The autonomous-truck company led by University of Toronto researcher Raquel Urtasun said its new Waabi World product can act like a “school” for self-driving vehicles. (The Logic)

Talking point: Waabi World is a first look at what Urtasun has been developing since leaving her post as chief scientist and head of R&D at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group in Toronto. When bringing her own startup out of stealth last summer, Urtasun told The Logic that a key selling point was a faster, safer and cheaper testing process. Waabi said its World product achieves that by avoiding artist renditions of the simulated world and eliminating the need to gather new data each time sensors are updated. The program would recreate “digital-twin” objects of the real world, which can also be manipulated in the digital world. Waabi said two AI systems, one that simulates a driver and one that simulates an environment, essentially “play against” each other like in a video game, homing in on what scenarios are most difficult and automatically creating harder levels.