WeRide and Uber announced on Tuesday the launch of Spain’s first commercial robotaxi pilot in the Region of Madrid — a move that also represents their first joint European market entry. Moove Cars Group’s AVOMO will handle fleet operations for the pilot. The company already manages autonomous vehicle fleets for Uber in the United States and has a presence in four European countries, including Spain. Rides will be available through the Uber app, with public operations expected to begin later this year. Madrid’s regional government, the Comunidad de Madrid, is collaborating on the launch. Vehicle Operators The fleet will initially include trained vehicle operators inside the cars. WeRide, AVOMO, and Uber stated they are committed to adding hundreds of robotaxis as key performance milestones are met, including the expansion of fully driverless commercial service across core urban areas of the city. The vehicles to be deployed are WeRide‘s Robotaxi GXR, the company’s latest-generation autonomous vehicle. WeRide‘s GXR features an L4-level redundant drive-by-wire chassis architecture and a hidden B-pillar design. The model is already operating in fully driverless commercial service in Beijing and across WeRide‘s Middle East fleet. Fourth City Under 15-City Agreement The rollout follows WeRide‘s asset-light operating strategy, under which local partners contribute fleet investment and platform support while WeRide provides the autonomous driving technology. In Madrid, AVOMO will handle fleet operations — the same role it plays for Uber‘s autonomous vehicle programs in Austin and Atlanta, where it currently manages around 400 vehicles with a team of more than 200 specialists. Madrid is the fourth city activated under WeRide and Uber‘s broader agreement to deploy robotaxis in 15 cities by 2030 and the fifth European market entry for the Chinese company. The company has previously received autonomous driving permits in France, Switzerland, and Belgium, and has deployed vehicles
Jun 2, 2026 · via eletric-vehicles.com
Robotaxis set to launch in Madrid before the year’s end WeRide, Uber and Avomo are expanding their global alliance and will land in the Spanish capital with backing from the regional government WeRide, one of the leading companies in autonomous‑driving technology, along with Uber Technologies and Avomo — a Moove Cars group company — announced on Tuesday their plans to launch Spain’s first commercial autonomous‑vehicle pilot in Madrid before the end of this year. The service would thus make its debut in Europe, as other major players like Alphabet’s Waymo and Tesla expand in cities around the world. Indeed, it will be the first time the companies launch a service together in Europe. In a statement released Tuesday, the companies said the service is expected to begin operating at the end of the year, in collaboration with the regional government of Madrid, and will allow users to request rides in autonomous vehicles through the Uber app. The fleet will be deployed gradually and, in an initial phase, will include safety operators on board. As part of their plans, Uber, WeRide and Avomo expect to add “hundreds of Robotaxis as key performance milestones are met, including the expansion of fully driverless commercial service across core urban areas,” according to the joint statement. As an example, the three companies highlight their “proven experience” in the Middle East, where WeRide and Uber operate commercial robotaxi services in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Riyadh is expected to be the next city to join. The rollout reflects “WeRide’s asset-light operating strategy, enabling robotaxi commercialization through established partners that contribute fleet investment and platform support,” said the statement. As for operations themselves, Avomo, a company in the Moove Cars group and Uber’s partner for autonomous vehicle operations in the United States in Atlanta and Austin, will provide
Jun 2, 2026 · via english.elpais.com
Robotaxis set to launch in Madrid before the year’s end WeRide, Uber and Avomo are expanding their global alliance and will land in the Spanish capital with backing from the regional government WeRide, one of the leading companies in autonomous‑driving technology, along with Uber Technologies and Avomo — a Moove Cars group company — announced on Tuesday their plans to launch Spain’s first commercial autonomous‑vehicle pilot in Madrid before the end of this year. The service would thus make its debut in Europe, as other major players like Alphabet’s Waymo and Tesla expand in cities around the world. Indeed, it will be the first time the companies launch a service together in Europe. In a statement released Tuesday, the companies said the service is expected to begin operating at the end of the year, in collaboration with the regional government of Madrid, and will allow users to request rides in autonomous vehicles through the Uber app. The fleet will be deployed gradually and, in an initial phase, will include safety operators on board. As part of their plans, Uber, WeRide and Avomo expect to add “hundreds of Robotaxis as key performance milestones are met, including the expansion of fully driverless commercial service across core urban areas,” according to the joint statement. As an example, the three companies highlight their “proven experience” in the Middle East, where WeRide and Uber operate commercial robotaxi services in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Riyadh is expected to be the next city to join. The rollout reflects “WeRide’s asset-light operating strategy, enabling robotaxi commercialization through established partners that contribute fleet investment and platform support,” said the statement. As for operations themselves, Avomo, a company in the Moove Cars group and Uber’s partner for autonomous vehicle operations in the United States in Atlanta and Austin, will provide
