C. Kang, Sept.19, "Federal auto safety regulators on Monday made
it official: They are betting the nation’s highways will be
safer with more cars driven by machines and not people.
In long-awaited guidelines for the booming industry of automated
vehicles, the Obama administration promised strong safety
oversight, but sent a clear signal to automakers that the door
was wide open for driverless cars.
“We envision in the future, you can take your hands off the
wheel, and your commute becomes restful or productive instead of
frustrating and exhausting,” said Jeffrey Zients, director of
the National Economic Council, adding that highly automated
vehicles “will save time, money and lives.”...
The policies unveiled on Monday were designed to walk that line.
In a joint appearance, Mr. Zients and Anthony Foxx, secretary of
the United States Department of Transportation, released the
first guidelines, which outlined safety expectations and
encouraged uniform rules for the nascent technology. The
instructions signaled to motorists that automated vehicles would
not be a wild west where companies can try anything without
oversight, but were also vague enough that automakers and
technology companies would not fear over-regulation. .."
Read
more Hmmm...Here it comes..
Looking for the details. See also NPR: Feds
To Set Rules On Self-Driving Vehicles. Alain
key passage:
"emphasizes that semi-automated driving
systems – ones in which the human continues to monitor the
driving environment and perform some of the driving task –
that fail to adequately account for the possibility that a
distracted or inattentive driver-occupant might fail to
retake control of the vehicle in a safety-critical situation
may be defined as an unreasonable risk to safety and subject
to recall". Read
more Hmmm....What does that mean? A truck cuts you off
when you are lazily cruising down a roadway at 4:40pm on a
clear afternoon. Nothing you could have done if you had your
hands on the wheel in this safety critical situation. Does
this trigger a recall???
Does this
say that the only time that you can be distracted or
inattentive is when you are NOT in automated mode.
What they
should have done is deal aggressively with automated
emergency braking and automated lane keeping (with an
emphasis on making sure that all highways had visible lane
markings that would readily enable both humans and vision
systems to clearly see the lanes.
At first blush this seems to be NHTSA & DoT doing a
"CA DMV regulations " on this. They may make it that
"NHTSA Level 3" is un-un-recallable, ie DoA, so Google may
be right in that it is either Level 2 (close to useless,
(except for safety)) or Level 4 "no steering wheel" and
the public will really freak out (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicago-aldermen-propose-ban-on-driverless-cars/
). More later after I've
had a chance to digest all of this. Alain
ALSO from NHTSA:
Please join us for a 30-minute briefing with senior NHTSA
staff on the launch of the new U.S. DOT Automated Vehicles
Policy. This policy will lay a path for the safe testing and
deployment of new automated vehicle technologies that have
dramatic potential for improving safety and mobility for
Americans on the road. The policy sets a proactive approach
to providing safety assurance and facilitating innovation.
More information can be found
at www.transportation.gov/av
.
Date: Tuesday, September 20,
2016
Time: 3:30 p.m. (ET)
Call-in phone number: 888-636-3807
Access Code: 2225680A
S. Lohr, Sept.19, "...Today, computerized sight can quickly and
accurately recognize millions of individual faces, identify the
makes and models of thousands of cars, and distinguish cats and
dogs of every breed in a way no human being could.
Yet the recent advances, while impressive, have been mainly in
image recognition. The next frontier, researchers agree, is
general visual knowledge — the development of algorithms that
can understand not just objects, but also actions and
behaviors...."
Read
more Hmmm...Poor title, but
after first few paragraphs the article becomes good. Alain
P. LeBeau, Sept 14, "Uber is launching a pilot program to
establish autonomous-drive, ride-sharing services,.."
See
video Hmmm...Fantastic. Couldn't
be happening in a better place and Go Stillers!!! Alain
L. Reid, Sept 14, "..."For me this is really important," says
Anthony Levandowski, the head of Uber's self-driving car team,
"because I really believe that the most important things that
computers are going to do in the next 10 years is drive
cars."..."
