Tech company IBM has been working with crowd-sourcing automotive startup Local Motors in an effort to bring autonomous technology to cars. Their latest breakthrough is Olli, a concept that aims to equip buses with self-driving technology.

In a press release, Local Motors chief executive officer John B. Rodgers said, "Olli with Watson acts as our entry into the world of self-driving vehicles, something we've been quietly working on with our co-creative community for the past year."

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IBM and Local Motors aim to create a fleet of autonomous, on-demand buses before the end of the year. The concept has already been tested in several roads near Washington, D.C. Similar programs are also slated to be tested in Miami and a handful of unconfirmed locations around the globe.

Olli is not just a conventional autonomous driving car. It is a 3D printed car that can interact with its passengers. It is powered by IBM's Watson Internet of Things for Automotive technology.

Olli is also equipped with technology like Speech to Text, Natural Language Classifier, Text to Speech, and Entity Extraction. With all this high-end technology embedded in Olli, passengers can simply tell Olli their destination, and the vehicle will automatically plan out the best route.

Aside from finding the best route to take, Olli can also offer recommendations of local hot spots like restaurants or historical sites.

IBM and Local Motors said that testing is currently limited to a very small area. However, the companies added that next-generation models of Olli will be powerful enough to drive passengers around an entire city.

Olli is the first vehicle to take advantage of the immense computing power of IBM's Watson Internet of Things, which is a cloud-based computer system equipped with cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology. IBM's Watson made news headlines back in 2010, when it won a game of Jeopardy against three previous champions.

TagsIBM, Local Motors, Olli, IBM Olli, autonomous car, Self-Driving Car, autonomous bus