Russian online taxi order service Yandex Taxi has been conducting tests on their driverless car technology in the snowy conditions of suburban Moscow. Driverless cars have successfully covered hundreds of thousands of miles on dry roadways around places like Silicon Valley but inclimate conditions have been a lingering challenge with autonomous transport relying heavily on visual inputs that can be effected in bad weather (lane markers/obscured pedestrians).
As you can imagine, having a driverless car operate flawlessly on snowy roadways is of particular importance to a Russian company and while this test isn’t exactly pushing the limits of bad road conditions, it does demonstrate basic driverless operation on snow covered and icy roads:
“We began testing our driverless car technology in winter weather conditions. Safely navigating various weather conditions is an important part of the development of autonomous transport. As our engineers continue to develop our driverless car, they consider all weather conditions and run performance tests looking at a number of factors. Severe winter weather is especially important to test as icy and snow covered roads are not only slippery but difficult to see. After a recent snowfall in the suburbs of Moscow, we tested two Yandex.Taxi driverless car prototypes against winter weather conditions. Our prototypes based on Toyota Prius were modified to run tests with a help from the NAMI (The Central research and development automobile and engine institute).”
Fingers crossed the winter capability of driverless cars improves to the point where we can relax in the back seat on the way up the mountain and step out of warm cars refreshed and ready to go….that’ll be the day. 
or ride up teen wolf style like the savage you are….
images from pinterest & youtube luxury fred
