http://SmartDrivingCars-6.01-HelloDriverless-011418
61st
edition of the
6th year of
SmartDrivingCars
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
Episode 18 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast with Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser, co-host Fred Fishkin and guest research engineer Steven Shladover of UC Berkeley. Topics: General Motors, Waymo, the Transportation Research Board, CES, nVIDIA and how #MeToo may impact ride sharing technology in the future.
A. Kornhauser, Jan 13, "... What if no one owned a personal car or truck any more? What operational characteristics would a fleet of autonomousTaxis (aTaxis), operating nation-wide, need to have to deliver a comparable level-of-Service (LoS), in conjunction with existing Rail Transit, AmTrak and Airline networks (with appropriately enhanced LoS between existing stations/airports)? How many of what size would be needed? How would they need to be managed? What would be the fundamental economics in order to adequately serve the Billion or so person trips that take place on a typical day across the US? Because details matter, we synthesized each of the 310 or so, million people in the US. For each we synthesized their mobility needs throughout a typical day to accomplish their activities such as get to and from work/school/play/shopping/entertainment/... Preliminary results include...
J Huang, Jan 8, "Watch a replay of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's press event at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, where he unveiled ... along with a slew of auto news, including NVIDIA DRIVE " Read more Hmmmm... And most importantly listen at 1:32:52 when he credits my Doctor-son, Chenyi Chen, with what he and the Urs Muller's Holmdel team have done with using vision to drive a car. I'm so proud Chenyi! :-) Alain
M.
Cochrane, Oct
5, "A UB
graduate who
said the
university
changed his
life has given
$4 million to
the School of
Engineering
and Applied
Sciences
(SEAS).
Stephen Still
graduated with
a bachelor’s
degree in
civil
engineering in
1976, then
earned
master’s and
doctoral
degrees at
Princeton
University.
While he says
his passion
has always
been in
transportation
planning, he
spent most of
his career in
the aviation
industry....In
recognition of
Still’s
generosity, UB
will rename
the institute
the Stephen
Still
Institute for
Sustainable
Transportation
and
Logistics...."
Read
more
Hmmmm... I'm
so proud of my
Doctor-son,
Steve Still!
:-) Alain
Jan 10, D. Etherington, "...AutoSIM is essentially a huge virtual world running on extremely powerful Nvidia DGX GPU-based super computers. Within, there are multiple virtual cities, and virtual cars driving around virtual roads within those cities, sharing the generated urban environments with virtualized pedestrians, cyclists, animals and more..." Read more Hmmmm... This is a no-brainer for nVIDIA because it takes its legacy/expertise in gaming (creating virtual environments for gamers) and puts it to good societal use as both a testing environment but also a training and re-training environment for developing the AI for the safe and efficient driving of road vehicles.. Alain
R.
Rosenberg, Dec
28, "The U.S.
has seen a
14-percent spike
in roadway
fatalities
over the past
two years.
It’s also seen
the biggest
back-to-back
increase in
motor
vehicle–related
death rates
per mile
driven in more
than 50 years
and 37,461
lives lost by
drivers,
passengers,
cyclists, and
pedestrians in
2016 alone....
In its reassessment
of data from
2015, the
NSC estimated
that cellphone
usage was
involved in 26
percent of all
traffic
accidents. A
study released
this year
by Cambridge
Mobile
Telematics, a
company that
creates apps
to monitor
driving and
smartphone
usage for
insurance
purposes,
similarly
found that
approximately
a quarter of
drivers
involved in
crashes were
using their
phones during
or in the
minute before
the accidents
occurred....in
February, for
example, the
Consumer
Technology
Association, a
trade
organization
that lobbies
for companies
like Apple and
AT&T, sent
a letter to
relevant Trump
Cabinet
officials
urging them to
reconsider the
Phase 2
guidelines...Another
trade group,
CTIA -
...issued a
public comment
calling for
the
guidelines’
full
retraction....Well-written
state laws
against bad
driving habits
and federal
guidelines
about the
design of
in-car
infotainment
systems and
personal
electronics
can send
crucial
signals about
the dangers of
these
distractions.,,"
Read
more Hmmmm...
Very
interesting!!
Moreover, the
best thing to
do is to
insist that
the automakers
equip every
car with crash
avoidance and
automated lane
keeping
systems that
actually work
and keep
drivers from
misbehaving.
To deliver
Safety we
don't have to
ask the driver
not to drive
but simply
place systems
in cars that
doesn't let
the driver
mis-behave
PERIOD! The
systems should
NOT allow us
to speed
excessively,
run red lights
or stop signs,
change lanes
without
signalling,
tailgate or
crash into
things. Its
not that hard
and its cost
should be such
that insurance
can happily
pay for it.