Jun 2, 2026 · via english.elpais.com
Senator Dave Cortese’s SB 1246 Strengthening Oversight and Public Safety Standards for Autonomous Vehicles Advances to the Assembly SACRAMENTO, CA — California State Senator Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) announced that his Senate Bill 1246 (SB 1246), legislation aimed at strengthening oversight, transparency, emergency response, and public safety standards for autonomous vehicles operating on California roads, has successfully passed the California State Senate and will now move to the Assembly for further review and consideration. SB 1246 establishes a comprehensive framework to ensure that as autonomous vehicle (AV) technology continues to expand throughout California, public safety and accountability remain the top priority. “California can continue leading the nation in innovation while also protecting the safety of our communities, first responders, transit operators, pedestrians, and drivers,” said Senator Cortese. “SB 1246 is about accountability, transparency, and making sure autonomous vehicles have clear standards and responsibilities in place when emergencies, accidents, or roadway obstructions occur.” The bill would require remote assistants, remote drivers, and local incident technicians supporting commercial autonomous vehicles to be located within the United States and hold a California driver’s licenses. It also establishes remote staffing standards for autonomous passenger service vehicles and improves rapid response protocols when incidents or emergencies occur. Among its key provisions, SB 1246: - Requires autonomous vehicle operators to maintain emergency response and immobilization procedures - Establishes in-person rapid response requirements for incidents involving property damage, roadway obstructions, or emergency requests from first responders - Requires commercial AVs to be equipped with manual override systems accessible to trained personnel during emergencies - Directs the California Highway Patrol and Office of the State Fire Marshal to develop uniform emergency training and operational guidelines - Requires AV operators to maintain and report operational and emergency response data to state regulators, and - Increases transparency by requiring summary
Jun 2, 2026 · via sd15.senate.ca.gov
The final vision of an autonomous factory Physical AI has the potential to transform automotive manufacturing depending on globally recognised data standards and trust in the tools being developed with them, according to speakers from Hyundai, Lucid, Schaeffler and Accenture at this year’s Nvidia GTC conference Digital platforms are enabling OEMs to visualise production processes end-to-end before executing them on the shopfloor. The challenge now is to get the workforce of new talent up to scale and coherent with the latest technology and the speed of its development. The deployment of more intelligent automation is being coordinated by [AI] agents and that is what will ultimately be the final vision of an autonomous factory At this year’s Nvidia GTC global AI conference, speakers from Hyundai, Lucid, Schaeffler and Accenture looked at how the automotive industry is being transformed by AI and how a digital twin of the supply chain is critical to optimising manufacturing decisions. The journey from generative AI for design to agentic AI for orchestrating production in complex environments is now entering the phase of physical AI, driving fundamental change in the real world by simulating manufacturing processes and then deploying autonomous robotics to carry them out. “The deployment of more intelligent automation is being coordinated by [AI] agents and that is what will ultimately be the final vision of an autonomous factory,” said Alpesh Patel, senior vice-president of the Software-Defined Factory Transformation Center at Hyundai Motor Group. Software-defined factory Hyundai Motor Group is currently building an AI factory with Nvidia in Korea to accelerate model training, validation and deployment for in-vehicle AI, autonomous driving, smart factories and robotics. Nvidia provides hardware and software for AI and will Hyundai will be deploying Nvidia’s Blackwell AI infrastructure across manufacturing and robotics, as well as autonomous driving. The two companies
Jun 2, 2026 · via automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com
