[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.2&filename=hejedgabmgkdglfj.png" class="" height="100" width="169" border="0">

Friday, September 7, 2018

[log in to unmask]">SmartDrivingCar.com/6.38-GettingBetter-090718
38th edition of the 6th year of SmartDrivingCars

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="23" width="78">  Self-Driving Cars Will Keep Getting Better Forever

D. Silver, Sept. 4, " Evans raises a particularly interesting question about autonomy: "what winner takes all effects apply?"

Waymo, which recently surpassed 9 million miles driven autonomously, started working on autonomous vehicles in 2009, years before many current competitors. That head start has allowed them to rack up far more autonomous miles than other companies (the next closest program appears to be Uber's now-paused Advanced Technology Group, with 2 million autonomous miles)....
Similarly, Tesla has sold hundreds of thousands of Autopilot-enabled semi-autonomous cars. Collectively, Autopilot-enabled vehicles have driven approximately 1.5 billion miles, providing Tesla with a dataset no other company has.

With those kinds of leads, a question arises of whether Waymo and Tesla have already won the market?  ...." Read more Hmmmm.... Very good question!!  What do you think?  Alain  

imap:<a href=[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" src="cid:[log in to unmask]" id="_x0000_i1027" height="37" width="91" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 56

F. Fishkin, Sept 7,  "re Waymo and Tesla way out in front in autonomous technology.
Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser weighs in along with Fred Fishkin Episode 56 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. Plus the latest from Amazon, Aurora Innovation, Ouster, Jaguar Landrover and Fiat Chrysler. Tune in and subscribe!"

imap:<a href=[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" src="cid:[log in to unmask]" id="_x0000_i1027" height="37" width="91" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 55

F. Fishkin, Sept 6,  "The coming new world of driverless cars! In Episode 55 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast former GM VP and adviser to Waymo Larry Burns chats with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and Fred Fishkin about his new book "Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car and How it Will Reshape Our World"." Hmmmm.... Now you can just say "Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" .  Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay.  Alain

Real information every week.  Lively discussions with the people who are shaping the future of SmartDrivingCars.  Want to become a sustaining sponsor and help us grow the SmartDrivingCars newsletter and podcast? Contact Alain Kornhauser at [log in to unmask]!  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  Amazon just revealed an update to its plan to promise massive profits to anyone who wants to start a delivery company

D. Green, Sept. 5, "Amazon is going all in on its new delivery program.  The retailer announced on Wednesday that it would acquire 20,000 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans to use in its new homegrown delivery initiative, in which it says it will pay entrepreneurs to start small businesses to deliver its packages.

Amazon announced the program in June, promising $300,000 in annual profits for entrepreneurs willing to start companies and hire up to 100 drivers for a fleet of up to 40 delivery vehicles. The new vans will not be owned and managed by Amazon but by a fleet-vehicle company that will in turn lease to the new delivery companies.

The vans will, however, be emblazoned with Amazon's branding and blue Prime logo...."  Read more Hmmmm.... When will Jeff Bezos drop the other shoe, announcing that either he's developed, or is partnering with some "Waymo", to plop an automated technology package on each of these vans enabling each to make "Driverless Deliveries to your house in the wee hours of the morning"??? How neat would that be!!  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="22" width="99">  HOW SELF-DRIVING SUPERGROUP AURORA PLANS TO MAKE ROBOCARS REAL

A. Davis, Sept 4, "....Just about a decade into the race to develop self-driving cars, this young industry has its own supergroup: Aurora Innovation, formed by three of the biggest names in the field and veterans of its highest-profile efforts. At the end of 2016, Chris Urmson, Drew Bagnell, and Sterling Anderson created the startup to deliver fully self-driving technology—no human involvement—and will start with operations in geofenced areas (somewhere), slowly expanding as the cars prove themselves...

You might expect Aurora’s founders, then, to throw their cumulative experience into an ambitious effort to outrace these more established programs to market, one of those together we can rule the galaxy-type deals. Instead, the zeitgeist at Aurora is one of humility. Urmson, Bagnell, and Sterling haven’t put any hard dates on when it when their tech might be ready. They don’t pitch a grandiose vision of a remade world of mobility. They seem to seek a role as a Tier 1 supplier, selling self-driving tech to automakers the way others sell airbags....

Aurora hasn’t made much noise in general since starting work in January 2017, apart from announcing partnerships with Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Chinese startup Byton, and raising an impressive but hardly stunning $90 million in funding. But now that it’s looking build up its team (currently about 160-strong), it has published a blog post laying out its approach to robo-driving...."  Read more Hmmmm.... Very interesting and read blog below.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="36" width="36">  Aurora’s Approach to Development

Aurora Team, Sept. 4, "At Aurora we believe that self-driving technology will dramatically improve the safety, accessibility, and convenience of transportation. Our mission is to deliver these benefits safely, quickly and broadly. In service of that mission, we wanted to share some of our thinking on how we approach the development of this technology....

We’re making a fresh start at building the driver by combining excellence in AI, rigorous engineering and a team with decades of experience building robots that work. Together we will deliver self-driving vehicles safely, quickly and broadly...." Read more Hmmmm.... Interesting self appraisal. Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="39" width="46">  Volvo reveals new robo-taxi in race to autonomy

E. Vaish, Sept 5, "Volvo Cars presented a fully electric robo-taxi on Wednesday, as the Geely-owned Swedish company races to meet an ambitious target for driverless vehicle sales with its Uber supply deal on hold.  Besides city driving, Volvo said the 360c would extend its customer base by tapping into demand from inter-city taxi passengers traveling as far as 300 km (186 miles), allowing it to challenge short-haul airlines and train operators.

Chief Executive Hakan Samuelsson said the Uber partnership remained intact, with Volvo set to supply up to 24,000 cars to the startup over two years.  Samuelsson, speaking to journalists at the launch, said the company was in talks to deliver an autonomous car specially designed for Uber’s driverless program as it sees ride-hailing as the right way for Volvo to make good on its promise to deliver its first autonomous car by the 2020s.

“This is a product where we see interest from ride-hailing businesses,” Samuelsson said...."   Read more Hmmmm.... Very Interesting. To really serve and compete in the ride-hailing business, it must be driverless.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  This lidar/camera hybrid could be a powerful addition to driverless cars

T. Lee, Sept 4, "Lidars and cameras are two of the three standard sensors (along with radar) on almost all self-driving cars being tested today. Lidars and cameras both operate by detecting reflected light, but cameras are passive, whereas lidars actively send out laser pulses and measure the light that gets reflected back. Cameras produce a flat two-dimensional image, while conventional lidars produce a three-dimensional "point cloud."

Lidar startup Ouster has developed a clever and potentially significant hack: the company figured out how to make the sensors already on its powerful OS-1 lidar units function as a     camera, producing a panoramic two-dimensional snapshot of the sensor's

surroundings.Even better, these snapshots actually have three layers. The first layer is an ambient-light image like you would get from a conventional camera. Meanwhile, a second, "signal" layer is based on light reflected from the sensor's laser pulses. Finally, there's a "depth" layer that provides the distance to each pixel in the other two layers.

Still, these images have significant limitations: they're low-resolution, and they're black and white, not color. And while conventional cameras capture light in visible wavelengths, Ouster's lidar captures light in near-infrared wavelengths—though Ouster says the images "closely resemble visible light images of the same scenes."....

Convolutional neural networks are designed to work with multi-layered pixel maps—after all, conventional images can be thought of as having red, blue, and green layers. So it's straightforward to take a neural network designed for conventional color images and retrain it to recognize images with ambient, laser, and depth layers instead of red, blue, and green..."  Read more Hmmmm.... Very interesting having {greyScale, distance} at teach pixel, especially for improving "correspondence" with the "next frame" so that I can compute a relative velocity vector at each pixel.  Now I send that to CNN.  Watch out!   Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="17" width="132">   Fiat Chrysler Confirms $30M Investment for Autonomous Vehicle Testing Facilities

J. Gilboy, Sept 6, "Fiat Chrysler Automobiles confirmed on Thursday that it will invest $30 million on a variety of improvements to its testing facilities. The upgrades will help the automaker better develop and evaluate self-driving vehicles.

The announcement outlined three major upgrades to its Chelsea Proving Grounds test track in Chelsea, Michigan. The first is a 6,500 square-foot command center equipped with computer monitoring systems for external control and tracking of prototype autonomous vehicles. The second is a track for highway-speed testing exclusively with autonomous vehicle prototypes, which will be subjected to a variety of conditions such as tunnels, obstacles, on- and off-ramps, and different lighting conditions. Lastly, a 35-acre paved area will be used for automated parking and emergency braking system testing. ..."  Read more Hmmmm.... Not Half-baked like BMW's announcement because the  "monitoring capability (and remote intervention)" of a  driverless vehicle fleet is really important.  Testing at "highway speeds", which means 85 mph or less (this isn't Germany, we have no autobahns) is just fine, thank you.  Anything that will help make "emergency braking systems" actually work is worth its weight in Gold.  Thank you Fiat Chrysler.  So the only thing that could have been considered "half-baked" is the "automated parking" ... that's just so lame and really trivial in the scope of driverless capability...  Anyway, nice job Fiat Chrysler. Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="26" width="46">  Jaguar Land Rover's prototype driverless car makes eye contact with pedestrians

R. Aouf, Sept 4, "Jaguar Land Rover has created self-driving cars with eyes that are used to communicate with pedestrians when it's safe to cross in front of them...." Read more Hmmmm.... Cute, but is this really the way these machines should communicate with us???   I suspect that Don Norman , Myra Blanco and others would have better approaches.   Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="24" width="156">  Tesla stock falls as Mercedes unveils an all-electric SUV and Goldman Sachs says 'sell'

R. Mitchell, Sept 4, "...Mercedes-Benz on Tuesday unveiled the EQC, its first entry into the all-electric luxury vehicle market. It joins Jaguar’s new I-Pace all-electric SUV, due in U.S. showrooms this fall. ...Rising competition was one reason Goldman Sachs stock analyst David Tamberrino downgraded Tesla’s stock Tuesday morning; the other is the pending end of tax credits on its vehicles.

In a note to investors, Tamberrino put a “sell” rating on Tesla stock with a target price of $210 a share — 30% below Friday’s closing price of $301.66. At the close of trading Tuesday, Tesla stock was down 4% to $288.95...."  Read more Hmmmm.... Ouch!  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">   Micron Bets $3 Billion on Autonomous Vehicles

B. Duberstein, Sept 4, "...Beyond 2021, more widespread adoption of Level 5 autonomous vehicles could accelerate the need for memory even further. Although today's "regular" vehicles have quite a bit of electronic content in them, a fully autonomous Level 5 vehicle -- which can drive with no human behind the wheel -- will need more than nine times the amount of DRAM and a stunning 100 times the amount of NAND flash!..." Read more Hmmmm.... Maybe. Look also at Micron v nVIDIA Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">   Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) Open Data Recommendations

A. Somers, Sept 2018, "...The recommendations from this project seek to map out a strategic approach to the next steps that Austroads could take in this field. The recommended approach includes a phase of active learning to assist the development of the positive guidance sought by government and industry. While some aspects of the future data ecosystem have emerged, much remains unclear and developments are occurring at fast pace. The value of the future guidance will be strengthened by using this active learning as a key input. Beyond this, the focus shifts to supporting change..."  Read more Hmmmm.... Lots of discussion but doesn't really deal with the 10 seconds prior to cashes and near misses. (or I missed it in the report.)  Alain


Jobs


Half-baked stuff that probably doesn't deserve your time

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="17" width="132">  BMW Building High-Tech Driving Simulation Center in Munich

G. Kuruvilla, Sept 5, "e BMW Group has started work on a new $116 million Driving Simulation Center in Munich that will help with the company's testing and development of autonomous driving technology. The new facility will "bring the road into the lab” and is located in Munich’s Milbertshofen district. The new build will cover a total of 123,000 square feet and will be equipped with 14 simulators and labs creating nearly 160 jobs. The facility is expected to be completed in 2020.

