Self-driving cars, voice assistants, and facial recognition technology are just a few of the advancements made possible by Hinton, LeCun, and Bengio’s work.

The award, named after British mathematician Alan Turing, carries a $1 million prize, which the trio will split. Previous Turing Award winners include Tim Berners-Lee, best known for inventing the World Wide Web.

Hinton is currently a top AI researcher at Google. LeCun is now at Facebook, working as the company’s chief AI scientist. Bengio has remained in academia but has worked with companies such as AT&T, Microsoft, and IBM.

Digit the robot will place orders right on customers’ doorsteps.

Autonomous vehicles might someday be able to navigate bustling city streets to deliver groceries, pizzas, and other packages without a human behind the wheel. But that doesn’t solve what Ford Motor CTO Ken Washington describes as the last 50-foot problem.

Ford and startup Agility Robotics are partnering in a research project that will test how two-legged robots and self-driving vehicles can work together to solve that curb-to-door problem. Agility’s Digit, a two-legged robot that has a lidar where its head should be, will be used in the project. The robot, which is capable of lifting 40 pounds, can ride along in a self-driving vehicle and be deployed when needed to delivery packages.

“We’re looking at the opportunity of autonomous vehicles through the lens of the consumer and we know from some early experimentation that there are challenges with the last 50 feet,” Washington told TechCrunch in a recent interview. Finding a solution could be an important differentiator for Ford’s commercial robotaxi service, which it plans to launch in 2021.

(Reuters) — The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday started a two-week test transporting mail across three Southwestern states using self-driving trucks, a step forward in the effort to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology for hauling freight.