade to VPS.
6. Access
When you sign up for hosting, you will be provided with a control panel for managing your hosting account. You’ll also need FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access to your files. FTP is the most common method used to transfer your web pages and other files from your computer to the web host’s computer to be hosted.
Look at the maximum file size as this may restrict your ability to upload media files. Many providers will also offer an online file manager which is useful if you are away from your usual workstation and have to do a quick update to your website, even from your smartphone.
7. Support
When technical difficulties arise, you’ll need swift backup support. Good hosting providers will offer 24/7 support, so that you can get your business back online if something goes wrong. There are various methods of support available including, email, telephone, live chat.
Check your service level agreement (SLA) for details of the support you can expect to receive. Some providers will also stipulate the expected uptime in their SLA. A 99% uptime means that the site can be expected to be down for 3.5 days a year.
That’s down to less than one hour on a 99.99% uptime agreement. All but the most expensive web hosting packages will promise five nines (99.999%) where the maximum agreed downtime is just over five minutes.
8. Location
The closer a data centre is to your visitors, the faster the page loading will usually be. If it is likely all of your visitors will come from one area, choose a hosting provider with a data centre nearby. Even if that’s not the case, you can always buy a web hosting package that includes the option of a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
A CDN will host a copy of the page and the static content of your website when it is accessed from a territory. Caching, as it is known, means that visitors to your website will always get the data from the closest server to their location.
Last, but certainly not least, backups are a critical service you should receive from a hosting provider. Not all hosting companies offer this service as part of your bundle , so make sure you ask. Backups will usually be taken off your website daily automatically and kept for seven days, enabling you to restore your website at any point if needed.
Backups usually include both the website files (static) and the database (dynamic). Reasons you may need a backup of your website include: fire at data centre, hacking, human error and component failure. You may also decide to backup your files to a third party (like Google Drive) or locally on your computer.
This is an adapted excerpt from an eBook called “The ultimate guide to web hosting”, published by TechRadar Pro in association withPlanet Hippo