The Driving Simulation Center will allow virtual testing of advanced driving assistance systems, and innovative display and control concepts to move autonomous tech forward. At the heart of the center are two innovative driving simulators. One is a high-dynamic simulator creating movements up to 1.0 G-force. It will be used to test new systems and functions by replicating evading maneuvers, full braking, and hard acceleration.

The second unit is one that can provide an extremely detailed rendering of real-world driving characteristics and is called the high-fidelity simulator. Braking and accelerating while cornering, driving in roundabouts, and a series of multiple turn-off maneuvers can be reproduced with precision in this simulator’s nearly 4,300 square-foot motion area.  ..."  Read more Hmmmm.... Half-baked because this is at least "half" to support BMW as the "ultimate driving machine" and less than "half" to support "autonomous driving" aka "ultimate riding machine" and thus a misrepresentation on BMW's part.  If it was really to support the   "...testing and development of autonomous driving technology. .. ", then they would be talking about all of the nVIDIA boards that they were buying and all of the AI Dynamic Deep Learning stuff and the number of Virtual Reality gamers that they'll be hiring to build a robust training, testing and enhancing environment to ensure the safety, comfort and convenience of the shared-ride-hailing public.  Alain

 C'mon Man!  (These folks didn't get/read the memo)



Calendar of Upcoming Events:

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.5&filename=lmjdiniodjkflpia.png" class="" height="52" width="46" border="0">

3rd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit
evening May 14 through May 16, 2019
Save the Date; Reserve your Sponsorship

Catalog of Videos of Presentations @ 2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit
Photos from 2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit

Program & Links to slides from 2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit



imap:<a href=[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" src="cid:[log in to unmask]" id="_x0000_i1027" height="37" width="91" border="0">

Recent PodCasts

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 54

F. Fishkin, Aug 26,  "The impact of the Hitch service murders in China on ride sharing, Toyota's investment in Uber and the issue of who controls data...are the focus of Episode 54 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast. Co-hosts Alain Kornhauser of Princeton University and Fred Fishkin are joined by The Dispatcher publisher Michael Sena."

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 53

F. Fishkin, Aug 26,  "Ralph Nader weighs in when it comes to safety regulations for self driving vehicles.... but is his focus in the right place? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser offers up his thoughts on that and more ...from Zoox, to Waymo, Lyft and Drive.AI in Episode 53 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast with co-host Fred Fishkin. Tune in and subscribe!"

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 52

F. Fishkin, Aug 18,  "Uber's future is linked to it's ability to deploy self driving vehicles. That's what Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser says in Episode 52 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast with co-host Fred Fishkin. Also...the latest from Ford, Tesla, Elon Musk, Kroger and more. Tune in and subscribe!"

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 51

F. Fishkin, Aug 11,  "Waymo worth 175 billion dollars before it starts charging for rides? Join Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for Episode 51 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. And the latest on Uber and the battle with New York City, Olli shuttles off to Buffalo, Tesla and BMW."

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 50

Aug 3, F. Fishkin, , "Drive.ai gets ready for self driving tests in Texas, Waymo partners with public transit, Tesla's self driving chips and the latest on Uber and Lyft. All that and more in Episode 50 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast with Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Tune in and subscribe!"

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 49

F. Fishkin, July 27, "When will we shift from buying cars to buying rides? In Episode 49 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast, entrepreneur, speaker and co-author of "The End of Driving: Transportation Systems and Public Policy Planning for Autonomous Vehicles" ...Bern Grush joins co-hosts Alain Kornhauser of Princeton and Fred Fishkin. That along with the latest on Ford, Waymo, Uber and more."

 Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 48

F. Fishkin, July 23, "What to make of Waymo as it passes 8 million miles of automated driving on public roads? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser joins Fred Fishkin for Episode 48 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. This week... Waymo, Zoox, Embark, Nvidia and new reports from Brookings."

 Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 47

F. Fishkin, July 14, "Self driving taxis from Mercedes? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser says, "No thank you". Why? Tune in as the faculty chair of autonomous vehicle engineering joins Fred Fishkin for that and much more in episode 47 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast."

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 45 F. Fishkin, June 15, "Waymo marks the first year of its early rider program. The news is good but Princeton's Alain Kornhauser says it could be better. How? Tune in to Episode 45 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast for that and the latest on GM, Voyage, Ford and more "

 Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 44

F. Fishkin, June 12, "What is the big mistake California is making in driverless vehicle testing? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser says the key is to promote ride sharing. Join the professor and co-host Fred Fishkin for Episode 44 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast for more on that, Waymo, Tesla and more.

 Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 38

F. Fishkin, May 10, "The continuing Uber crash investigation, Waymo and Ohio rolls out the welcome mat for the testing of self driving cars. All that and more in Episode 38 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast. This week Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by Bryant Walker Smith of the University of South Carolina and Stanford. Tune in and subscribe!"

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 34

F. Fishkin, Apr 13, "Should a brand new regulatory agency be formed to oversee self driving and driverless vehicles? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser says yes in Episode 34 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast with co-host Fred Fishkin. Also...Uber's CEO calls self driving vehicles are in the student driver phase....and Tesla feuds with the NTSB."

Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 33

F. Fishkin, Apr 4, " Waymo is making it real! In Episode 33 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast, hosts Fred Fishkin and Princeton's Alain Kornhauser are joined by Michael Sena, publisher of The Dispatcher newsletter. Take a deep dive into Waymo's deals with Jaguar and talks with Honda.. Tesla, Volvo, Uber and Ambarella. And the Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit is coming up!         "


Friday, August 31, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="39" width="50">  Customers Died. Will That Be a Wake-Up Call for China’s Tech Scene?

L. Yuan, Aug. 29. "Huang Jieli, who ran a Chinese ride-sharing business called Hitch, was invited to a wedding in March. One of her drivers was getting married to a woman who had once been his passenger. Thanks, the invitation said, for getting them hitched.  Didi Chuxing, Hitch’s corporate parent and one of the world’s most successful and valuable start-ups, once cheered these stories of young love. Like so many other Chinese internet companies, Didi explored all kinds of ways to bring in new users, including social networking.

So through suggestive ads hinting at hookups through driving, Didi pushed Hitch’s romantic possibilities. In a 2015 interview with the Chinese online portal NetEase, Ms. Huang compared Hitch cars to cafes and bars. ...

In the aftermath of the two assaults, Chinese media has uncovered dozens of others over the years. It also found past advertisements for Hitch that featured lewd double entendres and other language that could suggest a female passenger might welcome an advance from her male driver. ..."  Read more Hmmmm.... This is truly UGLY!  Given all of the inter-personal sensitivities associated this with business, both now with gig drivers and later with efforts to encourage ride-sharing in driverless aTaxis, how could such an advertising approach ever see the light of day at any on-demand ride-hailing company.  Aren't there any adults at DiDI?  It is bad enough that Uber deliberately tested its Self-driving cars in domains where/when those cars had their AEB turned off.  It is way worse to the whole ride-hailing mobility-as-a-service business, when one of its shining stars spends money advertising in such a way.  Ride-hailing and ride-sharing are serious businesses that absolutely require simultaneous and complete trust and confidence between what are otherwise complete strangers.  Inspiring any desire to engender "ChatRouletteness" should and will lead directly to Blockbuster.  This is really UGLY!  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="40" width="38">  Waymo’s Big Ambitions Slowed by Tech Trouble

A. Efrati, Aug 28, "HANDLER, Ariz.—Alphabet’s Waymo unit is a worldwide leader in autonomous vehicle development for suburban environments. It has said it would launch a driverless robo-taxi service to suburban Phoenix residents this year. Yet its self-driving minivan prototypes have trouble crossing the T-intersection closest to the company’s Phoenix-area headquarters here.

Two weeks ago, Lisa Hargis, an administrative assistant who works at an office a stone’s throw from Waymo’s vehicle depot, said she nearly hit a Waymo Chrysler Pacifica minivan because it stopped abruptly while making a right turn at the intersection. “Go!” she shouted angrily, she said, after getting stuck in the intersection midway through her left turn. Cars that had been driving behind the Waymo van also stopped. “I was going to murder someone,” she said.

The hesitation at the intersection is one of many flaws evident in Waymo’s technology, say five people with direct knowledge of the issues in Phoenix. More than a dozen local residents who frequently encounter one of the hundreds of Waymo test vehicles circulating in the area complained about sudden moves or stops. The company’s safety drivers—individuals who sit in the driver’s seat—regularly have to take control of the wheel to avoid a collision or potentially unsafe situation, the people said....

 In reality, the vast majority of Waymo’s test cars continue to use safety drivers. Typically, the cars that drive without a person at the wheel have been in relatively small residential areas of Chandler, Ariz., where there is little traffic, according to people familiar with the program. And these vehicles are monitored closely by remote operators that can help the cars when they run into issues. (Waymo last week told the Verge that its first driverless taxis would include a “chaperone” from Waymo who would sit in the cars.)..."  Read more Hmmmm.... As I've been saying, we are still at the very beginning.... 0.001 degrees Kelvin.  Plus "others/non-users" will never like them.  Just this morning I honked at the driver in front of me who passed up a gap to make an unprotected left turn.  I had to wait for a whole cycle!!  I hate every car that drives on Cleveland Lane in front of my house.  I want that street all for myself.   I hate buses.  I hate trucks.  I hate everything and everyone but me.  This is just human nature.  Little respect for others.  Heck, I'm the only good driver out there. The innuendos are not surprising.  We'll just have to grin and bear them as we do with all of the conventional cars running around out there. 

On a more serious note, this reality demonstrates that we may need  regulation/legislation that  explicitly protects the rights of driverless cars to share the  public road infrastructure.  We do this for bicycles, motorcycles and in a way even for trucks and buses.  Also, buses, and other vehicles today have signs on their backs that state "This vehicle stops at all RR crossings" because it differs from normal car behavior.      I suggest that Waymo and all that are testing driverless vehicles on city streets place a sign on the back of each vehicles:"This Car Obeys All Traffic Laws and Rules.  You should too
[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="83" width="115">  [log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="85" width="134"> Alain

Sunday, Augus26, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class=""> The founder of $3.2 billion startup Zoox says that he was ousted as CEO 'without a warning' because 'the board chose a path of fear'

T. Wolverton, Aug 22, "The CEO of Zoox has left in a management shake-up at the the high-profile, well-funded, and idiosyncratic self-driving car startup.

