Yandex shows off the first tests of self-driving cars on Moscow roads

Russian search and internet services giant Yandex has been working on its autonomous driving program, and its most recent achievement is a public self-driving pilot of its self-driving test car in Moscow, the first such test on public roads in the Russian capital.

Yandex had an additional degree of difficulty to contend with, too: Their recent testing, which kicked off in December of last year, included some days following heavy snowfalls, which are difficult conditions for any autonomous vehicle to navigate because of how they obscure road markers and other guiding indicators used by optical cameras systems, among other challenges.

As you can see, the car handled snow, ice, parked cars, traffic and even pedestrians even amid the wintery conditions, which is a key use case that autonomous vehicle technology providers will need to solve before the tech can be broadly adopted.

Beyond the snow, Yandex notes that Moscow also provides a terrific test bed for its AVs because of factors including high traffic volume, as well as pedestrian density on top of the variable weather patterns that come to the city across seasons.