Abstract Accurate and robust trajectory tracking under varying vehicle dynamics remains a major challenge for autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, where safety, comfort, and stability must be ensured despite nonlinearities and uncertain parameters such as mass variation, tire stiffness, and road friction. This study presents a Robust Model Predictive Control framework that explicitly accounts for parameter uncertainty and external disturbances while maintaining computational efficiency suitable for embedded automotive systems. The controller integrates multi-parametric predictive modeling and robust optimization with constraint tightening, enabling proactive adjustment of steering commands and sustained stability across diverse driving conditions. A detailed nonlinear vehicle model incorporating lateral, yaw, and load-transfer dynamics was developed, and the proposed controller’s performance was benchmarked against proportional integral derivative and linear predictive control strategies. Simulation results demonstrate major improvements, including up to 78% reduction in lateral tracking error, 71% enhancement in yaw stability, 68% reduction in settling time, 61% smoother steering actuation, and 57% improvement in disturbance rejection compared to conventional controllers. Moreover, the proposed method maintains real-time feasibility with an average computation time of 6.3 milliseconds per control cycle, confirming its suitability for on-board electronic control units. Compared to classical robust strategies such as Sliding Mode Control, the proposed approach provides improved smoothness and explicit constraint handling while maintaining strong robustness to uncertainties.These results establish that the proposed robust predictive framework significantly enhances accuracy, stability, and computational efficiency under nonlinear and uncertain operating conditions. Overall, it provides a practical, scalable, and reliable foundation for next-generation intelligent vehicle control systems capable of safe and adaptive trajectory tracking in real-world environments. Similar content being viewed by others Abbreviations - aₓ: - Longitudinal acceleration of the vehicle(m/s²) - Cf: - Front tire cornering stiffness coefficient(N/rad) - Cr: - Rear tire cornering stiffness coefficient(N/rad) - CoG: - Center of Gravity - δ: - Front wheel
Jun 2, 2026 · via nature.com
China catching up to U.S. on autonomous driving tech, experts warn
Breana Noble
The Detroit News
June 2, 2026, 12:01 a.m. ET
Market conditions in China, regulatory changes there and its brands' speedy vehicle development threaten to put the United States behind in developing autonomous driving technologies, experts say.
Direct comparisons are rare, given the lack of Chinese vehicles in the United States and data-sharing restrictions between the two nations. But that's changing. Tesla Inc. last week said its Full Self-Driving Supervised is launching in China with an update coming shortly following years of delays. Google affiliate Waymo LLC is poised to compete against China's Baidu Inc. in London. And Chinese brands are expanding into more markets globally — including North America.
Jun 2, 2026 · via detroitnews.com
Rivian boss on self-driving cars: "level four is going to be here much sooner than people think" If you thought Rivian’s first act was dramatic, wait to see what CEO RJ Scaringe is cooking up next... RJ Scaringe asks as many questions as he answers. Rivian’s founder and CEO is with TG for an early drive in the new R2, on a route that skirts the company’s modernist HQ, an hour south of LA. The R2 is the smaller Rivian, the follow-up to the impressive pure electric R1 pickup and SUV. That’s succeeded where Ford’s F-150 Lightning faltered, and has proven a hit with well-heeled Musk-averse liberals in the bicoastal areas of the US. In excess of 42,000 have been sold so far. Now the R2 ramps up the ambition, spearheading Rivian’s push into Europe. It feels better than it needs to be, I venture, not quite overengineered but clearly done with care. “Where do you sense that?” Scaringe replies. In the damping, for starters, and the generally polished way it gets along the road. Dynamically it’s right up there with the likes of the new iX3, which is no mean feat given how much BMW has poured into the Neue Klasse project. Photography: Greg Pajo But Rivian’s attention to detail is everywhere. The brand message is “adventure forever”, on road and off. Scaringe talks of “brand tonality” and admires Apple in terms of how it built an entire ecosystem around its products. Rivian makes its own tents, flashlights and portable kitchens, to go with the cars. Honestly, if Apple made tents, flashlights or portable kitchens, they’d look like this. Clever, beautifully constructed, but human. Now the second act is set to begin. Production is scaling up dramatically, and a second factory in Georgia opens later this year. It’ll manufacture
Jun 2, 2026 · via topgear.com
