Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center starts testing self-driving car in Pittsburgh

Uber has been testing it's prototype of a revamped Ford Fusion which has now been spotted on the streets of Pittsburgh as Uber is continually testing and updating for the next phase in its self-driving car.

The company announced in February that it will open a research facility in Pittsburgh to develop and research on self-driving cars. Uber's Advanced Technologies Center is located near the CMU campus. The company officially confirmed that the car is indeed a part of its early research efforts regarding mapping, safety and autonomy systems. 

The company’s self-driving car looked almost similar to the one that Apple has been testing earlier in San Francisco which had a bunch of sensors and multiple cameras mounted on the roof .

The company's vehicle  was initially spotted  with the words “Uber” and “Advanced Technologies Center” drafted on the sides. Uber has been rather adamant in showing its desire to bring autonomous taxis to its fleet. The plan is to make the human element obsolete and cutting down on expenditures. 

Google and Apple are currently testing out self-driving vehicle technology. Google was first tech company with self-driving cars on the road. The search giant has largely relied on Lexus and Toyota Prius vehicles for on-road testing. The search giant is also developing its own self-driving prototype. 

Google has been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at their test facilities and ensuring that their software and sensors work as they're supposed to on their fleet of self-driving vehicles. The new prototypes will drive with the same software as their existing group of autonomous cars. 

Google recently announced that its self-driving prototypes will hit streets of Mountain View, California this summer. The concept of autonomous driving cars is certainly one of the hot avenues for research and development. The company's fleet has logged nearly a million miles on the roads since they started the project. So the current batch  of cars have already a lot of experience under its hood as the data is always being analyzed and improved on.

Other companies now seem to be digging even deeper into the whole idea of autonomous cars. Nissan and NASA earlier announced a partnership that would see the two exploring and expanding development on autonomous cars. Even German car maker Audi is planning to bring its main driving setup its next-gen A8.

Google is set to add fingerprint authentication technology to its Android operating system

Google will be adding new technology to its Android operating system within its security protocol which will support fingerprint scanning. The component would allow developers to add fingerprint sensing technology for their utilization.

The typical way of unlocking your Android device with a PIN code may soon be obsolete. Google will introduce native fingerprint scanning for its Android M operating system at the company’s annual I/O conference. Google will launch an application programming interface (API) for fingerprint authentication to developers so they can merge fingerprint sensing into their apps.

Google has yet to confirm that it will announce that next version of its operating system for mobile devices, which would be Android M the expected follow-on to Android Lollipop, which Google released in late 2014.

Google’s partners are happy to use Google’s platform to implement features that at one time may have been considered too costly or time-consuming to develop internally as they welcome the dedicated support for fingerprint technology.

Various smartphone companies such as Apple and Samsung both offer fingerprint capabilities for their various products, including the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6. Security is often promoted as the main reason for implementing the technology, but it’s hard to ignore the advantage that Fingerprint based technology for smartphones that  is why it is slowly becoming a very important feature. Imagine placing your finger on a sensor to open a device, which is much faster than having to remember and manage complicated passwords.

The public should be aware about whether a data of the fingerprint is stored on the device, or if it’s converted into some form of encrypted data. For now it doesn’t go into detail how Google plans on protecting its data, but it’s something to be watchful of as fingerprint authentication becomes more and more prevalent. It is also important to know if the information is backed up or stored in the cloud at any point in time or if anyone else have direct access to the data.

The ideal way of dealing with security problems is to follow Apple on how it is implementing its own encryption protocol wherein a mathematical representation of your fingerprint is stored on secure chips that are off-limits to apps and the operating system. Google should either implement something similar or develop something way better.