We have talked about Pasi William Sachiti a few time in the past. We have been impressed by his UK startup, Academy of Robotics which has been working on Kar-go, a driverless car to solve the last mile delivery problem.
The last time we talked about Sachiti and Kar-go, he had just successfully raised funding for the innovation via a crowdfunding platform. The autonomous vehicle was launched last week and it was hosted at two glamorous events in the UK.
Hosted by the Duke of Richmond
Kar-go was part of the Duke of Richmond’s Festivals of Speed (FOS). This is when the Duke hosts motoring enthusiasts from around the world who flock to see the latest concept cars to classics. A new addition to the show is what is called, the FOS Future Lab which has become a centre piece of the event. This is where Sachiti’s car was featured.
Minister S B Moyo
Sachiti’s vehicle was also hosted at an event graced by Zimbabwe’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, S.B Moyo during his trip to the UK. The minister together with Zim’s ambassador to the UK inspected the Kar-go vehicle at an exclusive reception hosted at the Westbury Mayfair hotel.
The event organised by Conrad Mwanza and the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards team saw Sachiti share his vision to make Kar-go technology available around the world. Sachiti who still frequently visits his family in Zimbabwe says he used Zim roads to ‘train’ the car’s AI:
There are some great delivery robots out there, but most of them are designed to run on neat pavements or sidewalks of grid-like cities. We want Kar-go to be universally applicable, so we have trained our technology in a number of different environments and of course, for me, Zimbabwe was a natural choice
Resultantly, Kar-go has a unique software stack that allows it to navigate on unmarked country roads and even without GPS.
How does Kar-go work again?
Kar-go works in conjunction with an app, where recipients can track their delivery and meet the vehicle just like meeting a pre-booked taxi. Recipients will then use the app to open the hatch to release their specific parcel. Inside the vehicle, a patented package management system will sort and re-shuffle packages on the move.
Powered by Tesla batteries, Kar-go can drive at 60mph and cover around 193km before it needs re-charging – around the same distance as an average delivery driver covers daily. Travelling at up to about 96km/h, the vehicle has been developed in collaboration with the UK’s vehicle licensing authority, the DVLA, to travel on the roads.
Adopting a revolutionary terrain-training approach, Kar-go uses advanced evolutionary artificial neural networks to train the vehicle in a way which mimics aspects of nature and biology helping it to learn from events in the past and apply this knowledge to new situations it faces.
Here’s a video we shared previously:
14 comments
Good work.
Brilliant !The future is now. Disruption par excellence.
We need to bring back these guys home, but please reform first!
Tanga wagadzira ma pot hole
Tanga wagadzira ma pot hole
america had such people..Marconi,Einstein,tesla ,,,they all fled their countries to become greats in their adopted nations,,,,this is happening to us. nothing will make them want to come back kumarara.
Excellent
Amazing
your headline is rather deceiving. this is not the first vehicle to feature driverless tech. the 2018 and 2019 s class and eclass, the 2018 and 2019 5 and 7 series, the tesla model s and audi q7, a6 and a7 feature driverless tech. secondly, current EU regulations donot even permit completely driverless vehicles, a driver has to be in the driver seat and atleast one hand has to be on the steering wheel. what i do find revolutionary is the use of AI which would be a world first. however, given the fact that googles deep mind AI, which is the most advanced AI and can only play chess and another board game, it would be intresting to investigate exactly how this AI is able to drive. please researxh more before posting articles.
I work in the industry. All the cars you mention here feature what is called level 3 driverless tech. This is what allows cars to drive autonomously on motorways and stay in lane, change lane etc. Level 3 cannot drive off the motorway itself and navigate small or unmarked roads. Sachiti’s company, Academy of Robotics features level 4, it is in fact one of the most advanced in the world based on peer reviewed scientific papers published by the team. All the publications seem to have proffessors names on them too. This is why this story was picked up by many of the world press, it is revolutionary. I read from the Financial Times that this car was co-produced with the UK regulator. it is the first allowed on the road with no driver because it carries cargo only. It is completely new and outperforms Google in Europe at least. Perhaps you should research too before commenting?
the point i made, was that, it is not the first vehicle to feature level 4 driverless tech and secondly, as of today authority has not been granted yet for that vehicle to operate. i was criticising the article and not kar-go.
Lovely that what we are here for go guy
Lovely that what we are here for go guy
An achievement paexcellence by African/Zim standards