Auto companies
have for too
long sold cars
as a dream to
mis-behave.
just look at
today's car
commercials.
Many/most have
small print
stating that
the driving
was done on a
closed course
by
professional
drivers.
Irrespective
of the
disclaimer,
they're using
mis-behavior
to sell their
product.
Shame on
them.
Instead, they
should be
placing
systems on
cars that
precludes them
from behaving
that way on
public
streets.
Alain
S. Hanley,
Jan 1,
"Shenzhen,
located just
north of Hong
Kong, is home
to BYD, which
happens to
build electric
vehicles,
including
buses. With a
population
approaching 12
million,
Shenzhen has a
lot of buses —
16,359 of
them, to be
precise — and
as of this
moment, every
one of them is
electric...Of
course, none
of those
electric
vehicles are
worth anything
if they can’t
be recharged
cnveniently.
Over the past
few years, the
city of
Shenzhen has
built 300 bus
chargers and
installed
8,000
streetlight
poles that
double as
charging
stations for
electric cars.
The bus
chargers can
replenish the
battery in an
electric bus
in about two
hours...." Read
more Hmmmm...
Very
ineresting.
Alain
D.
Shepardson,
Jan 2, "...
Chao wanted
railroads to
"greatly
accelerate"
efforts to
meet
congressional
deadlines. A
deadly Amtrak
crash last
month near
Seattle that
killed three
occurred on a
section of
track that did
not have the
PTC system
operating....The
Transportation
Department
said 12 of 41
railroads
covered by the
requirements
report having
installed less
than 50
percent of the
hardware
required for
their PTC
systems as of
Sept. 30. The
government
said the
systems are in
operation on
45 percent of
route miles
owned by
freight
railroads and
just 24
percent of
passenger
railroads..."
Read
more Hmmmm...
The system is
so old, and
possibly so
obsolete, that
maybe the
better thing
to today is to
to go to a
more modern
system sys so
little ahs
been installed
to date.
Should
railroads
simply be
automated. You
have a human
implementing
what a
signaling
system is
telling
her/him what
to do. Since
"the system"
knows what to
do, wouldn't
it be
better/safer
if the system
just did it,
instead of
trying to
cajole a
person to do
it. Sure some
jobs would be
lost, but so
many more jobs
would be
created
because
railroads
would be able
to offer
substantially
better service
with short
trains that
their busibess
would increase
so much that
all the
displace train
engineers
could readily
find even
better
employments in
ather areas of
the business.
Alain
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
M.
Mawad, Jan
n10, "...There
are bugs
though. The
car had some
glitches on
the highway,
and the
co-pilot had
to jump in a
few times to
stop it from
driving
straight into
a lane that
was under
construction
or too close
to other
vehicles when
the road got
crowded.
We also had to
stop to wipe
condensation
off certain
sensors. While
the car has a
360-degree
view and
detects
elements up to
250 meters
around it,
it’s not fit
yet for city
driving, and
regulation
doesn’t allow
that anyway in
most
countries..."
Read
more
Hmmmm...
Sounds like
this isn't
even a Tesla
that you've
been able to
buy for some
time. Why is
this news?
Alain
[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">
2nd
Annual
Princeton SmartDrivingCar
Summit
May 16
& 17, 2018
Princeton
University
Princeton,
NJ
Save the Date
Episode 17 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast! Princeton University Professor Alain Kornhauser, who is faculty chair of autonomous vehicle engineering and tech journalist Fred Fishkin chat about the latest from Waymo, Velodyne, GM, Lyft and more.
Episode 16 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. The Amtrak crash: who is to blame? Uber's European problem. Yann LeCun at the Institute for Advanced Study. All this along with the latest on Apple, Volvo and Tesla in Episode 16 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast with Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Listen
Episode 15 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. Hosts Fred Fishkin and Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser are joined by leading expert Michael Sena from Sweden in a wide open and most entertaining chat ranging from the impact of Ralph Nader to the insurance industry's role, to the latest from Ford, Lyft, Uber and China's Didi.
Episode 13 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast with host Fred Fishkin and Princeton University Professor Alain Kornhauser. This edition In this edition Fred and Alain are joined by Bernard Soriano, the Deputy Director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles. On the agenda: Waymo's CEO says real driverless testing is coming soon.; Waymo's autonomous fleet now has traveled four million miles; Lyft gets the green light from California to test self driving on public roads
Episode 11 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast with host Fred Fishkin and Princeton University Professor Alain Kornhauser. Fred and Alain are joined by leading expert and Internet pioneer Brad Templeton. Waymo makes some history, Thee tech needed to make it work..cameras...lidar or both? Navya bringing new robotic vehicles to Paris. And an accident...as a self driving shuttle is launched in Las Vegas.