Zoox has already started searching for a replacement for Tim Kentley-Klay, who cofounded the Silicon Valley-based company, a source close to Zoox told Business Insider. In the meantime, it has named board member Carl Bass as its executive chairman and cofounder Jesse Levinson as its president, the source said. Bass is the former CEO of Autodesk.

Kentley-Klay confirmed his ouster in a statement posted on his Twitter account. Zoox's board fired him "without a warning, cause or right of reply," he said in the statement.  "Today was Silicon Valley up to its worst tricks," he said. "Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win," he continued, "the board chose a path of fear, optimizing for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress for the universe."

Along with his statement, Kentley-Klay posted a pair of charts comparing Zoox to its chief rivals — Google spinoff Waymo, Uber, and GM-owned Cruise. The charts essentially assert that Zoox has made more progress with its technology for less money than its rivals... A native of Australia, Kentley-Klay had no background automobile engineering or artificial intelligence before starting Zoox, according to a recent Bloomberg profile. Instead, he had worked in online advertising.." Read more Hmmmm.... Must be trying to protect its $3.2B valuation and avert an "Uberism" (a single valuation-changing irresponsible incident) .   Alain

Saturday, August 18, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="40" width="38">  Uber’s Losses Mount at Self-Driving Car Unit

A. Efrati, Aug 15, "Uber has been spending between $125 million and $200 million a quarter on its self-driving car unit over the past 18 months, The Information has learned, equivalent to between 15% and 30% of the company’s quarterly losses. The previously undisclosed spending highlights the financial burden that self-driving car development has imposed on Uber and why CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is under pressure to decide what to do about it.

Some investors have told Uber officials that it may be wise to divest the self-driving car unit, said a person familiar with the issue. Uber has invested least $2 billion in the unit over the past three years. Yet the company hasn’t yet come up with a clear path to commercializing the technology it has developed.

The group’s quarterly cash burn of $1 million to $2 million per day has been particularly high during quarters when Uber paid for expensive hardware like cars and sensors that are attached to the cars, said a person with knowledge of the data. The company has tried to reduce some expenses by withdrawing operations from Arizona and cutting a development effort for self-driving trucks. Broadly, though, there’s no sign that the unit’s cash needs will meaningfully come down. An Uber spokeswoman did not have a comment....

The argument against selling the autonomous unit would be that Uber needs to have a way to develop self-driving cars if other companies won’t partner with it. Long term, self-driving cars could help Uber’s ride-hailing network reduce costs from not having to employ drivers. If Uber doesn’t develop the cars itself, it will need to figure out how to get other car developers to agree to use their vehicles to pick up Uber’s passengers...." Read more Hmmmm.... They are really between a rock and a hard place. They can’t really grow without. If someone else is successful at making it work, they'll operate it themselves rather than license it (Netflix didn't license its service to Blockbuster).   With that competition, Uber's valuation goes to 10x earnings which is an ugly IPO .  The only upside rests in Driverless, so they can't get out.   Alain

Friday, August 10, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="23" width="78">  Why Waymo Is Worth A Staggering $175 Billion Even Before Launching Its Self-Driving Cars

A. Ohnsman, Aug 7,  "Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s multibillion-dollar self-driving vehicle bet hasn’t yet launched commercial operations but that’s not stopping Morgan Stanley from predicting massive potential for the company that’s emerged as the leader in the autonomous tech race.

A year after his initial estimate that Waymo was likely a $75 billion startup, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas raised it to a staggering $175 billion, citing greater revenue potential from passenger ride services and licensing of its tech. The biggest source of future revenue, however, is likely to come from autonomous trucking and delivery services, which Jonas thinks could generate as much as $90 billion....." Read more Hmmmm.... Wow, a year ago some thought Waymo and Uber were neck2neck in the Driverless horse race. Waymo executed its business plan, had no crashes and went from $75B to $175B.  Uber executed its business plan, had one crash and went from $73B to  ? (<$50B) .  Just in case you thought safety wasn't important.    Just think, if Waymo continues on its business plan without causing a crash, it means that their "driverless suite" really does work in its expanding geo-fenced areas.  That dynamic evolution suggests that in September, 2020, there will be ~100,000 Waymo aTaxis serving ~5M trips a day throughout many medium density areas across a substantial part of the USA.   And in September 2022 there will be...  (you can do the math...  Kornhauser's Waymo Law.. 10x every 2 years).   There is a very big "IF... & WITHOUT", but when the "driverless suite" works (and it may well be working now, since it hasn't caused a crash, but Waymo hasn't divulged "near misses"..), then the probability that the "driverless suite" causes a crash is really small and there is essentially zero pushback to delivering what is an almost insatiable demand for the affordable mobility services afforded by the"driverless suite".  That's why it is worth $175B today ....   and potentially $500B in 2020. (Boy this is fun!!).  Alain

Friday, August 3, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="32" width="55"> On the eve of a 6-month pilot, Drive.ai details its self-driving car plans

K. Wiggers, July 30, "It’s been almost a year since Waymo, the autonomous vehicle division of Google parent Alphabet, became the first company to operate autonomous cars on public roads without drivers behind the wheel. Now Drive.ai intends to follow suit.  This month, the Silicon Valley startup will set loose a fleet of self-driving Nissan NV200 vans in Frisco, Texas. They won’t be completely autonomous —  a small army of safety drivers and remote operators will ensure rides go off without a hitch. And the vehicles will be contained in a geofenced area.

But Drive.ai’s six-month test will be one of the largest of its kind so far. When all is said and done, the company hopes to transport over 10,000 people in its driverless cars.

Here’s how it’ll do it...." Read more Hmmmm.... This shows the amount of work that needs to be done just to prepare for Driverless operation, and this is even before one finally operates without an "attendant".  This also demonstrates how far ahead Waymo is from anyone else.  Alain

Friday, July 27,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class=""> Ford is taking on Waymo and GM's Cruise by creating its own standalone self-driving division

M. deBord, July 24, "... The division will be called Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC and will be overseen by Sherif Marakby as CEO; Marakby had been a vice-president of Ford's self-driving and electrified initiatives.... Ford CEO Jim Hackett said in a statement. "Now is the right time to consolidate our autonomous driving platform into one team to best position the business for the opportunities ahead."

According to Ford, the new company will be "structured to take on third-party investment," an indication that the 115-year-old company is paying close attention to the competition....

General Motor's Cruise division recently announced a $2.25-billion investment from Japan's SoftBank, which paired with an additional $1.1-billion investment from GM gave Cruise an $11.5-billion valuation. (GM acquired Cruise for a total of around $1 billion in 2016.)

Alphabet's Waymo unit (formerly the Google Car project) is also heading toward a commercial rollout in the next 12 months, launching a fully autonomous fleet of vehicles in a ride-hailing framework. Standalone valuations for Waymo have been estimated at more than $50 billion.  ... not bad given that they've likely spent less than $1.5B to create that "valuation" which is likely to be low.  Which would you prefer to own for $50B, Uber or Waymo?  Talk about a no-brainer!.. 

The carmaker said that Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC will include an "ownership stake in Argo AI, the company's Pittsburgh-based partner for self-driving system development," in which the company "expects to invest $4 billion in its AV efforts through 2023, including its $1 billion investment in Argo AI."j..." Read more Hmmmm.... Ford need this since the legacy piece is focusing on people who want to "haul stuff".  Alain

Monday, July 23,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="23" width="78"> Transition To Autonomous Cars Will Take Longer Than You Think, Waymo CEO Tells Governors

S. Abuelsamid, July 20,  "Speaking in a fireside chat at the National Governors Association meeting Friday, Waymo CEO John Krafcik told the gathering that the “time period will be longer than you think” for automated vehicles to be everywhere..."everywhere" makes the statement meaningless.    ...  "“There are no autonomous systems available, zero on the road today,” said Krafcik. “Anything you can buy on the road today is a driver assist system, that means the driver is completely responsible for the car and I think there is so much confusion on that.”...  Agree 100%!  "...What Krafcik was referring to was some of the issues caused by consumers believing that the assist systems currently on the market are more capable than they actually are, ..." ...In particular the Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) Systems on those vehicles and the perception that these vehicles have AEBs that are actually functioning (which in many cases they are not functioning) while the lane centering and intelligent cruise control systems are doing the nominal lateral and longitudinal control of the car.   "...the problem is not unique to Tesla. Systems from Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and other manufacturers have similar limitations.
...“We humans are becoming used to some of the semi-autonomous technology, and I don’t like that term that's on the road, that's driver assist technology,” added Krafcik. We still have to be completely alert and in control of the cars that were driving every minute, every second that we're on the road driving.”...

Waymo’s goal is to replace that sort of technology with systems that don’t require any human supervision, something that the company decided several years ago was not a viable solution. Instead, Waymo plans to launch its automated ride hailing service commercially in the Phoenix area later this year and gradually expand to other cities as the technology continues to mature and is proven safe in those locations....Despite the rapid accumulation of testing miles, Krafcik warned the governors not to end all of their infrastructure investments just yet....Widespread adoption in the millions of vehicles globally is unlikely before the latter half of the 2020s"  ...Given that we are just in the hundreds of vehicles today, getting to millions in less than 10 years is fairly optimistic and not "longer than you think".  A few million in the US would serve about 100 million person trips a day, or more than 10% of total personTrips,...more than twice that served by all public transit today.  While that's not "everywhere", everyone will not be more than one person removed from someone who is using aTaxis everyday...
".... Krafcik was equally non-committal to Sandoval’s query about when he might be able to purchase his own car with Waymo technology. While Waymo and Fiat Chrysler are in talks about utilizing this virtual driver system on cars for retail sale, Krafcik said it’s going to be some time yet. The emphasis for now is the ride-hailing service, trucking and logistics and working with transit authorities. Supplying systems for personal use cars is last on the timeline...."  Read more Hmmmm.... Amen!!!  Driverless cars are mobility providing machines.  "Mothballing" them by selling them to individuals who will use them "4% of the day" has to be last on everybody's time-line.   Plus those individuals are  likely to be  uninterested and incapable of properly maintaining them so they will become a public nuisance and public liability.   Alain

Saturday, July 14,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="22" width="99"> MERCEDES WILL LAUNCH SELF-DRIVING TAXIS IN CALIFORNIA NEXT YEAR

J. Stewart, July 10, "...Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler took a cautious step into the swamp stomp, announcing plans to launch a self-driving car pilot somewhere in Silicon Valley, next year.