At GTC Taipei and Computex today, NVIDIA Corp. revealed several open-source physical AI skills and tools to help developers of robotics, autonomous vehicles, visual AI, and industrial digital twins. The company claimed that they can help reduce the costs, time, and complexity of building physical AI workflows at scale. Available as part of the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit, the new skills will let AI agents speed the data generation, simulation, training, evaluation, and deployment pipelines behind robots, autonomous vehicles (AVs), factories, and laboratories, said the company. “AI agents are revolutionizing software development, and that shift is now coming to physical AI, extending into the systems that will transform transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, and robotics,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, at GTC Taipei. “When agents can directly use NVIDIA libraries, models and frameworks, physical AI development will move faster, enabling developers to build the robots, autonomous vehicles, and industrial systems of the future at an incredible pace.” “Physical AI requires massive amounts of training data in diverse environments,” noted Rev Lebaredian, vice president for physical AI simulation at NVIDIA. “Teleoperation, simulation, and internet-scale data lead to world foundation models for an infinite diversity of use cases.” NVIDIA makes physical AI stack agent-ready NVIDIA said it is optimizing its entire physical AI stack for agents by turning libraries, models, and frameworks into agent-callable tools. This includes: - NVIDIA Cosmos 3 world foundation models for physical world reasoning and generation - NVIDIA Omniverse libraries for simulation and digital twins - NVIDIA Isaac for robotics simulation and robot learning - NVIDIA Metropolis for vision AI - NVIDIA Alpamayo for autonomous driving - NVIDIA Jetson platform for edge AI development “Cosmos 3 is the frontier foundation model for physical AI,” Lebaredian said. “It understands videos and text and can flag what matters. Cosmos is
Jun 2, 2026 · via therobotreport.com
Uber, Autobrains, and Nvidia plan Munich robotaxi program
Jun 2, 2026 · via qz.com
June 1, 2026 McLean, VA, June 01, 2026 — Statement by Andy Green, executive vice president of HII and president of HII’s Mission Technologies division, on the U.S. Navy’s selection of HII’s ROMULUS Unmanned Surface Vessel to advance to the at-sea testing phase of the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) program: “HII is proud that ROMULUS USV has advanced to the U.S. Navy’s Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel evaluation phase, a milestone that reflects HII’s longstanding track record for delivering mission-ready autonomous capabilities that support the U.S. Navy’s evolving operational requirements. “At the core of the ROMULUS USV is HII’s extensive experience as a global leader in autonomous unmanned maritime systems, combined with HII’s Odyssey Autonomous Control Solutions, a proven autonomy software suite and a key differentiator of our solution. Demonstrated across programs supporting the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard, and allied partners, Odyssey enables intuitive command and control of autonomous platforms and swarms across domains, enhancing fleet lethality, survivability, and operational effectiveness. “We appreciate the U.S. Navy’s confidence in ROMULUS and look forward to demonstrating the platform’s maturity, reliability, and operational effectiveness in support of the service’s vision for autonomous maritime operations.” About HII’s Odyssey Advanced Autonomy Solutions® HII’s Odyssey Autonomous Control Solutions (ACS) is currently deployed on REMUS unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and ROMULUS unmanned surface vessel (USV) platforms in 30 countries, transforming vehicles into intelligent robotic systems. Through flexible vehicle-, module-, and algorithm-level implementations across diverse platforms, sensors, payloads, and mission profiles, Odyssey Advanced Autonomy Solutions deliver multi-vehicle collaborative autonomy, sensor fusion, and advanced perception capabilities. About the ROMULUS Unmanned Surface Vessel The ROMULUS family of Unmanned Surface Vessels is designed to meet the current and emerging requirements of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, joint forces, and allies. They deliver high-endurance, sustained open-ocean autonomy
Jun 2, 2026 · via hii.com
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Transportation Authority unveiled a commemorative bus on Monday honoring the 250th anniversary of America’s independence at JTA’s Autonomous Innovation Center, or AIC. In attendance was U.S. Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology Seval Oz. Oz credited Jacksonville for its courage in integrating autonomous vehicles into public transit while the rest of the nation is still talking about it. “Innovation does require courage, it requires boldness, it requires perseverance, and it requires a sense of vision as to where we should be, as opposed to where we are,” Oz said. “Navi represents more than autonomous vehicle deployment — It represents proof that the autonomous public transportation can safely and successfully, with the public trust, operate as part of a real ongoing transit system serving customers throughout the region.” This month marks the one-year anniversary of the Neighborhood Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Service, or NAVI. But some say its first year has been less than perfect. On March 5 of this year, the Florida Department of Transportation saw a demonstration of the vehicles. Reports show that the demonstration required seven manual assists, challenging the idea that the system is truly autonomous. They also found that NAVIs cannot pull back into traffic and often make hard stops due to misjudging field conditions like flags or pedestrians on the sidewalk. Still, JTA CEO Nat Ford says our country is in the midst of a transformative period in public transportation. “Every day that Navi is operating, it demonstrates that autonomous mobility is not a theoretical dream,” Ford said. “It’s actually operational, it’s practical, and is helping to write the next chapter in the evolution of transportation in the United States.” We wanted to ask about Navi’s low ridership and high expenses, but neither JTA nor the feds were