F. Fishkin, Oct 25, Episode 9 "Host Fred Fishkin with Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and guest Fred Payne, council member from Greenville County, South Carolina. Greenville's autonomous taxis are rolling. Bank of America analysts see big investment opportunities in vehicle technology. The latest from London, China and New York. And on demand pilotless planes?
A.
Hawkins, Dec
19, "...Trov,
a
five-year-old
insurance tech
startup based
in Danville,
Calif., said
it would work
with Waymo to
insure
passengers for
lost and
damaged
property and
trip-related
medical
expenses. In
other words,
if your
driverless
Waymo is
involved in a
fender bender
— or, god
forbid,
something
worse — your
robot-induced
whiplash
treatment will
be covered.
Importantly,
passengers
won’t have to
pay for the
coverage, nor
will they know
that Trov is
the insurer.
Moreover,
Waymo is Trov’s
first
corporate
client.
The startup is
underwritten
by an
affiliate of
reinsurer
Munich Re,
whose
venture-capital
arm also led a
$45 million
fundraising
round for the
startup
earlier this
year. The
reinsurer was
willing to
take a risk,
given the lack
of data on
pricing and
claims history
surrounding
self-driving
cars..." Read
more
Hmmmm... This
is
significant!!!
This is
essentially
re-Insurance
of Waymo's
operation of
an
autonomousTaxi
(aTaxi)
service. It
would be
interesting to
know the
details of the
deal as to
deductibles,
coverage of
"the other
guy", etc. to
understand how
much Waymo is
confident in
its extensive
test results
and thus
largely
self-insuring
versus
risk-aversion
due diligence
for its
investors.
Alain
S.
Chirls, Dec.
20, "Three
people were
killed and
more than 70
were injured
as an Amtrak
Cascades train
derailed early
Dec. 18 while
traversing a
curve leading
into an
overpass at
Interstate 5
southwest of
Tacoma, Wash.,
sending a
locomotive and
passenger cars
crashing onto
the highway
below. The
National
Transportation
Safety Board
has identified
the cause of
the wreck as
an overspeed
condition,
citing a lapse
in situational
awareness as a
potential
contributing
factor...
Preliminary
information
indicated that
the emergency
brakes
deployed
automatically
...
pretty
worthless
automated
emergency
brakes,
Siemens. They
must be of the
same design
that the SAE
designed for
cars...
applied for
crash
mitigation
purposes, not
crash
avoidance.
And how good
was the
mitigation
this time?!
So bad!!...
and were not
manually
activated by
the engineer,
NTSB member
Bella
Dinh-Zarr
said, citing
data from the
locomotive's
event
recorder.
Positive Train
Control had
been installed
on the
right-of-way,
but wasn't
operational,
said Geoff
Patrick,
spokesman for
Sound Transit,
which owns the
right-of-way.
The target
date for
having PTC up
and running
for the
segment of the
track where
the derailment
occurred is
the second
quarter of
2018.
Locomotives
and
cab-control
cars also need
to be equipped
with PTC...
Read more
Hmmmm... So once
again the NTSB
will throw the
engineer
"under the
bus" rather
than senior
management
that didn't
implement PTC
in a timely
manner. The
same thing is
happening in
the
SafeDriving
car world
where the
mentality
remains at
SAE, NHTSA and
the OEMs that
the driver is
in control,
the automated
systems are
warnings and
the mentality
is crash
mitigation
instead of
crash
avoidance as
I've commented
previously.
Maybe this is
another
wake-up call
although there
have been many
and everyone
just hits the
snooze
button. And
then there is
the NYTimes
with their
typical "email
server"
and "flu
symptoms"
reporting....
B. Jones, Dec. 6, "Self-driving cars are expected to make our roads safer. Now, UK insurance company Direct Line is offering a discount to customers who use Tesla Autopilot to facilitate research into its effects....." Read more Hmmmm... Guess what.. I bet the discount is substantially less than the expected reduction in LOSS! Win-Win!! Why is this not happening in the US? Alain
Nov 27, " KPMG predicts that self-driving cars and mobility services will provide options that will reduce consumer desire to own cars, particularly sedans. Pushing a button for mobility services competes with the utility of sedans, and both give consumers the freedom to buy the car they really want to own or utilize mobility by the trip. In fact, KPMG projects that sales of personally-owned sedans in the U.S. will drop precipitously – from 5.4 million units sold today to just 2.1 million units by 2030...." Read more Hmmmm... See video, See full report next, Excellent but they don't sufficiently differentiate between Self-driving and Driverless (and don't even bother with Safe-driving which is unfortunate. But excellent anyway because they approach it from the individual trip demand. Alain
S.