Read/hear
more Hmmm...Congratulations
Anthony! Alain
M. Isaac, Sept 14, "... In this case, my “computer” is a
modified Ford Fusion hybrid sedan code-named Boron 6, an atomic
element often found in magnets, laundry detergent and nuclear
reactors. Uber has outfitted it with more than 20 cameras, seven
lasers, a spinning 360-degree laser-based detection system and
1,400 other aftermarket parts that render millions of bits of
data about the environment in real time as I drive through it.
If the car works as advertised, someday neither I nor anybody
else will sit in the driver’s seat of a car again....
"
Read more Hmmm...Interesting. Alain
Some other thoughts
that deserve your attention
N. Boudette, Sept 14, "...The crash took place on Jan. 20
and killed... Read
more Hmmm...We are only
hearing about this after 8 months???? Alain
J. Cichowsky, Sept 15, " ...From Washington to Los Angeles,
police, lawmakers and road-safety advocates like Poedubicky
want answers to a scourge that took 35,092 lives last year –
2,348 more than in 2014.... Read
more Hmmm...Interesting. Alain
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
Ben Loeb, Kara Kockelman, and Jun Liu.
Under review for presentation at the 96th Annual
Meeting of the Transportation Research Board and publication
in Transportation Research Record (2017). Read
more
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="21" width="67">Tracking a System of Shared
Autonomous Vehicles across the Austin, Texas Network using
Agent-Based Simulation
Jun Liu, Kara Kockelman, Patrick Boesch, and Francesco Ciari.
Under review for presentation at the 96th Annual
Meeting of the Transportation Research Board and publication
in Transportation Research Record (2017). Read more
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="21" width="67">Anticipating the Emissions
Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles Using the MOVES Model
Jun Liu, Kara Kockelman & Aqshems Nichols.
Under review for presentation at the 96th Annual
Meeting of the Transportation Research Board and publication
in Transportation Research Record (2017). Read more
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="21" width="67">Economic Effects of Autonomous
Vehicles
Lewis Clements & Kara Kockelman.
Under
review for presentation at the 96th Annual
Meeting of the Transportation Research Board and publication
in Transportation Research Record (2017). Read more
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="21" width="67">Anticipating the Regional Impacts
of Connected and Automated Vehicle Travel in Austin, Texas
Yong Zhao & Kara Kockelman.
Under review
for presentation at the 96th Annual Meeting of
the Transportation Research Board and publication in Transportation
Research Record (2017). Read more
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="21" width="67">Making the Most of Curb Spaces in
a World of Shared Autonomous Vehicles: A Case Study of
Austin, Texas
Qinglu Ma, Kara Kockelman, & Marc Segal.
Under
review for presentation at the 96th Annual
Meeting of the Transportation Research Board and publication
in Transportation Research Record (2017).
Read more
Half-baked stuff that probably
doesn't deserve your time:
Older stuff that I had missed:
C'mon Man! (These folks
didn't get/read the memo)
Calendar of
Upcoming Events:
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="49" width="208">
Sept 19-21, 2016
Antwerp, Belgium
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="59" width="128">
Sept 19-23, 2016
Washington, DC
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="31" width="87">
F1/10
Autonomous Racing Competition
Oct 1-2
Wean
Hall, Carnegie Mellon U.
Recent Highlights of:
[log in to unmask]"
border="0" height="76" width="129">
J. Peterson, Sept 1, "..To find out what
it’s been like to rebuild a top robotics lab after being
gutted by one of the most powerful companies in the world,
I called up Herman for a candid conversation about what
universities can do that corporations can’t, and how CMU
has managed to pick up the pieces of what Uber left
behind...
Maybe, and maybe not. The objectives of
companies like Uber, and our objectives as a university,
are different. Uber as a company has to worry about its
valuation. I think part of the reason that they released
the news about these autonomous taxis is marketing.