Daimler is calling its service an “automated shuttle,” but it's not referring to some blobby, slow-moving van. It’s going to start out using a fleet of S-Class luxury sedans and B-Class hatchbacks, with long-term plans for vehicles designed for autonomous driving, like the F 015 “Luxury in Motion” concept it showed off a few years back..."  Read more  Hmmmm....  Daimler, please DON'T!!!! This is such the wrong concept by the wrong company.  Daimler is singularly focused on 1%ers and the last thing that 1%ers need are Driverless aTaxis!  1%ers already have more personal mobility than they can throw a stick at. 1%ers  can easily afford a driver/attendant, so they have no need for Driverless. And one suspects that those who seek elite modes of transportation will not be the first to share rides with others. Daimler, this isn't your market.  Please stick to the Safe-driving and Self-Driving (with adult supervision) worlds.  You are doing a great job with those, but, please,  don't ruin the the Driverless, mobility-for-all world with your "F 015 “Luxury in Motion”concept, which reeks of exclusivity. Daimler's proposed design seems fundamentally focused on the very few.  Driverless is a technological opportunity to provide life-enhancing mobility to the many, which is NOT in Daimler's DNA and unfortunately NOT is the EU's DNA, because Daimler has played such a strong role in the evolution of the EU's perspective on AV technology.  Driverless must focus on shared-riding whenever practical, else it will fail.  So please, Daimler, stay away for  now.  Alain

Saturday, June 30,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="39" width="46"> Uber car's 'safety' driver streamed TV show before fatal crash: police

H. Somerville, June 22, "The safety driver behind the wheel of a self-driving Uber car in Tempe, Arizona, was streaming a television show on her phone until about the time of a fatal crash, according to a police report that deemed the March 18 incident “entirely avoidable.” ...The report said police concluded the crash, which has dealt Uber Technologies Inc a major setback in its efforts to develop self-driving cars, would have been “entirely avoidable” if Vasquez had been paying attention.

Vasquez could face charges of vehicular manslaughter, according to the report, which was released late on Thursday in response to a public records request....

Police obtained records from Hulu, an online service for streaming TV shows and movies, which showed Vasquez’s account was playing the TV talent show “The Voice” for about 42 minutes on the night of the crash, ending at 9:59 p.m., which “coincides with the approximate time of the collision,” the report said."  Read more  Hmmmm....  This doesn't absolve Uber.  Uber's interest in Automated Vehicles is confined to the "Driverless" variety.  Those that can deliver mobility services without a driver.  Technology that requires human supervision, such as a "Self-driving" car, is of no value to Uber.  What limits Uber is the number of competent drivers that it can engage.   Driverless technology enables Uber to grow beyond being a niche business serving 1% of person trips to being a dominant service providing mobility to greater than 10% of person trips.  Only Driverless will enable then to reliably and effectively provide that amount of mobility.  So why was Uber testing a technology that, by design in that domain (traveling greater than 30 mph) requires a human attendant/driver because the Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) system is, by design, turned off (disregarded) at speeds greater than 30mph.  With the AEB turned off, the last line of defense against a crash is a driver.  Thus a driver is required and that domain has no value to Uber.  Uber had no  reason to be testing on public street, outside of its "Drivereless" design domain and thus was reckless and they probably failed to adequately inform its drivers to remain especially alert when testing in domains where its technology is, by design, incapable of providing Driverless operation.  Alain

Friday, June 15,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  Waymo’s early rider program, one year in

Waymo team, June 13, "Ariel rides after school. Neha hops to the grocery store. Barbara and Jim zip around town while kicking back.

They’re all part of the Waymo early rider program we launched last April. Today, over 400 riders with diverse backgrounds use Waymo every day, at any time, to ride all around the Phoenix area. Their feedback helps us understand how fully self driving cars fit into their daily lives.

One year in, our early rider program and our extensive on-road testing is helping us build the world’s most experienced driver. In fact, our fleet of cars across the U.S. is now driving more than 24,000 miles daily; that’s the equivalent of an around the world road trip! Here’s a quick report on how our riders use Waymo, what we’ve learned, and what’s next....As some of the first people in the world to use self-driving vehicles for their everyday transportation needs, our early riders are helping shape this technology. Thanks to their feedback, we’re refining the rider experience to make sure that: ...  nobody wants to carry grocery bags a block down the street... "  Read more Hmmmm.... Yipes!!  The personal car isn't bad enough in its focus on private single-occupant parkingSpot2parkingSpot mobility? Are we now going to have Waymo providing it Door2Door with zero opportunity to share rides and while delivering negative public benefits of increased energy, pollution and congestion with all of its empty vehicle repositioning.  No wonder the CPUC voted to forbid ride-sharing.  Did Waymo made them do it since Waymo hasn't done ride-sharing in Phoenix? Having 2 or more people in the car isn't ride sharing if they would have all gone together in their own car had Waymo not been there.  So Bad!!!  Without ride-sharing, this is just expensive, energy inefficient and environmentally challenged private chauffeuring for the entitled privileged class:  See video Just like watching Oszzie & Harriet or Leave it to Beaver.  For Waymo to "Win it", they'll need to embrace ride-sharing because no "Blue-state" PUC is going to be as impressionable as as California's.  Alain

Tuesday, June 12,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="45" width="52"> CPUC AUTHORIZES PASSENGER CARRIERS TO PROVIDE FREE TEST RIDES IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES WITH VALID CPUC AND DMV PERMITS

Press Release, May 31, "...Today’s decision also allows TCP permit-holders that hold a “DMV Manufacturer’s Testing Permit – Driverless Vehicles” to operate autonomous vehicles without a driver in the vehicle, subject to certain restrictions. Authorization to provide this service is available only to TCP permit-holders with driverless autonomous vehicles that have been in DMV-permitted driverless operation on California roads for a minimum of 30 days. Entities seeking to participate in the pilot program are not allowed to operate from or within airports; must limit the use of the vehicle to one chartering party at any given time (i.e., fare-splitting is not permitted); must ensure that the service can only be chartered by adults 18 years and older; and may not accept monetary compensation for the ride. Participants are also required to continuously comply with all DMV regulations, and to report certain data to the CPUC on a quarterly basis that will be publicly available...."  Read more  Hmmmm.....Good News:  Able to serve customers with autonomousTaxis.  Bad news: Not able to Share Rides.  (This is really bad news because having the public oversight body focus Driverless serving single occupants thereby making even worse the fundamental problem of the personal auto is simply REALLY BAD!.  Their opportunity is to encourage ride-sharing whenever possible so as to alleviate  congestion and reduce energy and pollution.  C'mon CPUC!!  The fact that the rides are free is largely irrelevant at this time, except as, once again, a subsidy to the 1%ers who are a disproportionate element of the early adopters that are likely to hail this service.  Alain

Friday, June 8,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="24" width="156"> Tesla Model X on Autopilot sped up seconds before deadly crash in Silicon Valley, report says

R. Mitchell, June 7, "Three seconds before a Tesla Model X on Autopilot slammed into a concrete barrier in March in Silicon Valley, killing the driver, the car sped up, the brakes were not applied, and there was no evasive action.

Those findings were disclosed Thursday in a preliminary report from the NTSB on the Highway 101 crash that took the life of Walter Huang, a 38-year-old software engineer at Apple. ...

Alain Kornhauser, head of the autonomous car engineering program at Princeton University, said the NTSB and Tesla have plenty of questions left to answer....Read more  Hmmmm.....Just a couple of things:

1.  " ...for the last 6 seconds prior to the crash, the vehicle did not detect the driver’s hands on the steering
wheel."  Was the driver's hands on the wheel during the 7th second prior to the crash and did his hands over-ride the Tesla's steering command in any way?  Did they initiate the "left steering movement".  If not, what initiated that steering movement"? What was the exact longitudinal and lateral positions of the car 8 seconds before the crash, 7 seconds before the crash, 6 seconds before the crash, ...?

2.  During the 7th, 6th, 5th and 4th second before the crash how did the Tesla's lateral positioning vary relative the the lateral position of the lead car?

3.  During the last 3 seconds prior to the crash, did any of the sensors detect an object ahead?  If yes, what closing speed (or "stationary world coordinate" speed) was assigned to that object?

4.  Does Tesla employ different lateral control logic if the Tesla is following a car ahead rather than simply "staying between two road lane markings?  To what extent does it continue to follow the car ahead if the car ahead begins to cross a lane marking?

5 .  Which lane did the lead car take at the fork( left or right)?  (NHTS should provide a Plan View of the crash location).

6.  Why did the CA Highway Department not replace/repair the attenuator in less than 11 days (or in the time between March 12 and March 23).   
7.  Why isn't the area stripped (cross hatched) leading up to the barrier and inside the point lines.  No car should ever stop there, correct???   Alain

Sunday, June 3,  2018

  SOFTBANK FLIPS THE VENTURE-CAPITAL SCRIPT AGAIN WITH GM DEAL

E. Griffith, May 31, "GENERAL MOTORS, THE 10th-largest company by revenue in the US, is eager to lay the groundwork for future growth by developing self-driving technology. But its shareholders are dubious of too much spending as revenue declines—it fell 5.5 percent last year.

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has the opposite problem: a giant pile of cash but not enough opportunities to spend it. The company’s Vision Fund does not make investments smaller than $100 million, and there are only so many startups worthy of such a large check. That’s why the firm has taken a loose interpretation of its artificial-intelligence-focused investment thesis, including aspects of human needs that won’t be replaced by technology.

It also helps explain SoftBank’s $2.25 billion investment in GM’s self-driving car unit, Cruise, announced Thursday. The move further complicates the tangled web of connections among startups, automakers, big tech companies, and venture investors angling for a piece of the market for autonomous vehicles—a market that doesn’t yet exist but is expected one day to generate trillions of dollars in revenue.

The overlapping investments and alliances have become so prevalent that they border on conflicts. And SoftBank sits at the center.

To wit: SoftBank invested in Uber after it had already backed Uber competitors in India (Ola), Singapore (Grab), Brazil (99), and China (Didi). Didi, which also invested in Ola, Grab, 99, and Lyft, eventually merged with Uber’s China business. Uber continues to compete with Ola in India and 99 (which Didi acquired) in Brazil. Meanwhile SoftBank’s Vision Fund has taken investment from Apple, which has its own autonomous vehicle program, and Uber has taken investment from the venture arm of Alphabet, owner of autonomous competitor Waymo, which recently settled a nasty lawsuit against Uber and received a small slice of equity in its rival. Oh, and SoftBank portfolio company Alibaba has invested in Uber rival Lyft, along with Ford, GM, and CapitalG, the late-stage investment arm of Alphabet...." Read more  Hmmmm.... Most interesting.  Must be a realization that Uber's "Driverless Initiative" is so hopelessly 3rd rate, that SoftBank invested up to the 2nd pick in order to salvage the Uber IPO valuation.  SoftBank has a tangled web of investments but it is strategically biases in a desperate attempt to catch the breakout leader Waymo.  All the while Waymo seems to be putting the pedal to the metal. (next article).     Alain

  Waymo’s fleet of self-driving minivans is about to get 100 times bigger

A. Hawkins, May 31, "The size of Waymo’s fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans just got radically bigger. The Alphabet unit announced today that it struck a deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, for an additional 62,000 minivans to be deployed as robot taxis." Hmmmm.... Wow!!  What is Waymo going to do with 60,000 more aTaxis on top of the 20,000 Jaguars they ordered a few months back???  I guess that they will send a couple thousand to NJ. .   Those 80,000 aTaxis will serve about 4 million person trips/day (~50 personTrips/aTaxi-day).  That's about 0.5% of all personTrips greater than 0.5 miles in the USA on a typical day, roughly equal to the number of personTrips that Uber serves today in the US on a typical day today in the USA and is ~10% of the personTrips riding today's conventional transit systems.  Wow!!!
Moreover, the two companies have also begun discussions about how to eventually sell self-driving cars to customers as personally owned vehicles..." Read more  Hmmmm.... What????  Waymo can't be serious.  No way Waymo or anyone else is going to allow these vehicles to be in the hands of consumers.  The professional maintenance and adult supervision required by these vehicles today makes such a suggestion preposterous.  Moreover, this would be Uber's biggest windfall, to be able to buy the best driverless car rather than having to make it themselves.  No way Waymo allows Uber this windfall.  The floor price for a goose that lays golden eggs is the investment required to purchase an annuity of golden eggs.  Not only is that a big number, Uber doesn't have any secret sauce that can extract more value out of those eggs than Waymo can.  So, if Uber bids high enough to buy them, they'll lose money.  This "rumor" deserves a super C'mon Man!!! Alain

Thursday, May 31,  2018

AI Winter Is Well On Its Way

F. Piekniewski, "Deep learning has been at the forefront of the so called AI revolution for quite a few years now, and many people had believed that it is the silver bullet that will take us to the world of wonders of technological singularity (general AI). ...We have now mid 2018 and things have changed. ..By far the biggest blow into deep learning fame is the domain of self driving vehicles ..