Jun 1, 2026 · via actionnewsjax.com
Mach Industries, the three-year-old defense tech startup run by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. The raise nearly quadruples the valuation of the company in a year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures. The round was led by deep tech fund Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, known for fintech and lately in hot deals everywhere — from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe. Since building autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive industry, Thornton began actively fundraising a couple of months ago, he told TechCrunch, and quickly discovered that the round would be popular with investors. “We went out to raise 200 [million dollars] and we were extremely oversubscribed at 200 and happy with the price, so we decided to push up to 300. We’re still oversubscribed at the 300 mark,” Thornton said of the fundraising efforts. Founded in 2023, Mach and its growth have been a wild ride for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to start the company. VC enthusiasm is high for a few reasons. Other than AI, defense tech is a hot area for investment right now as newfangled autonomous weapons and drone defense systems prove themselves in battle in Ukraine. Mach has also become prolific in its short time. The Huntington Beach, California-based company now has five autonomous vehicles in development: Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff vehicle; Glide, a high-altitude glider capable of launching weapons; Stratos, an airborne surveillance platform; Dart, a low-cost counter-drone interceptor; and Pike, intended for launching long-range munitions. Production is expected to begin next year on at least three of these systems, the company
Jun 1, 2026 · via techcrunch.com
Professor Christos Cassandras Wins 2026 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Outstanding Research Award Imagine a world where morning traffic completely disappears, intersection lights are obsolete, and your car pays you a small digital incentive for letting someone merge. It sounds impossible, but CISE Faculty Affiliate and Head of the Division of Systems Engineering Professor Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) is building that reality, and the engineering community is taking notice. Cassandras was recently named the recipient of the prestigious 2026 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) Outstanding Research Award. The honor recognizes Cassandras’ groundbreaking contributions to the field of smart cities and automated traffic management. The award comes on the heels of a high-profile feature in Nature, where Cassandras detailed his vision for rewriting how the world drives. “In some circles, this is considered science fiction, but in most technology-aware circles, it’s very real, it’s coming,” Cassandras said. “The hype will never deliver the absolute dream, but it will deliver something that is going to make the world a better place.” For decades, urban commuting has been defined by what Cassandras calls “selfish driving,” a system where individual drivers make competitive choices based entirely on personal convenience. This eventually leads to gridlock, wasted fuel, and accidents. Cassandras is pioneering a shift toward “social optimality.” His research focuses on Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) to transform standard roadways into fully integrated networks. Unlike some autonomous vehicles that currently operate in isolation using only onboard sensors, Cassandras’ model employs CAVs that actively “talk” to one another and to urban infrastructure, such as traffic lights. By sharing real-time data on position, velocity, and destination, the network can optimize routing and speed across an entire area. “It doesn’t take that many, maybe 10 or 20% [of autonomous vehicles] on the road, but they can act
Jun 1, 2026 · via bu.edu
Foretellix Unveils Reference Solution Integrating NVIDIA Alpamayo to Scale AI Autonomous Vehicle Development SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Foretellix, provider of safety and data infrastructure for physical AI, today announced its Reference Solution for the NVIDIA Alpamayo ecosystem. Foretellix enables developers building AI-powered autonomous driving systems to accelerate data curation, synthetic data generation (SDG), testing, and validation workflows. Foretellix's reference solution empowers any AI-powered autonomous driving development environment with the guidance, methodology and tools required to train and validate their AV stacks with greater confidence and scale. "The shift to AI-driven autonomy fundamentally changes how autonomous vehicle systems are developed and validated," said Ziv Binyamini, CEO and Co-Founder of Foretellix. "Developers