B. Vlasic, May 21, "In a shake-up reflecting the pressures on the American auto industry, Ford Motor is replacing its chief executive, Mark Fields, according to officials briefed on the move. Jim Hackett, who oversees the Ford subsidiary that works on autonomous vehicles, will take the reins from Mr. Fields...." Read more Hmmmm... Very interesting! For those of you that may have thought that SmartDrivingCars weren't important to Ford's future road map ....Think again! Alain
A. Ohnsman,
May 22, "It’s
too soon to
declare a
winner in the
long race to
perfect
self-driving
cars but
Nvidia and
Alphabet’s
Waymo (created
to
commercialize
Google’s
automated
vehicle
R&D) have
notched
successes in
both
technology and
strategic
partnerships.
Don't count
anyone out
yet, though,
as the
Intel-Mobileye-BMW-Delphi
alliance grows
increasingly
formidable and
Elon Musk's
Tesla is hard
at work
forging its
own path..." Read
more Hmmmm... We are still at Absolute (Kelvin) Zero, but
those two are
out in front.
Alain
Under the law, first mooted by Chancellor Angela Merkel last year, a driver must be sitting behind the wheel at all times ready to take back control if prompted to do so by the autonomous vehicle...." Read more Hmmmm... Of course, this is a 'Self-driving' law that effectively forbids 'Driverless' so as to protect the fundamental business model of German car manufacturers. Alain
J. Plungis, May 3, "GM’s new Super Cruise feature could represent a breakthrough in the race to build smarter autonomous vehicles because it not only steers, brakes, and adjusts speed for the driver, it also uses infrared cameras to assess whether the driver is paying enough attention. The updated new-production version of Super Cruise, unveiled at this year’s New York International Auto Show, will be available as an option for the 2018 Cadillac CT6 later this year...." Read more Hmmmm... Essentially an advertisement, but hopefully this puts Cadillac on notice to finally release this product. Let's see if Cadillac make you also buy "Corinthian Leather", is pre-ordered by dealers, is sold by the sales team and is priced. Alain
R. Mitchell, May 16, "...The most powerful weapon, along with the cash to make use of it, is intellectual property.
“When you own the I.P. for autonomous technology, that’s a huge asset,” Keeney said. “That’s who’s going to own the economics of this market.”
And who stands to gain the most? Whoever is first to market, Keeney said. That’s because data collection is crucial to perfecting robot car technology, and the sooner technology hits the road, the more data stream back to improve the systems. Which explains the bare-knuckles nature of the Waymo-Uber battle...." Read more Hmmmm... Seeking Domination of emerging markets has never been pretty... Railroad Barons, Big Oil, Electricity, Telegraph, Telephone, Computer Operating Systems, Internet Search, eCommerce, ... Alain
T
Horst, R
Mudge, R.
Ellis & K.
Rubin, Fall
2016, " In
recognition of
the important
role that
public works
infrastructure
plays in
supporting
national
economic
growth, the
U.S.
Department of
the Treasury
(Treasury), on
behalf of the
Build America
Investment
Initiative,
commissioned
this study.
Its objective
is to identify
40 proposed
transportation
and water
infrastructure
projects in
the United
States of
major economic
significance,
but whose
completion has
slowed or is
in jeopardy.1
This study
provides the
public with a
picture of
how, if
completed,
these proposed
infrastructure
projects would
have a
positive
impact on
national and
regional
economic
activity, such
as reducing
congestion,
improving
safety and
reliability,
decreasing
flood hazard,
and other
benefits....
... As a group, the 40 projects highlighted in this study return between $3.50 and $7.00 for every dollar of capital expenditure." Read More Hmmmm... Who doesn't want to make 3.5 -> 7 x on their investment. Certainly worth a place in the mix. Alain
F. Kunkle, May 18, "Ben Lieberman, whose son was killed in a crash involving a distracted driver six years ago, wants to find a way to stop drivers from texting and driving before other teens are killed.
He has given talks at schools. He has attended law enforcement conferences. He has seen people throw up their hands over the lack of a reliable field test to determine for sure whether a driver in a crash had been texting around the time of impact.
“I kept hearing over and over again, there’s no such thing as a Breathalyzer for distracted driving,” Lieberman said. “So I asked why not?” Now such a device seems close at hand. But Lieberman has also found that lawmakers and others, citing privacy concerns, are reluctant to embrace..." Read More Hmmmm... Unfortunately, "... after a crash..." is too late. Bandaids are good, but crashes need to be avoided and that can only come from the widespread adoption of Automated Crash Avoidance technology that actually works. Alainhttp://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
Apr
26, "Need a
new car? Then
consider one
with active
safety
systems.