Masunaga &
R. Mitchell,
Nov. 20, "
fleet of
self-driving
Volvo vehicles
operated by
Uber
Technologies
Inc. could be
ready for the
road as early
as 2019,
marking the
ride-hailing
firm’s biggest
push yet to
roll out
autonomous
cars. Volvo
said Monday
that it would
sell Uber tens
of thousands
of luxury
sport utility
vehicles
between 2019
and 2021
outfitted with
the Swedish
automaker’s
safety,
redundancy and
core
autonomous
driving
technologies.
Uber will then
add its own
self-driving
technology to
the autonomous
taxi
fleet..."
Read more
Hmmmm... This is a significant announcement and
recognizes
that it is
going to take
another
year-plus for
the Uber/Volvo
existing 'Self-driving'
technology
stack (which
now requires
an Uber
attendant in
the car) to
become
'Driverless'
(can operate
safely without
an Uber
attendant in
each car).
If these cars
don't become
Driverless,
their cost per
ride will be
so
prohibitively
high that
their use will
not be
sustainable.
24,000
is a
reasonable
number with
which to
start These
vehicles would
become Uber's
work horses.
They'll
operate ~20
hours a day
and could
serve ~5 short
trips per hour
when
concentrated
in Uber's
highest demand
areas. With
some ride
sharing they
could serve
100 person
trips per
day, allowing
them to serve
nearly half of
Uber's current
5.5
million trips
a day.
Unfortunately,
this is the
short-trip
half. The half
remaining is
dominated by
long trips.
Vehicles serve
these at only
about 1.5
trips per
hour. Vehicle
(driver)
productivity
is
consequently
limited to
about 30 trips
per day. That
means that
each day Uber
will still
need two
shifts of
100,000 gig
workers each
to show up and
deliver the
mobility
services
needed to
serve their 3
million daily
longer trips.
To really
scale, Uber
will need to
order many
more of these
Volvos and and
get them to
operate
Driverlessly
in much larger
geographic
areas so that
they can serve
some of these
long trips.
In
the US there
are about 1
Billion
vehicular
trips per day.
Many are
short, some
are long, very
few are very
long. It is
doubtful that
a Driverless
car could
serve more
than 2.5
person trips
per hour or 50
blended-length
trips per
day. Thus, to
serve 10% of
the Billion
trips per day
would require
a fleet of
about 2
million
Driverless
cars. In
2016, 17.5
Million cars
& light
trucks were
sold in the
US. By
devoting about
10% of the car
& light
duty truck
manufacturing
capacity to
the production
of Driverless
vehicles,
enough
Driverless
cars are
produced in a
year to serve
10% of all US
vehicular
trips. So the
manufacturing
capacity
exists to
enable an Uber
or Lyft or
Didi or Waymo
or ... to in a
few years
serve
many/most
trips in the
US.
This
suggests to me
that Waymo
must have
already
established a
deal/arrangement with a manufacturer to begin very soon to produce
thousands of
cars that can
accept Waymo's
Driverless
stack of
hardware and
software and
aggressively
begin to serve
pockets of
those 1Billion
daily person
trips. Alain
NYTM
Editor, Nov 7,
"IT IS A truth
as visible
from space, in
the tendrils
of our
brightly lit
megaroadways,
as it is under
a microscope,
in the diesel
particles that
tar our lungs:
America is a
car country.
This truth has
been true for
more than a
hundred years
now. Soon
after the turn
of the 20th
century, the
automobile
became
pervasive in
urban centers,
establishing a
new, briskly
perilous pace
for city life;
by the 1930s,
as annual
vehicle sales
surpassed four
million, urban
streetcar
systems had
begun to go
defunct,
scrapped in
favor of
gas-burning
buses; by the
mid-1950s, new
cars
increasingly
rolled off the
line into a
suburban way
of life that
the car itself
had made
possible.
Suburbs had
already
swallowed a
quarter of the
population
when, at the
behest of
President
Dwight D.
Eisenhower in
1956, Congress
inaugurated
the most
ambitious
infrastructure
project in the
nation’s
history: a
47,000-mile
Interstate
highway
system. Its
construction
would
crisscross the
nation and
spread even
more suburbia
as it went,
bringing a
profusion of
new features
to the
American
landscape —
not just
countless
cloverleafs
and imposingly
stacked
overpasses but
drive-ins,
drive-throughs,
cul-de-sacs,
acres upon
acres of
blacktop
parking.
As the car
transformed
the American
lifestyle, so
did it
colonize the
American
imagination.
Perhaps the
most
fascinating
artifact of
automotive
retrofuturism
dates to 1958,
two years into
the Interstate
building boom,
when Disney
produced an
hourlong TV
program called
“Magic
Highway,
U.S.A.” After
a half-hour or
so celebrating
the car’s
ascent, the
program
pivoted to
envisioning
its future. At
a time when
Eisenhower’s
Interstate
project —
inspired,
famously, by
his awe at
traveling
Hitler’s
autobahn
during the
Nazi overthrow
— was seizing
private
property
through
eminent domain
around the
country,
Disney
imagined
atomic-powered
tunnel borers
and imperial
road-building
machines as
tall and wide
as
skyscrapers,
cutting
through
landscapes and
leaving fully
constructed
roadways in
their wake.