Technically, I’m not sure if it’s ready. They still have
to have engineers in the car. So, for technical reasons,
it’s not there. But for non-technical reasons, they
decided that it’s a good idea to start talking about
it..." Read
more Hmmm...Juicy! Alain
B. Simpson, Aug
25, "Isn’t this supposed to be a quiet time for
business? ...Not in transportation technology.
For instance, Ford announced it was
working to launch fully autonomous automobiles by
2021. BMW, Intel and Mobileye joined to say they
will have vehicles in production for the same target
date. Ridesharing titan Uber says it will launch
this month driverless vehicles in Pittsburgh, though
some employees will be in the car to ensure safety.
Forget the 10 years down the road
baloney. We’ll be Level 4 Autonomous in three to
five years.
Yet for all the excitement there’s
been some downer news.... Lyft was seeking a buyer,
despite the $500 million that GM pumped into it
...Earlier this year Lyft pledged... to keep its
U.S. losses under $50 million a month....Uber told
its investors it lost $520 million in the first
quarter, and more than $750 million in the second.
This after losing about $2 billion in 2015....It’s
valuable to keep in mind the shaky foundations of
Uber and Lyft because the two have been touted as an
important foundation for the growth of autonomous
vehicles. Read
more Hmmm...Do read more!
It may well be that those that can't make a dime wont
even have the opportunity to buy the driverless
vehicles that would allow them to "make a dime". The
real value of the driverless vehicles may well be in
their ability to generate operating cash without
needing any of the $10B+ expertise/intellectual
property amassed by Uber/Lyft in managing
self-employed part-timers that aren't needed. If that
is the case, then the makers of those vehicles will
manage them for their own account rather than selling
them at cost-plus (or the price of those vehicles will
be such that only their maker is making any money).
Alain
T. Simonite, Aug 23, "BMW, Ford, and Uber
have all recently said they plan to have “fully
autonomous” cars ready to drive themselves on the road in
2021 (see “2021 May Be the Year of the Fully Autonomous
Car”). Ford says its fleet of vehicles will lack steering
wheels and offer a robotic taxi service.
But don’t expect to toss out your driver's license in
2021. Five years isn’t long enough to create vehicles good
enough at driving to roam extensively without human input,
say researchers working on autonomous cars. They predict
that Ford and others will meet their targets by creating
small fleets of vehicles limited to small, controlled
areas.
“Probably what Ford would do to meet their 2021 milestone
is have something that provides low-speed taxi service
limited to certain roads—and don’t expect it to come in
the rain,” says Steven Shladover. ...Alain Kornhauser, ...
“By then we may be able to define [a] ‘fenced’ region of
space where we can in fact let cars out there without a
driver,” he says. “The challenge will be making that
fenced-in area large enough so that it provides a valuable
service.”...Jeffrey Miller, ...says figuring out how
sensors limit the situations a vehicle can reliably handle
on its own is one of the most crucial challenges for
companies working on autonomous driving.
Read
more Hmmm...Achievable
reality. Alain
N. Boudette, Aug 16, "In the race to
develop driverless cars, several automakers and technology
companies are already testing vehicles that pilot
themselves on public roads. And others have outlined plans
to expand their development fleets over the next few
years.
But few have gone so far as to give a definitive date for
the commercial debut of these cars of the future. Now
Ford Motor has done just that. At a news conference on
Tuesday at the company’s research center in Palo Alto,
Calif., Mark Fields, Ford’s chief executive, said the
company planned to mass produce driverless cars and have
them in commercial operation in a ride-hailing service by
2021....
“That means there’s going to be no steering wheel. There’s
going to be no gas pedal. There’s going to be no brake
pedal,’’ he said. “If someone had told you 10 years ago,
or even five years ago, that the C.E.O. of a major
automaker American car company is going to be announcing
the mass production of fully autonomous vehicles, they
would have been called crazy or nuts or both.”...