But by far the biggest prick punching through the AI bubble was the accident in which Uber self driving car killed a pedestrian in Arizona. From the preliminary report by the NTSB we can read some astonishing statements:..." Read more  Hmmmm.... Very interesting.  We still have an awful lot to do.  See also,G. Marcus, below. Alain

Friday, May 25,  2018

PRELIMINARY REPORT: HIGHWAY: HWY18MH010 (Uber/Herzberg Crash)

KMay 24, "About 9:58 p.m., on Sunday, March 18, 2018, an Uber Technologies, Inc. test vehicle, based on a modified 2017 Volvo XC90 and operating with a self-driving system in computer control mode, struck a pedestrian on northbound Mill Avenue, in Tempe, Maricopa County, Arizona.

...The vehicle was factory equipped with several advanced driver assistance functions by Volvo Cars, the original manufacturer. The systems included a collision avoidance function with automatic emergency
braking, known as City Safety, as well as functions for detecting driver alertness and road sign information. All these Volvo functions are disabled when the test vehicle is operated in computer control..." Read more  Hmmmm.... Uber must believe that its systems are better at avoiding Collisions and Automated Emergency Braking than Volvo's.  At least this gets Volvo "off the hook". 

"...According to data obtained from the self-driving system, the system first registered radar and LIDAR observations of the pedestrian about 6 seconds before impact, when the vehicle was traveling at 43 mph..." (= 63 feet/second)  So the system started "seeing an obstacle when it was 63 x 6 = 378 feet away... more than a football field, including end zones!   

"...As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path..." (NTSB: Please tell us precisely when it classified this "object' as a vehicle and be explicit about the expected "future travel paths."  Forget the path, please just tell us the precise velocity vector that Uber's system attached to the "object", then the "vehicle".  Why didn't the the Uber system instruct the Volvo to begin to slow down (or speed up) to avoid a collision?  If these paths (or velocity vectors) were not accurate, then why weren't they accurate?  Why was the object classified as a   "Vehicle" ??  When did it finally classify the object as a "bicycle"?  Why did it change classifications?  How often was the classification of this object done.  Please divulge the time and the outcome of each classification of this object.  In the tests that Uber has done, how often has the system mis-classified an object as a "pedestrian"when the object was actually an overpass, or an overhead sign or overhead branches/leaves that the car could safely pass under, or was nothing at all?? (Basically, what are the false alarm characteristics of Uber's Self-driving sensor/software system as a function of vehicle speed and time-of-day?)  

"...At 1.3 seconds before impact, (impact speed was 39mph = 57.2 ft/sec) the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision" (1.3 x 57.2 = 74.4 ft. which is about equal to the braking distance. So it still could have stopped short.

"...According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control, to reduce (eradicate??) the potential for erratic vehicle behavior. ..." NTSB:  Please describe/define potential  and erratic vehicle behavior   Also please uncover and divulge the design & decision process that Uber went through to decide that this risk (disabling the AEB) was worth the reward of eradicating " "erratic vehicle behavior".  This is fundamentally BAD design.  If the Uber system's false alarm rate is so large that the best way to deal with false alarms is to turn off the AEB, then the system should never have been permitted on public roadways. 

"...The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. " Wow!  If Uber's system fundamentally relies on a human to intervene, then Uber is nowhere near creating a Driverless vehicle.  Without its own Driverless vehicle Uber is past "Peak valuation".  

"...The system is not designed to alert the operator. " That may be the only good part of Uber's design.  In a Driverless vehicle, there is no one to warn, so don't waste your time.  If it is important enough to warn, then it is important enough for the automated system to start initiating things to do something about it.  Plus, the Driver may not know what to do anyway.  This is pretty much as I stated in PodCast 30 and the March 24 edition of SmartDrivingCar, See below.  Alain 

Friday, May 18,  2018

 The Open Source Solution to Autonomous Safety #smartdrivingcar

K. Pyle, May 9, "Safety and, as importantly, the perception of safety could be the pin that pricks the expectations surrounding the autonomous vehicle future. Recognizing the importance of safety to the success of this still nascent industry, autonomous taxi start-up, Voyage, recently placed their testing and reporting procedures in an open source framework. ...Oliver Cameron, Voyage Co-Founder and CEO, is excited to see participation and says, “We can’t wait to have all of these contributions from companies from around the world; contribute to build the actual standard in autonomous safety.”  Read more, Hmmmm.... See the video that was played at the Princeton SDC Summit which generated substantial positive discussion at the Summit. See also full length video. Alain

Thursday, May 10,  2018

  Uber Finds Deadly Accident Likely Caused By Software Set to Ignore Objects On Road 

A. Efrati, May 7, "Uber has determined that the likely cause of a fatal collision involving one of its prototype self-driving cars in Arizona in March was a problem with the software that decides how the car should react to objects it detects, according to two people briefed about the matter." Read more  Hmmmm....Uber is "leaking" this???  Is this Spin?  Fake News??   I guess Uber doesn't believe in transparency here.  Where is the official public statement of reassurance??? 

"The car’s sensors detected the pedestrian, who was crossing the street with a bicycle, Hmmmm....Pretty much what I wrote on March 24, the sensors "Saw something" ...   but Uber’s software decided it didn’t need to react right away. ..."right away" is Fake News.  It never reacted.  Uber has not released any data indicating that the software ever reacted.  "That’s a result of how the software was tuned." ...That was a major "tuning" faux pas.  What is being divulged here is that Uber's software never became confident enough that what it was seeing was something that it should not hit and, at least,  begin to apply the brakes (or swerve, or ???).  Even the driver in the video recognized that the object should not be hit a split second before the crash.  So the Problem     is not "tuning" it is outright "fuhgeddaboudit"  Like other autonomous vehicle systems, Uber’s software has the ability to ignore “false positives,” or objects in its path that wouldn’t actually be a problem for the vehicle, such as a plastic bag floating over a road.... Is Uber suggesting that its software can't tell the difference between a plastic bag floating over the road and a pedestrian with a bicycle, even after seeing the object 30 to 60 or more times over the 3 or more seconds that the object was in view?    If this isn't Fake News then Uber is hopelessly far behind...   In this case, Uber executives believe the company’s system was tuned so that it reacted less to such objects."  It didn't react at all!... But the tuning went too far, and the car didn’t react fast enough, one of these people said.... ... It didn't react at all! If this wasn't so important I'd put it in C'mon man.

"False positives" are the symptom, not the problem.  The problem is Uber's system design and operational policy.  Uber system designers knew that the sensors under certain conditions reported "false positives" (were "spooked").  One of those conditions was possibly  the combination of "is the closing speed = car's current speed" AND "is the car's current speed greater than 30mph."  In situations in which both are true, then Uber's "tuning"  is outright "fuhgeddaboudit". This "tuning" effectively turns-off Uber's sensors to detecting anything that is stationary or moving across its lane ahead. If Uber has understood this, then Uber would/should have ...

1.  limited the operation of its cars to speeds under 30 mph,

2.  limited the operation of its cars at speeds greater than 30 mph only to roadways where pedestrians are extremely unlikely to cross, and

3.  focus on substantially improving its ability to interpret its sensor data so that the false alarm rate becomes so small that false alarms are tolerated throughout Uber's operational domain.

..."Meanwhile, the human driver behind the wheel, who is meant to take over and prevent an accident, wasn't paying attention in the seconds before the car hit..."  ...I think that this is a cheap shot against the driver.  I suspect that this car had a screen that displayed the real-time status of the automated driving system.  I would not be surprised if that screen was mounted below the radio and that the driver was actually monitoring the operation of the automated driving system prior to the crash.  Why this display wasn't on the dash so that the driver's peripheral vision could remain on the road ahead when the driver was monitoring the performance of the system is a question Uber should answer,...  if it had any interest in being transparent.

Another question that Uber could be asked: Why didn't the monitoring system warn the driver that it was "seeing something"  and ask the driver to look to see if it should be "saying/doing something".

Since it doesn't look like Uber is going to really divulge anything, it is incumbent on the NTSB to dig deeply into this "false alarm" issue.  Disregarding "false positives" in order to circumvent a little passenger/customer discomfort enables "false negatives" which kill people.  Not pretty! 

"...Uber has reached its own preliminary conclusion..."  .The problem was what the broader system chose to do with that information". .... Is Uber going to tell us????  This is way more than a "tuning problem".  This is a design and culture problem...       

"...In the collision investigation, Uber found that a vital piece of the self-driving car was likely working properly: the “perception” software, which combines data from the car’s cameras, lidar and radars to recognize and “label” objects around it. In this case, the software is believed to have seen the objects. The problem was what the broader system chose to do with that information..."  .......NO!!!!  The problem is in the "recognize & label".  If it didn't miss-recognize and miss-label then the ride wouldn't be jerky.  The "perception" software is so intent on "seeing something" in certain domains that it ends up "imagining that it saw something that wasn't there" (false positive) so the broader system  turns off the perception system in those domains.  It is the "vital" "perception" system that is at fault and needs the work. 

I suspect that this mess will be discussed at the  
[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.5&filename=lmjdiniodjkflpia.png" class="" height="21" width="18" border="0">  2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit  [log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.5&filename=lmjdiniodjkflpia.png" class="" height="21" width="18" border="0">   Uber isn't the only company with a "false alarm" issue.   Alain

Thursday, May 3,  2018

 As the Number of Driverless Cars Increase, So Does the Need for Car Maker Transparency

R. Mitchell, Apr 30, "...A schism is developing in the driverless-car world — but not between fans and foes of robot cars.

