J.
Cichowski, May
25, "...In a
recent two-day
”SmartCarsDriving Summit” at Princeton University, nearly all the
participating
North American
and European
engineers,
administrators,
lobbyists and
innovators
agreed
robotic-driving
technology is
on the verge
of taking
over, but our
nation – or
any nation –
isn’t prepared
to accept it.
“Maybe by the
year 2050,”
predicted Bern
Grush, a
Canadian
transportation
engineering
consultant who
has studied
nearly all the
work done on
this subject.
Why so long?
“It’s pricey
and it hasn’t
been
integrated or
informed in a
way that would
allow its
capability
today,”
explained
former Defense
Department
research
director Paul
Brubaker. “But
it’s
coming.”..." Read
more Hmmmm... John, thank you
for your
active
participation.
Alain
...The
revolution in
autonomous
vehicles
presents
opportunities
for insurers
in three key
areas:
May 16, Watch
Video Hmmmm... Enjoy! Alain
G. Silberg,
May 2017,
"...And while
a decline in
roadway
crashes is
undoubtedly
good news for
society, it’s
bad news for
automakersand
repair service
businesses,
who will face
a significant
hit to their
bottom lines
as the market
for their
lucrative
collision
parts and
services
business
shrinks
dramatically—and
sooner than
they may
think.
...Although
collision
parts
typically
account for
less than 3
percent of OEM
sales, they
provide a
highly stable
source of
revenue, and
more
important,
account for 10
to 20 percent
of
operating
profits. ...As
these
ADAS-equipped
vehicles and
self-driving
cars
increasingly
take to the
highway, the
questions now
are how much
will they
reduce driver
error and
lower the
incidents of
roadway
crashes, and
how the
expected drop
in vehicle
crash rates
will further
disrupt
automakers,
particularly
their
collision
parts
business....
In our
projection,
crash
involvement
rates could
decline by
over 60
percent by
2030 (that’s
just 13 years
from today)
and over 80
percent by
2040...., we
estimate that
the average
cost of
repairs will
increase (in
real dollars)
about 10
percent by
2030 and
almost 20
percent by
2040.
Nevertheless,
by combining
the crash rate
and cost per
repair
estimate, we
could see a
roughly 50
percent
decline in the
overall
collision
repair market
by 2030 and
around a 75
percent
decline by
2040. So, the
decline in
repair
business will
be somewhat
offset by the
cost per
repair.
However, it
will not be
nearly enough
to overcome
the dramatic
decline
crash-involvement
rates.." Read
more Hmmmm... This is another in
a series of
really good
KPMG reports.
It could only
be improved if
they entitled
it "Will
Safe-driving
vehicles...".
It will be the
Safe-driving
aspects of the
technology
that delivers
this impact.
Self-driving
and even
Driverless
will , at
best, simply
maintain the
safe gains.
It is
Safe-driving
that delivers
the maximum
reduction in
crashes. it
is essentially
available now
(AEB and the
like really
worked) which
solidifies
their 60 %
reduction by
2030 and it
does it with
inexpensive
parts.
Excellent
charts and
some excellent
basic facts.
Very nice.
Alain
T
Horst, R
Mudge, R.
Ellis & K.
Rubin, Fall
2016, Read
More Hmmmm... More on this from
SDC reader and
co-author R.
Mudge: "A
key finding is
hidden in the
text:
Pages A-96 and
A-97 are about
autonomous
vehicles.
Major
messages:
Read more Hmmmm... Thank you Dick! Alain
R. Dietz,
May 25,
"...While the
first impact
would tend to
increase
population
density,
particularly
in central
cities and
large urban
areas,
driverless
cars also
could increase
the number of
areas suitable
for
single-family
community
development.