Dreaming
further
forward, the
program
extrapolated
from the new
real-world
highways to
envision
literal
high-ways of
clear tubes
raised far
above the
urban
environment,
magnificent
air-conditioned
arteries that
someday would
“link together
all nations
and help
create a
better
understanding
among the
peoples of the
world.”..." Read
more Hmmmm... Wow! The
whole magazine
about
SmartDrivingCars.
Wow! Must
reading. Caution:
The only way
this utopia
doesn't turn
into a
disaster is
if, when
pertinent, we
Share Rides!
It is not
pertinent when
the trip
density is so
low that there
isn't anybody
around going
in the same
direction at
about the same
time. Then it
is appropriate
and no problem
to go alone.
However,
when there are
other people
going our way
at about the
same time,
then we should
go together
instead of
adding to
congestion by
going alone.
When several
people are
waiting for an
elevator going
up, they tend
to all get in
together and
go up. The
alternative
would need to
be for the
whole building
to be made of
nothing but
elevator
shafts (same
as paving our
way out of
congestion)..
Then each
could ride
alone without
waiting.
Without more
elevator
shafts, then
each could
wait and incur
intolerable
delay by
insisting on
riding alone
as, happens
today on our
streets and
highways at
rush hour. A
fleet of
centrally
managed
driverless
vehicles
create
"horizontal
automated
elevators"
that can
facilitate
sufficient
ride-sharing
to deliver
utopian
mobility to
all without
incurring
vehicular
congestion.
This enables
moderately
dense living
environments
to be very
attractive.
Alain
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
J. Lowy, AP, Nov 1, "he Trump administration has quietly set aside plans to require new cars to be able to wirelessly talk to each other, auto industry officials said, jeopardizing one of the most promising technologies for preventing traffic deaths....
...The administration has decided not to pursue a final V2V mandate, said two auto industry officials who have spoken with White House and Transportation Department officials and two others whose organizations have spoken to the administration. The industry officials spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize their relations with the administration...." Read more Hmmmm... This basically completes Washington's "540 degree turn" on Safety for cars. A complete spin from V2V and CV and on to AV.
One could sense this coming when it took until his 6th slide for Carl Andersen from US DoT to even mention the word 'Connected'. Four years ago at the 2nd AV conference in Palo Alto, the US DoT folks from would only talk about Connected Vehicles even though it was an AV conference. More recently the pivot was underway when Washington coined CAVs (Connected & Automated Vehicles; I complained that this gave only lip service to AVs since an alphabetic ordering was passed over. Connected was obviously favored.) Secretary Foxx continued the pivot into a spin with his Federal AV Policy statement in September 2016. More spin a month ago with Automated Driving Systems v2.0 and now this to put the nail in the coffin. Jerome Lutin and I have begun to sit Shiva and Paul Brubaker has started covering the mirrors for DSRC.
This substantial change in Washington has profound implications because so many in State & Local government were following the Washington lead and will now need to pivot. Europe, Japan and others in transport planning around the world were also following Washington in the promotion of CVs. Much of the "Smart Cities" and ITS objectives are/were all about Connectivity and the implied control and orchestration of societies to achieve some optimized utopia. Always seemed too "1984" for my taste. Seeking some perfect "Best" when one can't even reach a consensus on what "Best" is really the enemy of "good enough" . Give everyone a little room and let them individually work towards what they consider is best from their perspective. In my politics, this is my view of "Smart Cities" and SmartDrivingCars.
This change has also made obsolescent, if not completely obsolete, some recent reports such as much of the NCHRP 20-102 research which was initially motivated by CV and reports such as the recently released Future Cities: Navigating the New Era of Mobility.