Instead, on one side are driverless-car advocates who believe data transparency will lead to safer deployment of driverless vehicles and help alleviate public fears about the strange and disruptive new technology. On the other are some automobile and technology companies that, for good commercial reasons perhaps, prefer to keep their workings cloaked in mystery.

The lack of transparency about the workings of sensors, logic processors, mapping systems and other driverless technology, like the debate over robot-car regulation, could shape public perception of the nascent industry, said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.  "Essentially, [the public will be] looking to see whether these companies are trustworthy," he said...

In the Uber death, a video recorded by a dashboard camera — turned over to and released by Tempe, Ariz., police — showed the driverless-car system failed to brake for the pedestrian. It left open the question of whether the system sensors might have failed to notice the pedestrian at all.

Uber's reaction was to apologize, then dip into some of its $15 billion in investment capital to pay the victim's family in a legal settlement, thus avoiding a public trial.

Uber declined to make a company executive available to discuss data and transparency on the record, as did Waymo, Tesla and Lyft. Other companies — including Zoox, Nutonomy and General Motors, parent of Cruise Automation — agreed to talk.

Even driverless-car advocates are growing concerned about the silence from the industry's major players. Grayson Brulte, a well-known consultant in the driverless industry, worries that recent polls have consistently shown the public is wary about driverless technology, while companies appear reluctant to engage with the public.  "They're like Rapunzel up in the tower," he said. "They have to let down their hair and climb down."

Alain Kornhauser, who heads the driverless-vehicle program at Princeton University, said he believes that robot cars will improve safety, reduce driver stress, add productive time to the day and offer the elderly and disabled more independence. But the technology is far from perfect, he said, and some robot-induced deaths are inevitable.

Rather than wall off the lessons learned in fatalities such as the recent Uber and Tesla incidents, Kornhauser said, the companies should be sharing crash data with one another, with outside researchers and with the general public. And not just black-box data, but driverless-system data as well. That would make driverless cars safer and faster, he said.

"Uber should not gain a safety advantage over everyone else because they were involved in this crash," Kornhauser said. "All of the video, radar, lidar and logic trails in the seconds leading up to the crash should be released to the public.

"If this reveals some of Uber's intellectual property, so be it. If they want to protect their intellectual property, they shouldn't crash on public roads." ..."  Read more 

Hmmmm... Amen!  This article addresses what may well be the most important issue facing this industry.  Crashes will happen.  The industry has been holding its breath knowing that one, two, three, ... deaths are coming.  Deaths are associated with every substantial technological advance in transportation.  Deaths occurred with cable cars, with electric traction, with steam trains, with airplanes, with conventional cars, with elevators, ..., even with airbags... why do you have yellow stickers affixed to the passenger-side sun visor of your car.  That's right... airbags kill children.  No one expected that.  But when it was "tripped over", then that event was made transparent to everyone.  Similarly, total transparency needs to be created.  Uber needs to release the data that shows that their system did, in fact "see" Elaine for four (4), or however many, seconds before the crash, but didn't see her reliably enough to convince itself to apply the brakes.  The details of that decision logic and the uncertainty/stochastic characteristics of that decision process needs to be divulged.  Why wasn't it sure enough that a collision with Elaine was imminent for it to apply the brakes?  It is totally disingenuous for Uber to claim that its system never saw Elaine (Uber hasn't said that.  They've said nothing.  (They'd better not even try to say that. Their system is at least pretty good.  it was developed by competent individuals from CMU and other very good places.  It saw Elaine, it just didn't see her well enough or it chose to disregard what it saw for whatever reason.  The nitty gritty details of those uncertainties MUST be divulged in all of their minute, gory and transparent details.  Once made then everyone else in the industry can look at their comparable processes/algorithms and fix them so that the next time an "Elaine" is "seen" she will not be disregarded.  It is these situations that deserve the most serious attention.  These are infinitely more important and more challenging than the "Trolley (navel contemplation) Problem".  

We will be addressing, with some of the best people in the world, this and other fundamentally important issues at the
2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit    May 16 & 17.  Come join in and contribute to the conversations on these issues.  Russ Mitchell will be there. Bryant Walker-Smith will be there.  Grayson Brulte will be there. Raymond Martinez (Head of FMCSA) will be there.  Bernard Soriano (#2 @ CA DMV) will be there.  Nat Beuse (#2 @ NHTSA) will be there.  Oliver Cameron (CEO, Voyage) will weigh in,  Adam Jonas (#1 Auto Analyst, Morgan Stanley) will be there.  Fengmin Gong (Head, DiDi Research) will be there. Justin Erlich (Head AV Policy, Uber) will be there,  Sami Naim, (Manager, Public Policy, Lyft) will be there, Mike Jellen (President, Velodyne) will be there, Paul Brubaker (CEO ATI21) will be there, Matt Moore (SVP, Highway Loss Data Institute) will be there, Mike Scrudato (#1 AV Insurance guy, SVP, Munich Re) will be there, Ro Gupta (CEO Carmera) will be there. Insurance/risk assessment related: Ann Gergen (Exec. Dir. AGRIP), Jerry Spears ( Montana Association of Governments), Laura Kornhauser (President, Stratyfy), David Harmer, Head, Virginia transit Reliability Pool) plus many others will be there.  From the investment community: Sheldon, Sandler (CEO, Bel Air Partners) will be there.  And the list goes on...

Please come join in the discourse.  Click to register.  Alain

Thursday, April 26,  2018

 This startup’s CEO wants to open-source self-driving car safety testing

M. Harris, Apr 24, "... "I had to spend time after [the Uber crash] calming people down, telling folks at our deployments that it was an isolated incident," says Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron in an exclusive interview with Ars Technica. "But the truth is that everyone in the industry is reinventing the technology and safety processes themselves, which is incredibly dangerous. Open source means more eyes, more diversity, and more feedback.".

Starting today, Voyage will begin to share safety requirements, test scenarios, metrics, tools, and code that it has developed for its own Level 4 self-driving taxis. Five Voyage cars are currently deployed carrying passengers within two retirement communities in California and Florida..."  Read more  Hmmmm... This is a very positive step taken by Voyage's Oliver Cameron to address the enormous safety aspects of this technology.  It isn't obvious how everyone involved in this industry needs to work together to assemble the best "...safety requirements, test scenarios, metrics, tools, and code....".  There are serious concerns about collusion and protecting fundamentally valuable IP.  

None the less, what is important is that it is in everyone's best interest to have everyone be safe.  The Uber crash negatively affected everyone, even Waymo.   Everyone would be better off today, had Uber not crashed. 
Similarly with the Tesla crashes.  They've also had a negative impact on everyone.  This is a market where the faster the better products are available in the marketplace, the larger the sum of benefits to society, and, arguably, the large the accumulated benefits to each individual contributor/producer.   That argues for everyone working together, aka sharing: "...safety requirements, test scenarios, metrics, tools, and code....".  Whether  "open-source" his the exact right mechanism for "optimal sharing" , or it is Standards Committees, or Regulations (heaven forbid), working together for Safety rather competing on Safety is absolutely necessary in this r/evolution.  Kudos to Oliver for this initiative.  Alain

Thursday, April 12,  2018

 The way we regulate self-driving cars is broken—here’s how to fix it

T. Lee, Apr 10,"...Federal car safety regulation has traditionally been based on a thick book of rules called the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). These regulations, developed over decades, establish detailed performance requirements for every safety-related part of a car: brakes, tires, headlights, mirrors, airbags, and a lot more....

Federal regulations don't say much about how companies develop and test cars before bringing them to market. ... But that approach doesn't work for driverless cars. Companies can do some testing of driverless cars on a closed course, but it's impossible to reproduce a full range of real-world situations in a private facility. So at some point, carmakers need to put self-driving cars on public roads for testing purposes—before a manufacturer is able to clearly demonstrate that they're safe. In effect, this makes the public involuntary participants in a dangerous research project.

But updating the FMVSS is neither necessary nor sufficient for effective regulation of driverless cars....  Read more  Hmmmm...What needs to be recognized is that Driverless cars (much more so than Safe- and Self-driving cars) are really a NEW MODE. They are in many ways closer to an elevator than a conventional car.  Sure they run on conventional roads and not vertical shafts and they can run into each other and have to deal with conventional drivers and "pedestrians". but they will not be owned nor operated by consumers, but fleet operators (think buildings) .  They will serve demand upon request to everyone and anyone, be shared when appropriate and convenient and don't even have a driver's seat, let alone the controls of a conventional car. Driverless cars are enormously different than conventional cars. 

Just as railroads and airplanes have their own safety legislation and regulatory administration tailored to their needs, so should Driverless cars.  The best way to approach regulation of Driverless is to start fresh by declaring them as a new mode.  Alain

Thursday, April 5,  2018

Waymo Isn’t Going to Slow Down Now

M. Bergen, "Apr 2, " Waymo, the self-driving car company started by Google, did nothing after an autonomous vehicle run by Uber killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. It didn’t pull back on tests in the nearby suburb of Chandler, where passengers are already taking rides with no one behind the wheel. Its fleets elsewhere didn’t abandon public streets, a precautionary move made by Toyota.   For Krafcik, the crash video validated the philosophy Waymo had been following long before he joined, back when it was still part of Google: Never trust humans in cars....

Some onlookers question if Krafcik will be around to see Waymo’s alliances through. “You can’t meet John,” said Noble, the consultant, “and not think he’s someone that would have fun running a carmaker.”

For now, though, Krafcik looks to be having fun running a company that’s resolutely not making cars. On the convention floor in Las Vegas, he spotted a Ford Transit Wagon. It’s a hulking eight-seat model he worked on years ago that looks best suited for shuttling around a troop of Girl Scouts or a military platoon.

Krafcik leaped into the second row and turned to the nearest Ford employee: “Do you have a self-driving version?” The answer was no.  “Coming soon,” Krafcik said with a laugh."  Read more 
Hmmmm... Wow, this is more info than has been put out by Google/Waymo in the previous 9 years combined.  Looks like Waymo has entered the market/sales phase of its metamorphosis.  By the way, who gets to benefit from the deployment of the 1st 20k  of the Jaguars.  Phoenix and Mountain View don't have enough demand.  Is there going to be a competition a la the frenzy created by the "who wants the 2nd Amazon HQ”?   Alain

Saturday, March 31,  2018

The Most Important Self-Driving Car Announcement Yet

A. Madrigal, Mar 28, "On Tuesday, Waymo announced they’d purchase 20,000 sporty, electric self-driving vehicles from Jaguar for the company’s forthcoming ride-hailing service.... But the company embedded a much more significant milestone inside this supposed announcement about a fancy car. With orders now in for more than 20,000 of these vehicles and thousands of minivans that Chrysler announced earlier this year, Waymo will be capable of doing vast numbers of trips per day. They estimate that the Jaguar fleet alone will be capable of doing a million trips each day in 2020. ..."   Read more  Hmmmm...Yup!! This is HUGE!  It will change the city and the key to making it so it doesn't make thing worse is Ride-sharing.  If we ride-share we'll reduce energy, pollution & GHG by more than 50% and provide high-quality, affordable mobility indiscriminately for all.  It becomes the new high-quality, low-cost mass transit.  If it's kept/operated as another alternative for the 1%ers to be chauffeured alone, then the outcome is UGLY.  Ride-sharing is KEY!  Alain

Saturday, March 24,  2018

Experts say video of Uber's self-driving car killing a pedestrian suggests its technology may have failed

R. Mitchell, Mar 22, "Police late Wednesday released a video that shows an Uber robot car running straight into a woman who was walking her bicycle across a highway in Tempe, Ariz. The woman was taken to a hospital, where she died Sunday night.