More efficient
roadways would
reduce travel
times and grow
the size of
markets in
which buyers
could “ride
until they
qualify.” If
commuters are
free to work,
socialize, or
otherwise
spend their
time not
driving, the
mental cost of
commuting
would be
lower. A
less-taxing
commute would
mean that
people could
live farther
away, in homes
and
neighborhoods
perhaps more
to their
liking. This
effect could
spark a
renewed round
of exurban
development...."
Read
more Hmmmm... “ride
until they
qualify.” I love it! Not a bad
article. It,
and other
points,
pretty much
hit the nail
on the head.
Alain
R. Quain,
May 25,
"...The
advantage of
lidar is that
it can
generate
precise
three-dimensional
images of
everything
from cars to
trees to
cyclists in a
variety of
environments
and under a
variety of
lighting
conditions.
While
autonomous car
designs use
numerous
sensors,
including
ultrasonic,
radar and
video camera
components,
lidar has
unique
abilities.
Unlike
cameras, for
example, lidar
cannot be
fooled by
shadows or
blinded by
bright
sunlight...The
biggest hurdle
to widespread
lidar adoption
is an economic
one, and that
is where the
battle is
being waged. Read
more Hmmmm... An OK discussion
but the issue
is "an
economic
one". Lidar's
competition is
a lens (which
may be a pin
hole).
Biology found
lenses to be
the elegant
solutions when
backed up with
some
processing
power.
Moreover, the
whole
infrastructure
that we have
installed for
the past 100
years is based
on lenses. And
it works
pretty well as
long as we
behave and pay
attention.
Lidar doesn't
improve
behavior or
concentration
and it also
needs
processing
power. Alain
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
T. Litman,
May 1, "This
report
explores the
impacts that
autonomous
(also called
self-driving,
driverless or
robotic)vehicles are likely to have on travel demands and transportation
planning. It
discusses
autonomous
vehicle
benefits and
costs,
predicts their
likely
development
and
implementation
based on
experience
with previous
vehicle
technologies,
and explores
how they will
affect
planning
decisions such
as optimal
road, parking
and public
transit
supply. The
analysis
indicates that
some benefits,
such as
independent
mobility for
affluent
non-drivers,may
begin in the
2020sor 2030s,
but most
impacts,
including
reduced
traffic and
parking
congestion
(and therefore
road and
parking
facility
supply
requirements),
independent
mobility for
low-income
people (and
there
fore reduced
need to
subsidize
transit),
increased
safety, energy
conservation
and pollution
reductions,
will only be
significant
when
autonomous
vehicles
become common
and
affordable,
probably in
the 2040s to
2060s, and
some benefits
may require
prohibiting
human-driven
vehicles on
certain
roadways,
which could
take longer.
..." Read
more Hmmmm... A thorough
analysis that
suffers from
the beginning
by not
properly
recognizing
the enormous
difference
between
Self-driving
and
Driverless.
It treats them
interchangeably as autonomous vehicles even though they are VERY
different. It
also starts
out with a
condescending
Computers v
Automobiles.
It has obvious
inconsistencies in its very first Figure 1: Is it cost per passenger
mile or cost
per vehicle
mile or are
these prices,
not costs; are
aTaxi only
slightly
cheaper than
Ride-hailing
(are we
dealing with
costs or
prices?) yet
autonomous bus
is only
slightly
cheaper than
personal auto
(must not have
much ride
sharing).
Figure 2 is
useless
because it
completely
misses the
consumer-owned
Self-driving
and fleet
-owned
driverless
aspects. Plus
how do they
both end up
with 100%.
(100%
what??).
Figure 3 is
somewhat OK,
but implies
that factors
have equal
weights.
Table 8... we
are going to
"need to plan
for mixed
traffic
beginning in
2040" when a
major share of
all vehicles
are
autonomous?
How did we
transition
without that
need plan??
What am I
missing here?
The barn door
has been open
and now we're
worried about
what happened
to the
animals??? I
won't even
comment of
Figure 4.
WHATEVER. The
report is very
weak and
relies on
questionable
references.
But please
read and you
judge. 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):