Manufacturers
are building
cars with
systems that
can help you
avoid or
mitigate a
crash in all
sorts of
situations,
such as
closing in on
another car
too quickly,
changing lanes
into an unseen
car in a blind
spot, or
simply backing
out in a busy
parking lot.
Key active safety systems include:..." Read more Hmmmm... Good news... Great list of Active Safety Feature. Bad news...The exhaustive list of Make/Model-Feature uses a completely different naming systems for the features which must be totally confusing to Consumers, CR's customers. Plus, there is zero attempt by CR to try to tell its customers the extent to which these systems work or don't work. I understand that this is not easy to do, but to put out what you have have not come close in "...there remains the challenge in interpreting each manufacturer’s offerings, each with their own unique name, and then figuring out which trim and/or option is necessary to get the gear...." Alain
W. Nobles < May 16 "The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development has established a $2 million contract with three out-of-state companies as the state continues to get up to speed in the race to deploy driverless vehicles onto public roads.
The "multi-year" deal to research and plan for both connected and autonomous vehicles and their impact on state roads involves a partnership between Arcadis U.S., Inc., California-based Iteris, Inc., and Texas-based Alliance Transportation Group, Inc., according to a released statement from Arcadis. Arcadis is headquartered in Amsterdam..." Read more Hmmmm... Forwarded from an Anonymous SDC reader..."We could have saved La some big bucks, or made a bundle: Here is my report:
Can I have the $2 million now?! C'mon LaDoT! Want to buy a bridge? Alain
D. Hall,
Apr 17, "In
the race to
the autonomous
revolution,
developers
have realized
there aren’t
enough hours
in a day to
clock the
real-world
miles needed
to teach cars
how to drive
themselves.
Which is why
Grand Theft
Auto V is in
the mix.
The
blockbuster
video game is
one of the
simulation
platforms
researchers
and engineers
increasingly
rely on to
test and train
the machines
being primed
to take
control of the
family sedan.
Companies from
Ford Motor Co.
to Alphabet
Inc.’s Waymo
may boast
about putting
no-hands
models on the
market in
three years,
but there’s a
lot still to
learn about
drilling
algorithms in
how to respond
when, say, a
mattress falls
off a truck on
the
freeway....The
idea isn’t
that the
highways and
byways of the
fictional city
of Los Santos
would ever be
a substitute
for bona fide
asphalt. But
the game “is
the richest
virtual
environment
that we could
extract data
from,”
said Alain
Kornhauser..."
Read
More Hmmmm... Well...we have a slightly different
view of
history wrt to
GTA5. The
'Alain view'
is that Chenyi
Chen*16
independently
started
investigating
the use of
virtual
environments
as a source of
Image -
Affordances
data sets to
use as the
training sets
in a 'Direct
Perception'
approach to
creating a
self-driving
algorithm.
Images of the
road ahead are
converted into
the
instantaneous
geometry that
is implied by
those image.
An optimal
controller
then
determines the
the steering,
brake and
throttle
values to best
drive the
car. The
critical
element in
that process
are the Image - Affordances data
sets which
need to be
pristine.
Chenyi
demonstrated
in his PhD
dissertation
, summarized
in the ICCV2015
paper,
that by using
the pristine
Image -
Affordances
data sets from
an open-source
game TORCS
one could have
a virtual car
drive a
virtual race
course without
crashing.
More
importantly,
when tested on
images from
real driving
situations,
the computed
affordances
were close to
correct.
This encouraged us to look for more appropriate
virtual
environments.
For many
reasons,
including:
"wouldn't it
be amazing if
'Grand Theft
Auto 5'
actually
generated some
positive
'redeeming
social value'
by
contributing
to the
development of
algorithms
that actually
made cars
safer; saving
grief,
injuries and
lives".
Consequently,
in the Fall of
2015, Artur
Filipowicz'17
began to
investigate
using GTA5 to
train
Convolutional
Neural
Networks to
perform some
of the Direct
Perception
aspects of
automated
driving. With
Jeremiah Liu,
he continued
his efforts in
this direction
last summer
which were presented
at TRB in
January.
Yesterday, he
and Nyan
Bhat'17
turned in
their Senior
Theses focused
on this topic.