The video, shot from the car, is sure to raise debate over who's to blame for the accident.   In the video, the victim, Elaine Herzberg, 49, appears to be illegally jaywalking from a median strip across two lanes of traffic on a dark road. But she was more than halfway across the street when the car — traveling about 40 mph, according to police — hit her. The car did not appear to brake or take any other evasive action....

Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor and driverless specialist at the University of South Carolina, said: "Although this appalling video isn't the full picture, it strongly suggests a failure by Uber's automated driving system and a lack of due care by Uber's driver as well as by the victim."..."  Read more
  Hmmmm...  "..."What we now need is for the release of the radar and lidar data," Princeton's Kornhauser said in an email. (Lidar is a sensing technology that uses light from a laser.) "Obviously, the video of the driver is extremely bad for Uber and probably implies that Uber should suspend all of its 'self-driving' efforts for a while if not for a very long while.

"The 'self-driving' systems are supposed to have 'professional' overseers who are really supposed to be paying attention during these 'tests'. Apparently Uber didn't make it clear in this case."

Kornhauser questioned the police description of a situation that would have been difficult to avoid. He said Uber should reveal what its collision-avoidance software was doing during the couple of seconds before impact.

"The front-facing video suggests that this person was crossing the lane at a slow speed and should have been noticed by the system in time to at least apply the brakes, if not stop the vehicle completely," he said. "While a human may not have been able to avoid this crash, a well-designed, well-working collision avoidance system should have at least begun to apply the brakes."..."
" 
...  Again, my sincerest condolences to Elaine Herzberg's family and friends.

The simple arithmetic is:  She crossed more than a lane and a half before being struck or more than 15 feet.  Average walking speed is about 4.6 ft/sec which means that she was "visible" on this stretch of road for more than 3 seconds.  Uber's speed of 38 mph =  55.7 ft/sec means: Uber was 150 ft away when she began crossing the left-hand lane and could have been visible by an alert driver.  The car's lidar and radar surely must have "seen" her beginning at about that time.   Car stopping distance including "thinking time used in The Highway Code" @ 38mph is 110 feet.  The driver should have been able to stop 40 feet short.  Any Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) system should have been able to stop the car in little more than the stopping distance of 72 feet, half way to Elaine.  This simple arithmetic suggests that there may be a very fundamental fatal flaw in Uber's AEB.

And the driver was not paying attention.  At 3 seconds prior to impact, Elaine was within a 12 degree field of view when she began to cross the left lane. While outside the fovea, this is well within a normal gaze had the operator been looking out the window. 

The released video is from a "dash cam" and is unlikely to be the video captured by Uber's "Self-driving" system (or whatever Uber calls it).  That video may well be at a much higher resolution and frame rate.  Uber MUST release that video (not just the dash-cam video) as well as the radar and lidar data that was being used by their "Self-driving" system.  Uber was testing its system at the time of the crash and therefore MUST have been logging those data in case something went wrong.  Uber needs those recorded data in order to have a chance to learn what went wrong and fix it.  Something did go wrong, very wrong.  Uber and everyone else MUST also have the opportunity to learn from this tragedy.  So Uber MUST release all of the data.  Alain

Tuesday, March 20,  2018

Robot drivers may be safer than humans, but tech companies are way behind in proving it

R. Mitchell, Mar 21, "As long as robot cars roam public streets and highways, they will occasionally kill people. That's an ugly truth that no one in the driverless vehicle industry can deny.

Will those robot cars kill people at significantly lower rates than drunk, stoned, tired or distracted human drivers do now? Automakers, technology companies, politicians and regulators are betting they will, as driverless vehicles are rolling out faster than almost anyone expected as recently as a year ago.  But the Sunday night incident in Tempe, Ariz., in which an Uber robot car hit and killed a woman walking her bicycle across the street, makes clear the industry is much further behind in making its case to the public.

"It's likely there will be far fewer deaths with driverless cars," said Marlene Towns, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. "But getting to the point where people will be convinced of that will be tough."

Speculation by Tempe's police chief that the robot may not be at fault in the crash may temper any public or political backlash.

Uber was testing the robot car in autonomous mode with a human engineer, who was behind the wheel but not driving. Elaine Herzberg, 49, walking a bicycle, stepped in front of the car from a center median, according to video evidence, police said...."  Read more
  Hmmmm...  "...Carmakers and technology companies need to be far more transparent as they push forward, experts said. "It's important that we all learn from this accident and we make these technologies even better, said Alain Kornhauser, a professor at Princeton University and a leading authority on driverless cars. "To that end Uber must release all of the data leading up to this crash. All of the video, radar, lidar and logic trails for the three or so seconds leading up to the crash. If this releases some of Uber's intellectual property, so be it."..."
...  My sincerest condolences to Elaine Herzberg's family and friends.  I hope that Uber with its "$60"B  valuation will make a very generous contribution to homeless charities and think even more seriously about "buying" (by partnering) rather than "making" this technology.  Alain

Tuesday, March 13,  2018

Waymo shows off what it is like to ride in a truly driverless self-driving car

G. Kumparak, Mar 13, "...."  Read more  Hmmmm... This is REALLY big news.This marks the real beginning of on-demand mobility provided by vehicles without a driver or an attendant on-board, only the passengers and the vehicles used normal public roadways that operated in normal everyday manner and used by conventional cars and trucks.  Ng Waymo to their o police escorts, no warning signs, just normal everyday operating conditions.  Except for the one trip given to Steve Mahan in November 2015 in Austin Texas, this is the First time that it kind of mobility service has been delivered anywhere in the world.  Waymo has achieved 5 million vehicle miles of Self-driving (automated driving on normally operating public roadway; however, with a driver/attendant in the car ready to take over should the automated system begin to fail.  Many others including Uber, Lyft/Aptiv, GM/Cruise, nVIDIA, Apple, Tesla, Nissan and many others have also done many miles of Self-driving on normal roads but each an everyone had a driver/attendant in the vehicle ready to "save the day" should something go bad.  Nobody else anywhere in the world is doing what Waymo is now doing in Chandler AZ. Now that the first one has been done, any community that is similar to Chandler AZ can now think seriously about inviting Waymo to provide affordable on-demand mobility to everyone in their city.

Be sure to see the video.  Congratulations Waymo!!!!! Alain

Wednesday, February 28,  2018

California to allow testing of self-driving cars without a driver present

D. Etherington, Feb 27,  "California’s Department of Motor Vehicles established new rules announced Monday that will allow tech companies and others working on driverless vehicle systems to begin trialling their cars without a safety driver at the wheel. The new rules go into effect starting April 2 ..." Read more  Hmmmm... Even though we have been expecting this, it is a major hurdle for it to actually have occurred.  How long after April 2 will Waymo take to begin this type of testing.  Again this is only testing and deployment, but NOT commercial service, which may happen first in Arizona, but it is a major step in this r-evolution.  Commercial services are regulated by other agencies in California, not CA DMV.  It is those other agencies that will need to grant/award the licenses for the various commercial operations where these driverless vehicles would be used.  This regulation allows properly licensed commercial operations using CA DMV certified driverless vehicles to have those vehicles use California public roadways in delivering the otherwise licensed commercial activity. Note: CA DMV does not license the commercial transport of people or goods.  That is the purview of other CA regulatory agencies.  Alain  

Friday, February 23, 2018

Broadening Understanding of the Interplay Between Public Transit, Shared Mobility, and Personal Automobiles

Friday, February 16, 2018

Billionaire Bets On a World Without Car Crashes

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Waymo strikes a deal to buy ‘thousands’ more self-driving minivans from Fiat Chrysler

Andrew Hawkins, Jan 30, “Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, has reached a deal with one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers to dramatically expand its fleet of autonomous vehicles. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced today that it would supply “thousands” of additional Chrysler Pacifica minivans to Waymo, with the first deliveries starting at the end of 2018.

Waymo currently has 600 of FCA’s minivans in its fleet, some of which are used to shuttle real people around for its Early Rider program in Arizona. The first 100 were delivered when the partnership was announced in May 2016, and an additional 500 were delivered in 2017. The minivans are plug-in hybrid variants with Waymo’s self-driving hardware and software built in. The companies co-staff a facility in Michigan, near FCA’s US headquarters, to engineer the vehicles. The company also owns a fleet of self-driving Lexus RX SUVs that is has been phasing out in favor of the new minivans. (The cute “Firefly” prototypes were also phased out last year.)…” Read more  Hmmmm... We’ve all been wondering”  Who’s going to make the cars?  How will that evolve?Will they magically appear???

Well….Looks like it is FCA for now. We've gone from a handful 5 years ago, 2 years ago added 100, added 500 last year, “thousands” this/next year, …  Beginning to look like exponential growth! (A Bit Coin Bubble??)   What is also most interesting: no parallel announcement that Waymo was hiring “thousands of attendants” to ride around as "drivers" in these “thousands of minivans”.  Guess what that means… The Kornhauser Scale is going to start really going up!!!
J 

While ultimately they’ll need about 35 million of these to provide affordable mobility to all in the US, this is a real start at making this into a business as opposed to an NSF-style study that collects dust on a shelf or, worse yet, a digital manuscript that is never downloaded by anyone outside a "group of three". This is a major announcement!
  

From Stan Young: It will be interesting to watch.  It probably has the OEMs, Uber and Lyft scared out of their wits.  Based on any objective comparison of accomplishment with automated vehicles, there is not a close second to Waymo, despite all the claims to the contrary by trade rags – and the competition knows it.   Still a huge unknown concerning the ‘social side’ of riding in an un-attended vehicle, but we will likely get over it like we did with elevators.   ‘Thousands’ of vehicles if deployed in one city will put it on scale of Uber and Lyft – an interesting study when/if it comes to that.

