J.
Hernandez,
Sept 2,
"...There are
now more than
16 million
shared
bicycles on
the road in
China’s
traffic-clogged
cities, thanks
to a fierce
battle for
market share
among 70-plus
companies
backed by a
total of more
than $1
billion in
financing.
These
start-ups have
reshaped the
urban
landscape,
putting bikes
equipped with
GPS and
digital locks
on almost
every street
corner in a
way that
Silicon Valley
can only dream
of.
But their
popularity has
been
accompanied by
a wave of
misbehavior.
Because the
start-ups do
not use fixed
docking
stations,
riders abandon
bicycles
haphazardly
along streets
and public
squares,
snarling
traffic and
cluttering
sidewalks.
Thieves have
taken them by
the tens of
thousands, for
personal use
or selling
them for
parts. Angry
and
mischievous
vandals hang
them in trees,
bury them in
construction
sites and
throw them
into lakes and
rivers...."
Read more Hmmmm... Nothing is easy. Without active 'empty
vehicle
management'
all of the
vehicles will
eventually end
up pilled up
in locations
where 'not
enough' users
want to fetch
them. Demand
is never
symmetric, nor
is it cyclic
with any kind
or reasonable
periodicity!
So the above
shouldn't be
surprising
anyone. Alain
Aug 15, " Preliminary estimates from the National Safety Council indicate motor vehicle deaths in the first six months of 2017 are 1% lower than they were during the same six-month period in 2016. However, the country is fresh off the steepest estimated two-year increase in motor vehicle deaths since 1964, and it is too early to conclude whether the upward trend is over. The estimated deaths during the first six months of 2017 still are 8% higher than the 2015 six-month estimates, and the final six months of the calendar year – July to December – tend to be deadlier than the first six...." Read more Hmmmm... Not good! Alain
B. Finley,
Aug 16,
"...City
officials on
Wednesday said
300 charging
stations for
electric
vehicles will
be set up
around metro
Denver over
the next two
years. They’re
also looking
at changes in
the city
building code
to encourage
installation
of more
charging
stations near
proliferating
apartments and
condos.
Lawsuit
settlement
money paid by
Volkswagen
after the
diesel
emissions test
scandal will
help fund
Denver’s
effort. Great use of that money
Colorado
residents have
registered
more than
10,000 plug-in
vehicles, up
from 1,200
four years
ago. Nearly 2
percent of new
vehicles sold
in the state
are plug-ins, We are still at the beginning...There
are at least
35 types of
electric
vehicles
listed for
purchase this
summer, up
from three in
2012. ...they
are advocating
for charging
at apartment
buildings,
grocery
stores, office
towers, gas
stations,
parks, shops,
parking meters
and along
major transit
corridors, Hmmmm... Why 'transit corridors', to help yet
another
competitor to
transit??? ...
The best
rapid-charging
stations,
which can
fully revive a
dead battery
in 30 minutes,
cost around
$100,000..."
Read
more Hmmmm... This remains one of several Achilles' Heels
of PEVs
(batteries and
road fees
being the
others). Takes
10x time to
'fill up' to
get less than
half the
range. If
PEVs replace
half of the
fleet we wont
need half of
the existing
gas pumps but
for each gas
pump we don't
need we'll
need 10x
charging
station. Oh,
but we'll all
charge at home
in our
garages.
(What happens
to all of the
junk that's
stored our
garages while
leaving our
cars in the
driveway. Oh,
but that's
just me.
Sorry!) Alain
B. Rush & B. Schlecter, Aug '17, "... the challenges of ride-sharing in an autonomous future. ..Frequent assertions that car owners will easily abandon ownership and become robo-vehicle ride buyers are largely wishful thinking... How much travelers tend toward increased vehicle ownership and how much toward car-and ride- sharing depends at least as much on human behavioral preferences and habit as on pure economic considerations....
Two great myths surround vehicle automation. The first is that technology will drive traffic congestion out of our transport system, This cannot happen soon for four reasons...
The second
great
driverless-vehicle
myth is that
"no one will
own a car"...
Read
more Hmmmm... Well written 'other' views. It won't be
easy, and of
course, it
won't be
everywhere
(Amazon hasn't
eliminated
every
brick&mortar
store, but is
certainly has
changed
things.) We
had reached a
point where
essentially
everyone in
the family
needed their
own car
because we had
located our
families in
places in
which one
needed one's
own car to get
anywhere and
everybody was
going
different
places at
different
times and
there were no
alternatives.
Alternatives
seem to be
appearing and
are becoming
known
(car-sharing,
Uber/Lyft,
Apps....).
It used to be
that many
students
brought cars
to campus
every year.
Not so much
anymore.