The fundamental problem with V2V is that it doesn't work unless there are other cars with which to communicate. That doesn't happen until the adoption level is substantial. Assume that if the V2V communications works (is fast enough and the right data is communicated perfectly) it has no chance of improving safety unless BOTH vehicles that are about to crash have the technology. The chance that exists, ie the probability that BOTH cars have the technology, is the square of the adoption level. At the beginning it is zero times zero which is zero. But even at a 10 % penetration level, which would take an exhaustive mandate at least two year to achieve, it would only reach a 1% chance of being relevant. When half of the cars have it (and 'it' works in all of the cars that have it, whatever 'it' is) the chances are only 1 in 4 that it is relevant, It takes a 70% adoption (and working) level, which would take at least 10 years to achieve, before it become better than a coin flip. That's a long time before those that bought the hardware can have a reasonable expectation of capturing some benefits. Alain
Draft for Public Comment, October 19, 2017, "This Strategic Plan establishes the strategic goals and objectives for the DOT for FY2018 through FY2022. The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRA) aligns strategic planning with the beginning of each new term of an Administration, requiring every Federal agency to produce a new Strategic Plan by the first Monday in February following the year in which the term of the President commences. The Strategic Plan, therefore, presents the long-term objectives an agency hopes to accomplish at the beginning of each new term of an Administration by describing general and long-term goals the agency aims to achieve, what actions the agency will take to realize those goals, and how the agency will deal with challenges and risks that may hinder achieving results...." Read more Hmmmm... Nice...seems to be void of all references to Connected Vehicles (CV), V2V and V2I that were in the previous FY 2014-2018 strategic plan (Gone is any reference like footnote 13, p.24: "Transforming Transportation through Connectivity: ITS Strategic Research Plan, 2010-2014- Program Update, 2012 " (even the link is 404)
This
may finally be
a realization
by US DoT that
the Connected
Vehicle (CV)
program was a
fatally flawed
concept,
especially in
light of
having viable
Automated
Vehicles. CV
was a
grandiose plan
to have the
public sector
(Washington,
States &
Municipalities)
pay to deploy
electronic
Gizmos
everywhere and
have all of
our vehicular
mobility be
centrally
controlled (think 1984).
It was part of
the America's
National ITS
Architecture
which ITS
America
has been
promoting for
years in
support of its
Gizmo
manufacturing
members.
Unfortunately,
the fatal flaw
in
Architecture
is that the
benefits
(Safety) would
not begin to
really kick-in
until the
Architecture
was largely
deployed
throughout the
highway
infrastructure
and installed
in most
vehicles. It
is essentially
all-or-nothing, and "all" need to be so ubiquitous, consequentially so
expensive,
that the
public sector
was was the
only potential
financier.
However,
along came the
private sector
and
said..."maybe
we can address
this Safety
thing by
automating the
vehicle so
that it is
much less
likely to
Crash while it
shares the
existing
infrastructure
without asking
for any
improvements
(except maybe
better paint
and readable
signs; both of
which are
really needed
anyway for all
existing
users) ".
Sure,
safe
automation is
hard and
expensive, but
nowhere near
as expensive,
especially in
its early
commitments,
as the CV
approach.
And if
successful, at
least one
vehicle and
its occupants
are safer.
PLUS, the cost
of the
automated
vehicle
technology is
likely get
cheaper (it
scales) as we
replicate for
the 2nd, 4th,
8th, 16th...
vehicles and
likely to
become very
affordable
very quickly (Moore's Law) AND
the cost of
replicating
the software
is essentially
zero and ...
So, with what
amounts to a
little bit of
money we can
get started
with one
vehicle and it
is likely to
scale very
nicely to
initiate viral
adoption.
Wow! (Deja
vu all over
again... Steve
Jobs' garage).
So..
it is very
nice that US
DoT has
finally
recognized
through its
strategic
planning
process that
it is time to
pivot
from its
fundamentally
flawed CV
concept to the
SmartDrivingCar/Automated Vehicle (SDC/AV) concept, even though
historically
US DoT has
been all about
the
infrastructure
(roads) and
not-so-much
about vehicles
(cars).
Moreover,
this frees US
DoT from an
enormous
future
financial
obligation.
Congratulations
for making the
pivot. We are
all anxious to
help you
succeed.
Alain
[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.25&filename=eefemdfdfoeeijfb.png" class="" height="22" width="86" border="0">Automated Driving Systems Public Workshop Readout
Washington DC, Oct 20, "The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is committed to the safe deployment of automated vehicles. NHTSA hosted a public workshop today to get feedback on the Voluntary Safety Self-Assessments discussed in the Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety guidance released last month. ...The workshop , overall, was a productive, open forum, where manufacturers, suppliers, safety advocates, and other entities shared the types of information that could be made available, and opportunities for making that information public. There were over 100 attendees present, and many more who participated via a LIVE Webcast. A full transcript will be available in the coming weeks. " Read more Hmmmm... Congratulations Nat, I agree that it was productive. The comments the by Global Automakers, AAMVA, MEMA Waymo and AAM were positive and helpful.