...An issue is:  where will Waymo choose to deploy (and for Waymo, the word "deploy" is the right word...  they make the decision where to place these, in some sense take it or leave it... as opposed to waiting for people to show up at a dealership to buy or have it stay on the lot or have some governmental agency thinking that it actually has a role/power/where-with-all to “deploy”) where, when and how many.  They could "flood/concentrate" on Chandler/Phoenix/Tuscon  area with scale to be really relevant and  substantively demonstrate the evolution of mobility, or they could sprinkle them out nationwide and remain irrelevant everywhere.  I like the "flood/concentrate" approach in a state (Arizona) where they seem to be truly welcomed and whose climate, topography and road network are "easy".  More importantly it would demonstrate the viability/challenges of the at-scale approach.  From our simulations we uncovered that at-scale, one might need to be managing as many as 20,000 aTaxis in a 2.5x2.5 mile area  (the extreme in Manhattan, which may be the last place that you want to try this) but it can be large. We’ll drill down in our data and take a look at Chandler/Phoenix and report back as to what we think it would take to provide mobility for all.  Alain

Monday, January 29, 2018

Didi Chuxing looks beyond ride-hailing to help Chinese cities tackle transport challenge

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Say hello to Waymo

Jan. 9, T. Papandreou & E. Casson. "... Waymo driverless service..."  Read more Hmmmm...  Tim and Ellie made presentation at the Transportation Research Board's  Vehicle-Highway Automation (AHB30) Committee meeting on Tuesday in which they gave an update on Waymo's progress to launch "Waymo's driverless service" (slide 11), an app-based ride hailing service to the general public in a geo-fenced area of Arizona.  To date Waymo has been testing such a service using volunteer riders in their driverless vehicles in various areas around the country (slide 7): however, to date, except for one ride given to Steve Mahan in Austin, TX, rides on normally operating public streets have always had  trained Waymo-authorized personnel (an attendant) in the vehicle capable to intervene in the driving of the vehicle should the need arise.  Since October, in Arizona, those personnel no longer sit behind the wheel, but are in the back seat so that Waymo can observe the response of the volunteer riders to riding in a vehicle on normal public streets under normal conditions without anyone in the front seats of the vehicle. 

Tim said, without providing a specific date, that Waymo will soon launch "Waymo's driverless service" providing mobility to the general public on public roads in a geo-fenced area of Arizona.  I asked Tim "Will that service be offered with vehicles that have an attendant in the vehicle?".  Tim's answer was "No!".  I asked a follow-up question: "Will these vehicle's have telemetry capabilities that enable these vehicles to be closely monitored from a "situation room" or "control center" that would enable remote operation of the vehicle, should the need arise?".  Tim's answer was  "No!".  Another questioner asked if the geo-fenced area included special "connected vehicle" road infrastructure improvement that Waymo's system will be relying on?"  Tim's answer was "No!".

While the definition of "soon" was not given, I've taken this as a really big pronouncement that Waymo is actually going to go to launch commercially-viable on-demand mobility to the general public on conventional public roads.  This is really big news because this is finally going to enable us to begin to evolve on the "Kornhauser Scale" ( log of (world-wide VMT of Driverless (VMT-D) vehicles without a human attendant/driver on board accumulated while providing mobility to the general public on conventional roadways).  So far we are beyond the "undefined value" associated with VMT-D = 0 and are at KS = 1 only by virtue of the one Steve Mahan ride in Austin).  :-) Alain

Saturday, December 2, 2017

  Personal Sedan Sales in Jeopardy as U.S. Auto Market Transitions to “Islands” of Autonomous Mobility: KPMG Research

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Volvo to supply Uber with up to 24,000 self-driving SUVs for taxi fleet

Friday, November 17, 2017

THE TECH & DESIGN ISSUE: LIFE AFTER DRIVING

Friday, November 10, 2017

Waymo will now put self-driving vans on public roads with nobody at the wheel

AP, Nov. 7, 2017 "Waymo, the self-driving car company created by Google, is pulling the human backup driver from behind the steering wheel and will test vehicles on public roads with only an employee in the back seat.

The company’s move — which started Oct. 19 with an automated Chrysler Pacifica minivan in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Ariz. — is a major step toward vehicles driving themselves on public roads without human backup drivers. ..." Read more Hmmmm...  Not to be too critical, but Waymo is still just 'Self-driving' .  While they moved the 'engineer' with the ability to 'take over and drive the vehicle' from behind the wheel to the back seat, this is just a step along the broad 'Self-driving' continuum which is a vehicle that, under certain circumstance, can drive itself, but does that only if there is a person ready and able to take over if the unexpected appears. 

The big-leap/major-step will come when Waymo removes the 'engineer' entirely from the vehicle and it is human-less when it arrives to pick up a passenger and drives away human-less after the last passenger(s) disembark.  That enormous leap-of-faith in the technology will mark Waymo's inception of the Driverless Era. (or what Waymo prefers to call 'Fully Self-driving' era.) 

Just to be clear, when that time comes, I'm sure that Waymo will have telemetry throughout that Driverless vehicle and there will be a room full of engineers in Waymo's 'Situation Room' ready to take over the driving should the need arise.  However,  until that time, Waymo is just like all the other wanabes, they are just 'Self-driving' without the 'Fully'.

The reason why 'remote emergency driving' is 'Driverless' is because it scales.  By that I mean that it takes the provision of horizontal mobility on our public streets from needing at least one human per vehicle to needing less than one human per vehicle.  Initially the remote driver will monitor one car.  Before you know it that person will be monitoring two, four, eight, ... vehicles and truly Driverless with zero remote human oversee-ers will be approached asymptotically.  But just like the old saw between the engineer and the mathematician: engineer and mathematician were sitting on a bench recalling their youth... Engineer said "Long ago, I was sitting on this very bench with my girl.  We wanted to kiss but we were too far apart.  So we agreed to move towards each other by halving the distance between us on each move.  The mathematician blared " You're so stupid!  If you did that, you never came together!"  The engineer just smiled: "we got close enough!".  Alain

Saturday, November 4, 2017

APNewsBreak: Gov't won't pursue talking car mandate

Friday, October 27 , 2017

Strategic Plan for FY 2018 -2022

Sunday, October 15 , 2017

Proposed Driverless Testing and Deployment Regulations – Released October 11, 2017

 Rulemaking Actions, Oct 1The following 3 PDFs are important:
1. Autonomous Vehicles Notice of Modification (PDF)  Act

2. Autonomous Vehicles Statement of Reasons (PDF)  Act

3. Autonomous Vehicles 15 Day Express Terms (PDF)   Act  Hmmmm..This is all about Driverless!  Thank you California, and especially Dr. Bernard Soriano, for leading this noble effort and for continuing to distinguish this technology from Self-driving and all of the various other names seemingly meant to confuse.  Alain

Friday, October 6 , 2017

FHWA Awards $4 Million Grant to South Carolina’s Greenville County for Automated Taxi Shuttles

Friday, September 1, 2017

Automated Vehicles: Are We Moving Too Fast or Too Slow?

Friday, August 25, 2017

Inside Waymo's Secret World for Training Self-Driving Cars

Monday, August 21, 2017

Driverless-Car Outlook Shifts as Intel Takes Over Mobileye

Monday, August 7, 2017

Cadillac’s Super Cruise ‘autopilot’ is ready for the expressway

Sunday, June 25, 2017

NTSB Opens Docket on Tesla Crash

The docket material is available at: https://go.usa.gov/xNvaE" Read more  Hmmmm... A few comments...
1.  Since lateral control (swerving) couldn't have avoided this crash (the truck is almost 70 ft long (6 lanes wide) stretching broadside across the highway) , it doesn't matter if Josh Brown ever had his hands on the steering wheel. That's totally irrelevant. 
2.  Why didn't autobrake kick in when the tractor part of the tractor-trailer passed in front of the Tesla?
3.  How fast was the truck going when it cut off the Tesla.  I couldn't find the answer in 500 pages.   
4.  With sight distances of greater than 1,000 feet, why didn't the truck driver see the Tesla?  Was it the drugs?
5.  This intersection invites "left-turn run-throughs" (no stop or yield and a 53 foot median and turn lane need to be crossed before one slips through a gap in two traffic lanes.  So you certainly roll into it, (plenty of room to stop if you see something coming) and if you don't see anything, you hit it.  If you're in the Tesla, you think you've been clearly seem, you expect the truck to stop, it doesn't, you can't believe it, BAM!  All in probably a second or so.
6.  The head injury description (Table 1 p2 of 3) certainly suggests that Joshua Brown was seated upright facing forward at impact.  The bilateral lacerations on the lower arm from the elbow to the wrist may indicate that he saw it coming in the last second and raised his arms in an attempt to protect his head.   The evidence reported doesn't seem to suggest he saw this early enough to bend toward the passenger seat and try to pass underneath. 
7.  About 40 feet of tractor and trailer passed directly in front of the Tesla prior to impact.   Depending on how fast the truck was traveling, that takes some time.  Has NTSB run Virtual Reality simulations of various truck turn trajectories and analyzed what the truck driver and the Tesla driver could/should have seen?  Seems like a relatively simple thing to do.  We know what the Tesla was doing prior to the crash (going 74 mph straight down the road.) and we know where it hit the truck.  How fast the truck was traveling doesn't seem to be known.
8. Why wasn't there any video captured from the Tesla.  Didn't that version of the MobilEye system store the video; I guess not, :-( 
Anyway, lots to read in the 500 pages, but there is also a lot missing.  I'm not linking the many articles reporting on this because I disagree with many of their interpretations of the facts reported by NTSB.   Please reach your own conclusions.   Alain

Monday, June 19, 2017

Amazon Deal for Whole Foods Starts a Supermarket War

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Rethinking Mobility: The 'pay-as-you-go' ca: Ride hailing, just the start

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.5&filename=lmjdiniodjkflpia.png" class="" height="52" width="46" border="0">Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit

May 18, Enormously successful inaugural Summit starting with the Adam Jonas video and finishing with Fred Fishkin's live interview with Wm. C Ford III.  In between, serious engagement among over 150 leaders from Communities at the bleeding edge of deployment, Insurance struggling with how to properly promote the adoption of technology that may well force them to re-invent themselves and AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the various technologies that are rapidly advancing so that we can actually deliver the safety, environmental, mobility and quality of life opportunities envisioned by these “Ultimate Shared-Riding Machines”.

Save the Date for the 2nd Annual... May 16 & 17, 2018, Princeton NJ  Read Inaugural Program with links to Slides. Fishkin Interview of Summit Summary and Interview of Yann LeCun Read Inaugural Program with links to Slides. Hmmmm... Enormous thank you to all who participated.  Well done!  Alain

Tuesday, April 17, 2017

  Don't Worry, Driverless Cars Are Learning From Grand Theft Auto

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.36&filename=ajafjpkfaclhelpc.png" class="" height="50" width="44" border="0">Extracting Cognition out of Images for the Purpose of Autonomous Driving

announce historic commitment of 20 automakers to make automatic emergency braking standard on new vehicles

Sunday, December 19, 2015

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.38&filename=ccalfjfhllohpdpa.png" class="" height="63" width="96" border="0">Adam Jonas' View on Autonomous Cars

Video similar to part of Adam's Luncheon talk @ 2015 Florida Automated Vehicle Symposium on Dec 1.  Hmmm ... Watch Video  especially at the 13:12 mark.  Compelling; especially after the 60 Minutes segment above!  Also see his TipRanks.  Alain


This list is maintained by Alain Kornhauser and hosted by the Princeton University

Leave |Re-enter

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.39&filename=dhbhaandkmfbffia.png" class="" height="88" width="106" border="0">  [log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.40&filename=lglcejopfgfnajaj.png" class="" height="92" width="238" border="0">[log in to unmask]">Mailto:[log in to unmask] 






***************************************************************************************************************
This list is maintained by Alain Kornhauser and hosted by the Princeton University LISTSERV.

Unsubscribe | Re-subscribe