can no longer rely on traditional software validation approaches. Our NVIDIA Alpamayo-based reference solution demonstrates the Foretellix data-centric infrastructure required to train, validate, and safely scale next-generation AI driving systems." The workflow begins with the denoising of AV drive logs, which is fundamental to extracting the ground truth from data. This process enables both temporal scenario labelling and synthetic scenario design, allowing developers to accurately replicate specific scenarios or create controlled variations of them. This foundational step is followed by data curation and warehouse exploration, where developers identify high-value driving segments to serve as the baseline for synthetic data generation. V&V engineers gain immediate visibility into the specific operational design domain (ODD) areas the system has encountered or tested across both virtual and real-world environments. The Foretellix solution organizes this data into a structured warehouse rather than a disorganized data lake. Behavioral ODD coverage analysis and SDG are central to the Physical AI Toolchain. The toolchain identifies specific gaps in the ODD, allowing test engineers to design and edit new synthetic scenarios that directly fill the coverage gaps. Through the Foretellix Foretify scenario designer, integrated with NVIDIA
Jun 1, 2026 · via prnewswire.com
DCPS security guard arrest highlights other recent cases of inappropriate conduct between teachers and children
Jun 1, 2026 · via actionnewsjax.com
By: Laryssa Hulcio and Stephen Harber, GM Talent Marketing By: Laryssa Hulcio and Stephen Harber, GM Talent Marketing Alex Reba doesnât draw a line between career and service. He juggles both â and he does it well. By day, he works in Global Purchasing & Supply Chain at General Motors, helping stabilize supply, manage risk, and keep production moving. Beyond that, he serves as a Supply Corps Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, applying the same logistics, problem-solving, and leadership skills to mission-critical operations. âI didnât feel like I had to choose between them,â Reba says. âFor me, it was about finding a way to do both well.â TRACK to the future Reba joined GM in the summer of 2021 as an intern in finished vehicle logistics. The next year, he returned full-time through GMâs TRACK rotational program. This fast-paced environment exposed him to program management, purchasing, logistics, and supplier crisis response. âTRACK teaches you that change is constant,â Reba says. âEvery six months, you move into a new role, with a new team and a new mission. You learn fast, listen carefully, and execute.â Reba had always been interested in military service. While building his career at GM, the idea of serving was still on his mind. âI loved the job,â he says. âBut I also felt this pull to contribute in a different way.â So Reba looked into Navy Reserve opportunities. Permission to come aboard He soon found the Navyâs Direct Commission Officer program within the Supply Corps. The role touched logistics, procurement, operations, and supply chain strategy â all areas he was already building expertise in here at GM. âIt felt like a natural fit,â he says. âIt allowed me to bring the skills I was developing at GM into uniform, while still continuing to grow my
Jun 1, 2026 · via news.gm.com
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois rideshare drivers could soon collectively bargain with Uber and Lyft after the state General Assembly passed legislation early Monday outlining a path toward unionization. Meanwhile, a separate bill that would have authorized autonomous vehicle pilot programs in the state failed to advance before the end of the legislative session. The rideshare bill, which still needs Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature, passed with backing from SEIU Local 1, IAM machinists union Local 701 and Uber, supporters said. It would give more than 100,000 rideshare drivers in Illinois a way to form a union. “We’re excited to hit the road and let everybody know that they’re going to be able to join a union,” said Giovanni Suarez, a Chicago-based full-time rideshare driver who stayed in the Capitol past 2 a.m. to watch the bill pass in the state House. The Illinois model is similar to one approved by voters in Massachusetts, the first state where rideshare drivers won the right to bargain as independent contractors in 2024. Just days ago, Massachusetts also became the first state to formally recognize a union for ride-hailing app drivers, a certification covering roughly 70,000 workers that labor leaders described as the largest private-sector organizing win since Ford autoworkers unionized in 1941, according to The Associated Press. Illinois Republicans raised concerns during floor debate about the feasibility of organizing workers who are not classified as employees. “What I’m trying to understand is how do we unionize people who aren’t employees, people who are their own independent contractors? They run themselves as their own business,” said GOP state Rep. Dan Ugaste of Geneva. That tension was at the heart of the bill. Rideshare companies and other employers in the so-called gig economy have long maintained that their drivers and other workers are not their direct employees.