Ford also said it had acquired an Israeli start-up,
Saips, that
specializes in computer vision, a crucial technology for
self-driving cars. And the automaker announced investments
in three other companies involved in major technologies
for driverless vehicles....."
Read
more Hmmm...This
is significant because it implies that Ford, (or an
entity under its control) will operate and deliver on
a day-to-day basis MaaS (Mobility as a Service). In
other words it will both build/assemble and operate
mobility's "Cloud". The scale economies of such a
mobility "cloud" are arguably much more substantial
than that of the data storage & computing
"cloud". Think about it! Alain
J. Markoff, Aug 5, " A roboticist and
crucial member of the team that created Google’s
self-driving car is leaving the company, the latest in a
string of departures by important technologists working on
the autonomous car project.
Chris Urmson, a Carnegie Mellon University research
scientist, joined Google in 2009 to help create the
then-secret effort. ...Mr. Urmson has been unhappy with
the direction of the car project under Mr. Krafcik’s
leadership and quarreled privately several months ago with
Larry Page over where it was headed, according to two
former Google employees....
Mr. Urmson said he had not decided what he will do next.
“If I can find another project that turns into an
obsession and becomes something more, I will consider
myself twice lucky,” he wrote.
Read
more Hmmm...Very
unfortunate. What a great job he has done. All the
best. Alain
M. Ramsey, July 26, " A key supplier of
semiautonomous car technology ended a supply agreement
with Tesla Motors Inc. following
a
high-profile traffic fatality in May involving one
of the Silicon Valley company’s electric vehicles.
Mobileye NV said it would no longer provide its computer
chips and algorithms to Tesla after a current contract
ends due to disagreements about how the technology was
deployed. Mobileye provides core technology for Tesla’s
Autopilot system, which allows cars to drive themselves in
limited conditions....
Read
more Hmmm....Very
interesting!! Alain
And in
Mobileye’s
Short Trip with Tesla : D. Gallagher,
July 26, "In the emerging business of autonomous driving,
even the safer road isn’t free of potholes....In
explaining its move, Mobileye suggested that protecting
its reputation was at least part of the rationale. Below
is what the company said on the call:...
Read
moreHmmm....And why in all
of this isn't there a discussion of Automated
Emergency Braking (AEB) technology/suppliers?? There
must be no consumer/regulatory appeal to AEB? Alain
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="26" width="139"> Master
Plan, Part Deux
Editorial Board, July 11, "A recent fatal
crash in Florida involving a Tesla Model S is an example
of how a new technology designed to make cars safer could,
in some cases, make them more dangerous. These risks,
however, could be minimized with better testing (Hmmm....Yes!) and
regulations (Still too early, we
don't know enough, yet)...
[log in to unmask]" alt=""
height="26" width="139"> May
7 Crash
Hmmm...What we know
now (and don't know):
1. On May 7, 2016
at about 4:40pm EDT, there was a crash between a Tesla
and a Class 8 Tractor-Trailer. The accident is
depicted in the Diagram
from the Police Report: HSMV Crash Report #
85234095. (1)
Google
Earth images from the site.
2. The driver of
the Tesla was Joshua
Brown. "No citations
have been issued, but the initial accident report
from the FHP indicates the truck driver "failed to
yield right-of-way."" (2)
. Hmmm....No Citations??? Did the
truck have a data recorder? Was the truck impounded,
if so, how is the truck driver making a living since
the crash?
Chenyi Chen PhD Dissertation , "...the
key part of the thesis, a direct perception approach is
proposed to drive a car in a highway environment. In this
approach, an input image is mapped to a small number of
key perception indicators that directly relate to the
affordance of a road/traffic state for driving....."
Read more Hmmm..FPO
10:00am, May 16 , 120 Sherrerd Hall,
Establishing a foundation for image-based autonomous
driving using DeepLearning Neural Networks trained in
virtual environments. Very promising. Alain
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