A. Kornhauser, Jan 14, "Orf467F16 Final Project Symposium quantifying implications of such a Nation-wide mobility system on Average Vehicle Occupancy (AVO), energy, environment and congestion, including estimates of fleet size, needed empty vehicle repositioning, and ridership implications on existing rail transit systems (west, east, NYC) and Amtrak of a system that would efficiently and effectively perform their '1st mile'/'last-mile' mobility needs. Read more Hmmm... Now linked are 1st Drafts of the chapters and the powerPoint summaries of these elements. Final Report should be available by early February. The major finding is, nationwide there exists sufficient casual ridesharing potential that a well--managed Nationwide Fleet of about 30M aTaxis (in conjunction with the existing air, Amtrak and Urban fixed-rail systems) could serve the vehicular mobility needs of the whole nation with VMT 40% less than today's automobiles while providing a Level-of-Service (LoS) largely equivalent and in many ways superior than is delivered by the personal automobile today. Also interesting are the findings as to the substantial increased patronage opportunities available to Amtrak and each of the fixed rail transit systems around the country because the aTaxis solve the '1st and last mile' problem. While all of this is extremely good news, the challenging news is that since all of these fixed rail systems currently lose money on each passenger served, the additional patronage would likely mean that they'll lose even more money in the future. :-( Alain
September
2016,
"Executive
Summary...For
DOT, the
excitement
around highly
automated
vehicles
(HAVs) starts
with safety.
(p5)
...The
development of
advanced
automated
vehicle safety
technologies,
including
fully
self-driving
cars, may
prove to be
the greatest
personal
transportation
revolution
since the
popularization
of the
personal
automobile
nearly a
century ago.
(p5)
...The benefits don’t stop with safety. Innovations have the potential to transform personal mobility and open doors to people and communities. (p5)
...The remarkable speed with which increasingly complex HAVs are evolving challenges DOT to take new approaches that ensure these technologies are safely introduced (i.e., do not introduce significant new safety risks), provide safety benefits today, and achieve their full safety potential in the future. (p6) Hmmm...Fantastic statements and I appreciate that the fundamental basis and motivator is SAFETY. We all have recognized safety as a necessary condition that must be satisfied if this technology is to be successful. (unfortunately it is not a sufficient condition, (in a pure math context)). This policy statement appropriately reaffirms this necessary condition. Alain
"...we
divide the
task of
facilitating
the safe
introduction
and deployment
(...defines
“deployment”
as the
operation of
an HAV by
members of the
public who are
not the
employees or
agents of the
designer,
developer, or
manufacturer
of that HAV.)
of HAVs into
four
sections:(p6)
Hmmm...Perfect!
Alain
"...2.
Model State
Policy (p7)
The Model
State Policy
confirms that
States retain
their
traditional
responsibilities...but... The shared
objective is
to ensure the
establishment
of a
consistent
national
framework
rather than a
patchwork of
incompatible
laws..." Hmmm... Well done. Alain
"...3. NHTSA Current Regulatory Tools (p7) ... This document provides instructions, practical guidance, and assistance to entities seeking to employ those tools. Furthermore, NHTSA has streamlined its review process and is committing to..." Hmmm... Excellent. Alain
"...4. New Tools and Authorities (p7)...The speed with which HAVs are advancing, combined with the complexity and novelty of these innovations, threatens to outpace the Agency’s conventional regulatory processes and capabilities. This challenge requires DOT to examine whether the way DOT has addressed safety for the last 50 years should be expanded to realize the safety potential of automated vehicles over the next 50 years. Therefore, this section identifies potential new tools, authorities and regulatory structures that could aid the safe and appropriately expeditious deployment of new technologies by enabling the Agency to be more nimble and flexible (p8)..." Hmmm... Yes. Alain
"...I.
Vehicle
Performance
Guidance for
Automated
Vehicles
(p11) A.
Guidance: if a
vehicle is
compliant
within the
existing FMVSS
regulatory
framework and
maintains a
conventional
vehicle
design, there
is currently
no specific
federal legal
barrier to an
HAV being
offered for
sale.(footnote
7) However,
manufacturers
and other
entities
designing new
automated
vehicle
systems
are subject to
NHTSA’s
defects,
recall and
enforcement
authority.
(footnote 8)
.
and the "15
Cross-cutting
Areas of
Guidance"
p17)
In sum this is a very good document and displays just
how far DoT
policy has
come from
promoting v2v,
DSRC and
centralized
control,
"connected",
focus to
creating an
environment
focused on
individual
vehicles that
responsibly
take care of
themselves.
Kudos to
Secretary Foxx
for this 180
degree policy
turn focused
on safety.
Once done
correctly, the
HAV will yield
the early
safety
benefits that
will stimulate
continued
improvements
that, in turn,
will yield the
great
mobility,
environmental
and
quality-of-life
benefits
afforded by
driverless
mobility.
What are not addressed are commercial trucking and buses/mass transit. NHTSA is auto focused, so maybe FMCSA is preparing similar guidelines. FTA (Federal Transit Administration) seems nowhere in sight. Alain
Hmmm...What we know now (and don't know):