Jun 1, 2026 · via chicagotribune.com
Physical AI systems must understand the real world before they can act within it. Robots, autonomous vehicles, and smart spaces need to understand what’s happening in their world, predict what’s likely to happen next, and generate actions for specific environments, embodiments, and tasks. NVIDIA Cosmos 3 is a frontier foundation model for physical AI that combines physical reasoning, world generation, and action generation within a single open model. NVIDIA is open sourcing Cosmos 3 models, training scripts, deployment tools, and datasets to make physical AI development more open and reproducible. This blog post covers the fundamentals of Cosmos 3, highlights key concepts from the technical report, guides through technical workflows and shows how teamsrobotic manipulation systems, autonomous vehicles, and warehouse monitoring solutions can get started. Key highlights of this release include: - NVIDIA Cosmos 3 Nano and NVIDIA Cosmos 3 Super model checkpoints on Hugging Face with code on GitHub. - Open datasets for physical AI applications like robotics and autonomous driving. - Open post-training scripts for adapting Cosmos 3 to your domain. - Cosmos NIM microservices for easy, optimized deployment on NVIDIA GPUs. What’s new in Cosmos 3 Previous Cosmos releases separated world generation, physical understanding, and controlled scene generation into different models and workflows. This release unifies those capabilities with a Mixture-of-Transformers (MoT) architecture built around two towers. - Reasoner tower: A vision-language model (VLM) that interprets multimodal observations like images, videos, and text. This tower uses an autoregressive architecture to interpret the input and understand motion, object interactions, and other physical context. This serves as the ‘brain’ that reasons about the world before any generation happens. - Generator tower: Generates future observations and action sequences. This tower uses a diffusion-based process to generate physics-aware video and action outputs that are conditioned on the reasoner tower’s understanding. The
Jun 1, 2026 · via developer.nvidia.com
VINFAST AND AUTOBRAINS LAUNCH FIRST AGENTIC AI L4 PROGRAM FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA WITH NVIDIA Rhea-AI Summary VinFast (NASDAQ: VFS), Autobrains, and NVIDIA announced a strategic collaboration to develop a next-generation Level 4 autonomous driving program for Southeast Asia, built on NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion 10 and Autobrains' Agentic AI. The goal is scalable, cost-efficient autonomy suited to the region's complex traffic. AI-generated analysis. Not financial advice. Positive - None. Negative - None. Key Figures Market Reality Check Peers on Argus VFS was down 1.97% while key EV peers were mixed: LCID and NIO showed gains, ZK was nearly flat, and PSNY/PSNYW declined. The negative move contrasts with several rising peers, pointing to a stock-specific reaction rather than a broad sector move. Historical Context | Date | Event | Sentiment | Move | Catalyst | |---|---|---|---|---| | May 21 | VF 9 positioning | Positive | +0.3% | Highlights VF 9 as premium yet cost-efficient 7-seat electric SUV. | | May 21 | New VF 8 launch | Positive | +0.3% | Introduces new-generation VF 8 with upgrades and Vietnam pre-order details. | | Apr 22 | Q1 2026 deliveries | Positive | -1.4% | Reports strong YoY growth in global EV and two-wheeler deliveries. | | Apr 16 | VF 8 Eco promo | Positive | -1.2% | Promotes VF 8 Eco value proposition, specs, and financing offers. | | Apr 14 | Canada EV benefits | Positive | +0.0% | Showcases Canadian EV appeal amid higher fuel costs and warranty support. | Positive product and growth news has not consistently translated into gains; several upbeat releases coincided with flat or negative next-day performance. Over recent months, VinFast has focused on product positioning and volume growth. Releases on the VF 9 and new-generation VF 8 highlighted premium features, pricing, and user-experience
Jun 1, 2026 · via stocktitan.net