Car-sharing,
Uber/Lyft,
Apps... have
changed that.
Households
have begun to
not need
multi-cars.
So at least
the 2nd
derivative of
CarOwnership(t)
has changed
sign and maybe
even the 1st.
Unfortunately
the
RideSharing
needle hasn't
begun to
move. It
needs
Driverless is
a Necessary
Condition
which has yet
to even begin
to emerge.
EDGE, 2017,
"For
investors, the
rise of
autonomous
vehicles has
the potential
to impact
industries as
far afield as
health care,
insurance,
internet and
infrastructure.
... The
biggest
challenge
facing the
adoption of
autonomous
vehicles today
is achieving
the requisite
level of
accuracy
required to
drive safely
on public
roads in mixed
traffic. The
decision-making
and driving
capability of
autonomous
vehicles need
to be
practically
flawless.
Ensuring this
high standard
is met
requires
training the
autonomous
vehicle with
massive
amounts of
data that
takes into
account any
possible
situation it
may encounter
and extensive
safety testing
to validate
that the
autonomous
vehicle
performs as
expected at
all times.
Once the
safety of the
systems is
established,
another large
hurdle to
adoption will
be the
regulatory
environment.
Governments
and regulatory
bodies need to
develop
frameworks to
permit the
operation of
autonomous
vehicles on
public streets
and
highways...."
Read
more Hmmmm... Pretty fundamental. Alain
S. Pappas,
Aug 28, "A
team of
students from
Germany sent a
carbon-plastic
pod whizzing
through a tube
at 201 mph
(324 km/h)
last weekend,
securing the
top spot in
Elon Musk's
second
Hyperloop
competition.
Musk,...
envisions as a
series of
underground
vacuum tubes
through which
transportation
pods levitated
by air would
zoom at nearly
the speed of
sound.
In January,
SpaceX held
its first
Hyperloop
Competition
for students
to test
prototypes of
pods. The
winning team,
WARR Hyperloop
from the
Technical
University of
Munich, again
took top prize
in the second
Hyperloop Pod
Competition,
which was held
between Aug.
25 and 27. The
team's pod was
one of only
three that met
the technical
criteria for
testing inside
the 0.8-mile
(1.28 km) tube
at SpaceX
headquarters
in Hawthorne,
California....Read
more Hmmmm... And see the video. Still hard to see how
this beats
conventional
airplanes in
anything but a
niche market,
if even such a
market even
exists. Alain
P. Brown,
Sept 6,
"AImotive and
Groupe PSA are
partnering to
test a new
highway pilot
program to
deliver level
4 autonomous
driving
capabilities
on highways at
speeds of more
than 80 miles
per hour. The
project will
deploy
artificial
intelligence
functionalities
such as
adaptive
cruise
control, fully
automated lane
change,
autonomous
take-over and
collision
avoidance. The
goal is to
demonstrate
how AI can be
used for
future
autonomous
highway
driving at
level 4.... Read
more Hmmmm... See video in text. Alain
I. Lunden, Sept 4, "...Via — which has developed a shuttle-based carpooling service that it offers directly in the U.S. for a flat-rate starting at $5, as well as through platform partnerships with other transportation providers — has raised what it is describing as a “strategic investment” led by German automaker Daimler to expand into Europe as well as to work more closely on other business opportunities together. Alongside this, Daimler’s Mercedes Benz division is investing $50 million into a joint venture with the startup. The full amount of funding has not been disclosed, but we understand from a source very close to the deal that it is $250 million.
The
sizeable
funding
underscores
ongoing
momentum in
the
transportation
industry to
build more
tech-based
solutions,
updating
outmoded
legacy
infrastructure
with more
efficient
services that
can meet the
new demand for
on-demand...." Read
more Hmmmm... Wow! Dynamic ridesharing has come a long
way. The more
scale the more
effective, so
it is nice to
see this
enthusiasm at
trying to
achieve
cross-over
scale. Alain
R.
Vanderbei,
Sept 2, Solar
eclipse images
taken by my
colleague Bob
Vanderbei in
Salem OR, Sept
21, 2017 See
Images Hmmmm... Very nice!!! I could not see flares with my
naked eyes,
but the corona
was really
impressive.
Alain
Americans Plans for Acquiring & Using Electric, Shared & Self-Driving Vehicles- Neil Quarles & Kara Kockelman
Fleet Performance & Cost Evaluation of a Shared Autonomous Electric Vehicle (SAEV) Fleet: A Case Study for Austin, Texas - Ben Loeb & Kara Kockelman.
What Will Autonomous Trucking Do to U.S. Trade Flows? Application of the Random-Utility-Based Multi-Regional Input-Output Model - Yantao Huang & Kara Kockelman.