The ...opening remarks by NHTSA Acting Administrator Heidi King: "... At DOT and NHTSA, of course, our central focus is always on safety. NHTSA’s mission remains to help Americans drive, ride and walk safely..." Given that Safety is central, It is unfortunate that Automated Driving systems 2.0 skips over 'Safe-driving' (ADAS or Level1/2 or whatever) and jumps right into Self-driving (Level 3/4/5 or whatever) to address Safety. Essentially all of the Automated Vehicle Safety achievements (crash avoidance, lane departure avoidance, etc..) will be achieved by Safe-driving vehicles that always over-ride our failures and do the right thing even if they don't let us take our hands off the wheel or feet off the pedals. These systems are beginning to be made available today and it is not an understatement to say that they don't work as well as they should/could and there is essentially total confusion in the marketplace/showroom about the capabilities/consumer-expectations about these systems. NHTSA's 5-Star Safety Ratings program doesn't even consider any of these systems. Since 'Safe-driving' has the greatest and nearest term potential impact on Safety, why is it NOT part of this AV program? These systems are being tested; shouldn't NHTSA be calling for a Self-assessment of these systems. Safe-driving systems are beginning to be here now and I contend the public is totally confused.
"...Public trust is essential to the advancement of automated technology...." I wholeheartedly agree!! That trust needs to be earned and its first exposure is mixed. Anti-lock brakes and Electronic Stability Control are automated systems that have earned public trust event though they automatically detect erroneous driver behavior and automatically over-ride those actions in order to do the best that they can to keep the driver safe. But what about these Safe-driving (Level 1/2, ...) systems. These are automated systems focused on Safety, yet NHTSA hasn't even bothered to include any of these systems in its 5-Star Safety Ratings program. The public is totally confused about what is being offered and there seems to be no public trust evernthough these systems are the very foundations of Self-driving and Driverless systems. It is necessary that Safety and public trust be established first in Safe-driving systems. This forms the basis on which to expand that public trust to the downstream systems that deliver other societal benefits, comfort & convenience for Self-driving and affordable mobility for all for Driverless, while providing very little, if any incremental Safety benefits over Safe-driving technology. So... NHTSA's 1st order of business should be to ensure that Safe-driving technology actually works and is valued by car buyers.
A substantial part of the problem here is that the terminology that is being used is totally confusing. NHTSA's decision to give up on its original 4-Level nomenclature was good, they just chose to adopt an even worse one, SAE's. It focuses entirely on the details of the technology, rather than on the value that is to be derived from the technology. The Levels invoke no fundamental cognitive relationships; nothing that would inspire..."tell me more". Thus, engineers might eventually pay attention long enough to absorb the more than 7+/-2 chunks of cognitive information needed to understand the differences in the "Levels". Unfortunately, corporate buyers, journalists, planning, policy and/or legislative officials and the general public/consumers remain totally confused.
I've suggested three categories: Safe-driving..., Self-driving... and Driverless... Not necessarily perfect, because the leader of Driverless chose long ago (~8 years) to call itself Self-driving. Unfortunately, the term Self-driving with human supervision, reinforces the auto industry's 100-year old business model of selling personal comfort and convenience to consumers. The auto industry doesn't bother emphasizing the partial nature of its Self-driving. Waymo has chosen to add the prefix "Fully" in an effort to differentiate itself as really Driverless that is fundamentally attractive to a different business model focused on Fleets delivering mobility services to a public that doesn't own cars. But few are aware of the enormous difference implied by the the existence of the prefix.
In its efforts to engender public trust, NHTSA needs to rethink what it calls these things. An opportunity exists in the re-framing of its Star Ratings, Or maybe, this crash-avoidance technology is so different from the crash-mitigation technology that is NHTSA's sweet-spot, that a new agency or a new division of NHTSA should be created to provide the crash-avoidance safety oversight. Alain
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
Press
Release, Oct
4, "Federal
Highway
Administration
(FHWA)
officials
today awarded
a $4 million
Advanced
Transportation
and Congestion
Management
Technologies
Deployment
(ATCMTD) grant
to South
Carolina’s
Greenville
County for its
automated
taxis.
“Technology is
the future of
U.S.
transportation,”
said Acting
Federal
Highway
Administrator
Brandye L.
Hendrickson.
“These funds
will help
Greenville
County lead
the nation
into a future
with more
driverless
vehicles,
which will
improve
mobility for
some and
reduce traffic
congestion for
all.”
County
officials will
use the funds
to deploy an
integrated
system of
“taxi-shuttles,”
known locally
as “A-Taxis,”
on public
roads. These
are driverless
taxis
providing
shuttle
service to and
from
employment
centers–expected
to improve
access to
transportation
for
disadvantaged
and
mobility-impaired
residents..."
Read more Hmmmm... Wow!! FHWA
is actually
going to fund
aTaxis!!!
Congratulations,
Fred Payne!
This is a
non-trivial
achievement.
Alain
technology,
much as trucks
and airlines
have with
their own
'Administration'.
Alain
M
Burns, Aug 3,
"Cadillac is
about to start
selling
vehicles with
an autonomous
driving mode
...Once
the light bar
on top of the
steering wheel
turns green,
the driver can
let go...
“Wait for the
green light
and let go,”
the Cadillac
engineer
instructed.
That’s it. The
car was
driving
itself. I, the
person behind
the steering
wheel, was no
longer the
driver.
Cadillac’s
Super Cruise
system was
driving. The
2018 Cadillac
CT6 sped along
US-23 under
the direction
of Super
Cruise.
Traffic was
light and the
weather was
perfect. The
system held
the Cadillac
sedan in lane
and responded
appropriately
to traffic. I
spent an hour
on the
expressway and
touched the
steering wheel
and pedals
only a few
times. Super
Cruise made
the drive
boring. I
think that’s
the point....
When active,
Super Cruise
controls the
steering and
speed, but
again, only on
an expressway.
This is done
through on
board sensors
and using GPS
and mapping
data. GM
employed
GeoDigital, a
startup in GM
Venture’s
portfolio, to
map 160,000
miles of
expressways in
the U.S. and
Canada. The
car company
then used
Super
Cruise-equipped
vehicles to
test each
mile.
Cadillac’s
system also
lacks several
autonomous
features found
on Autopilot
including the
ability to
pull the car
out of a
garage and
change lanes
by using the
turn signals.
Hmmmm... fluff features with little value.
Super Cruise’s
IR sensors
tracks eye
location and
head
movements. As
long as the
driver looks
at the road
every seven to
20 seconds,
the system
works as
expected. Hmmmm... Fantastic!
General
Motors will
have to rely
on
independently
owned
dealerships to
correctly
position this
product and
train buyers
on its
capabilities.
Hmmmm... Yup!
For better or
worse, Super
Cruise is
built into the
CT6 like a
standard
system and not
something a
driver must
use every time
they’re on an
expressway.
This should
help timid
buyers. Super
Cruise feels
like a feature
ready for the
masses. The
system is
deeply
integrated
into the
vehicle and
using it is
akin to using
cruise control
or turning on
the lights.
There’s a
button for
Super Cruise
on the
steering
wheel. Press
the button
when the
system is
available and
it works. It’s
that easy to
turn a driver
into a
passenger. Read
more Hmmmm... Over the
air updates?
See also Motor
Trend's view:
"...
a stand-alone
option (as yet
unpriced) on
CT6 models
with the
premium luxury
trim package
and as
standard
equipment on
top Platinum
models (the
price of which
went up $500
for 2018, if
that’s any
indication)...." Finally, I guess
that I'll have
to go test
drive one.
Alain
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
R. Abrams, June 16, "Shares of Walmart, Target, Kroger and Costco, the largest grocery retailers, all tumbled on Friday. And no wonder.. Grocery stores have spent the last several years fighting against online and overseas entrants. But now, with its $13.4 billion purchase of Whole Foods, Amazon has effectively started a supermarket war. Armed with giant warehouses, shopper data, the latest technology and nearly endless funds — and now with Whole Foods’ hundreds of physical stores — Amazon is poised to reshape an $800 billion grocery market that is already undergoing many changes...." Read more Hmmmm... Since Jeff Bezos doesn't need to have you impulse buy on your walk through the store while you get a quart of milk, he simply has to get you click on organic milk and he'll present you with everything you absolutely can't checkout without. All he then needs is to get all those impulse buys (and the quart of organic milk) to your home from the hundreds of physical stores. That's where low speed driverless local delivery vans come in (operating initially in the early morning hours when the streets connecting those stores to our houses are completely empty and simply drop off everything you'll need for the day ahead in your "Amazon Box" that's replaced your 20th Century mailbox). So in the end it will be Jeff Bezos'86 battling Eric Schmit'76 for deploying the first fleets of driverless vehicles sharing our neighborhood streets. If they should decide to join forces and have these vehicles providing mobility whenever anyone wants to travel and moving groceries and other goods the rest of the time, watch-out!!! Then everybody wins!! (except Walmart, Target, Kroger and Costco) See also..Amazon and Whole Foods and Self-Driving Cars Alain
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
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.
Indeed, GTA5 is a rich virtual environment that begins to efficiently and effective address the data needs of Deep Learning approaches to safe driving. Alain
Press
release, Feb.
15, "NSC
offers insight
into what
drivers are
doing and
calls for
immediate
implementation
of proven,
life-saving
measures...
With the
upward trend
showing no
sign of
subsiding, NSC
is calling for
immediate
implementation
of life-saving
measures that
would set the
nation on a road
to zero
deaths:..." Read
more Hmmm..."Automated Collision Avoidance" or anything
having to do
with 'Safe-driving
Cars' is
not mentioned
anywhere in
the Press
Release. One
of us is
missing
something very
fundamental
here!! So
depressing!!
:-( Alain
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
Hmmm...What we know now (and don't know):
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
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