Analyzing the Dynamic Ride-Sharing Potential for Shared Autonomous Vehicle Fleets using Cellphone Data from Orlando, Florida - Krishna Murthy Gurumurthy & Kara Kockelman.
Deeper Understanding of Americans Autonomous Vehicle Preferences: Questions on Long-Distance Travel, Ride-Sharing, Privacy, & Crash Ethics - Krishna Murthy Gurumurthy, Kara Kockelman, & Jeffrey (Hyungseung) Hahm.
Anticipating
Long-Distance
Travel Shifts
due to
Self-Driving
Vehicles -
Ken Perrine,
Kara Kockelman
& Yantao
Huang.
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
M. Buchanan, Sept 8, "They could actually be less safe and more troublesome..." Read more Hmmmm... If true, then no one will be selling anything, so you won't need to worry about being 'Sold' on anything. If they are more safe and less troublesome, then what's your positions??? Now that would make this article worth while reading. Alain
C. Weiss,
Sept 8, " very
different kind
of Jaguar "F"
Type, the
all-new
Future-Type
concept leaps
ahead a few
decades,
exploring what
personal
luxury
transportation
might look
like in and
beyond 2040.
The new
concept molds
a sleek,
self-guiding
electric pod
around the
intelligent
Sayer steering
wheel
previewed
earlier this
week. In
Jaguar's
greater
vision,
artificial
intelligence
coordinates
your everyday
transportation
needs and
takes care of
many other
daily tasks at
the sound of
your
voice...The
narrow body is
optimized for
tight urban
streets and
parking
decks." Read
more Hmmmm... Very half baked. See
video.
Tight urban
streets yet
depicted on
wide-open
x-urban
freeway.
'parking
deck' Not a
chance, Sorry!
Alain
M. Sena,
Vol 4, issue
9,
"UNCERTAINTY
IS TROUBLING
for
businesses,
individuals
and
governments....
In one way or
another, all
businesses,
including and
especially
transport, are
completely
reliant on
four macro
factors:.. I'd add one more: where are children learn and play
.... A United
Nations study
projects world
population to
reach 8.5
billion by
2030, up from
7.5 billion
today, driven
by growth in
developing
countries...India
will have
traded places
with China as
the world’s
most populous
country in
around seven
years...So the
large bulk of
those
additional one
billion
inhabitants of
the planet by
2030 will be
looking for
places to live
in Mumbai, not
in Madrid. The
takeaway from
this is that
the so-called
‘developed’
countries,
with a few
notable
exceptions,
are either
losing
population due
to not
producing
enough
children or
seeing their
populations
staying
basically
stable. In
2030, Tokyo
will still be
the most
populated city
with an
estimated
population of
37.2 million.
Delhi will be
in second
place with
36.1 million,
up from 3.5
million in
1970! (How has
it coped?)
Shanghai will
be in third
place and New
York/Newark
will have
dropped off
the top ten
list. But what
will it be
like to live
in these
cities? The
Economist
Intelligence
Unit ranks
cities as the
most and least
liveable. ...
It ranked
Melbourne,
Australia as
number one,
...
Melbourne’s
density is 460
persons per
km2 compared
to 6,158/km2
for Tokyo and
2,059/km2 for
Shanghai....
None of the
most liveable
cities is
among the top
ten places
where venture
capitalists
have been
placing their
money bets
during the
past
year....These
four city
regions are
ranked below
30th place on
the EIU
Liveability
Index. In
other words,
they may be
successful,
but not that
liveable...
(in US) 50%
live in rural
or less urban
areas
occupying more
than 90% of
the land area.
Is there any
wonder why
over 50% of
the vehicles
sold in the
U.S. are not
passenger cars
but SUVs and
pick-up
trucks?...If
everyone who
lived in the
dense urban
areas stopped
buying cars,
there would
still be over
50% of the
population who
would continue
to be car
purchasers.
Can we conclude from this that the exodus from city regions to the suburbs of both jobs and families has now stopped and central cities once again will be where people live and work? No, not unless people will be willing to give up everything they have come to value in terms of living standards and will accept being packed into sardine can-sized apartments stacked a mile high.... Living in a central city in the most desirable neighborhoods will continue to be the privilege of the wealthy and very wealthy...They also have homes and dachas in the Hamptons, Vinyard and Vermont, else they couldn't stand it. ... When younger people build families and need more space, preferably with a yard, and that space is too expensive in the city, they find it further out...Visions of young professionals dashing around in robotic cars gobbling up mobility as a service are, to put it kindly, a bit fanciful. Read more Hmmmm...I love it!! So many good one-liners. 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):