[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="24" width="156"> Tesla Model X on Autopilot sped up seconds before deadly crash in Silicon Valley, report says

R. Mitchell, June 7, "Three seconds before a Tesla Model X on Autopilot slammed into a concrete barrier in March in Silicon Valley, killing the driver, the car sped up, the brakes were not applied, and there was no evasive action.

Those findings were disclosed Thursday in a preliminary report from the NTSB on the Highway 101 crash that took the life of Walter Huang, a 38-year-old software engineer at Apple. ...

Alain Kornhauser, head of the autonomous car engineering program at Princeton University, said the NTSB and Tesla have plenty of questions left to answer....Read more  Hmmmm.....Just a couple of things:

1.  " ...for the last 6 seconds prior to the crash, the vehicle did not detect the driver’s hands on the steering
wheel."  Was the driver's hands on the wheel during the 7th second prior to the crash and did his hands over-ride the Tesla's steering command in any way?  Did they initiate the "left steering movement".  If not, what initiated that steering movement"? What was the exact longitudinal and lateral positions of the car 8 seconds before the crash, 7 seconds before the crash, 6 seconds before the crash, ...?

2.  During the 7th, 6th, 5th and 4th second before the crash how did the Tesla's lateral positioning vary relative the the lateral position of the lead car?

3.  During the last 3 seconds prior to the crash, did any of the sensors detect an object ahead?  If yes, what closing speed (or "stationary world coordinate" speed) was assigned to that object?

4.  Does Tesla employ different lateral control logic if the Tesla is following a car ahead rather than simply "staying between two road lane markings?  To what extent does it continue to follow the car ahead if the car ahead begins to cross a lane marking?

5 .  Which lane did the lead car take at the fork( left or right)?  (NHTS should provide a Plan View of the crash location).

6.  Why did the CA Highway Department not replace/repair the attenuator in less than 11 days (or in the time between March 12 and March 23).   
7.  Why isn't the area stripped (cross hatched) leading up to the barrier and inside the point lines.  No car should ever stop there, correct???   Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="37" width="91" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 43

F. Fishkin, June 8, "What is missing from the NTSB's preliminary report on the March Tesla crash? Princeton's Alain Kornhauser's speaks out along with co-host Fred Fishkin in Episode 43 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. Plus... Waymo to bring self driving vehicles to Europe? Self driving shuttles in Canada. And GM bringing Super Cruise to more vehicles. Listen and subscribe."

Hmmmm.... Now you can just say "Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" .  Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay.  Alain
Real information every week.  Lively discussions with the people who are shaping the future of SmartDrivingCars.  Want to become a sustaining sponsor and help us grow the SmartDrivingCars newsletter and podcast? Contact Alain Kornhauser at [log in to unmask]!  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="27" width="219"> Driverless testing in NJ? Phil Murphy aide wants to move in that direction

J. Cichowski, June 6, "...“Finally, somebody in power recognizes that New Jersey is a microcosm of the nation that has everything necessary for a grand experiment,” he said, citing the state’s limited mass-transit options and its balance of urban, suburban and rural roads and population demographics. "And the weather isn't always great," he added, "but that makes it ideal for testing under all conditions."..." Read more  Hmmmm.... See video.  New Jersey may finally start trying to be a player. :-) "

 [log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="40" width="60"> Driverless Cars Still Handled by Humans—From Afar

T. Higgins, June 5, "Some Phoenix-area residents have been hailing rides in minivans with no drivers and no human safety operators inside. But that doesn’t mean they’re on their own if trouble arises.

From a command center, employees at Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo driverless-car unit monitor the test vehicles on computer screens, able to wirelessly peer in through the minivan’s cameras. If the robot brain maneuvering the vehicle gets confused by a situation—say, a car unexpectedly stalled in front of it or closed lanes of traffic—it will stop the vehicle and ask the command center to verify what it is seeing. If the human confirms the situation, the robot will calculate how it should navigate around the hazard.

Computers may be poised to take control of driving in the future, but humans will be backing them for some time yet. Tech giants Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc., auto makers General Motors Co. and Nissan Motor Co. and upstarts like Phantom Auto are all developing ways for people to remotely assist their autonomous vehicles during complicated driving situations...."  Read more  Hmmmm...  Excellent article.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="25" width="137"> Waymo shows off its self-driving car in first ad with Jimmy Kimmel [Video]

A. Li, May 30, "Widely regarded as the leader in autonomous vehicles, Waymo is slated to launch a public ride service later this year in Arizona. To build public awareness for the Uber/Lyft competitor and its technology, the Alphabet division appears to be embarking on an advertising campaign with the first ad going live today.

Tweeted by the official Jimmy Kimmel Live! account this afternoon, the over two-minute video features a hashtag labeling it as an advertisement. It is very much in the style of the late night comedian’s regular sketches and involves show personality Guillermo riding in a Chrysler Pacifica.

This being comedy, the long running “security guard” on the show was apparently not aware of the car’s self-driving nature, with the human “driver” leaving just before the vehicle autonomously took off. While video chatting with Kimmel, the ad tries to capture the normality of such cars and ride sharing services...."

Again, this being an ad, it’s unclear whether the video was entirely staged and how genuine the reactions were. However, at the end of the day, the coolness factor of being in a self-driving vehicle was likely captured by the clip..."  Read more  Hmmmm.... See video. Unfortunately, this is obviously STAGED, which is very Unfortunate.  Not as bad as the Staged Otto Beer Drive, but almost.  (No offense against Budweiser and Adult Beverages, but a Staged Otto AV demo that is nowhere near Driverless (that is...be able to take you from your watering hole, where you crawl in, all the way to your door step, where you crawl out) should in no way be suggested by a system that is, at best, Self-driving,  and desperately needs your full undivided attention even for just some of that trip; else, innocent people are killed.  It was embarrassing listening to the Governor of Colorado praising that completely staged demonstration at the ITS America Conference in Detroit this past Tuesday.  If that's one of Colorado's worthy SmartDrivingCar achievements, then Colorado is at the back of the pack along  with New Jersey.)

Back to my point... Driverless is very serious business and has been subject to way too much hype, smoke and mirrors.  It desperately needs a strong dose of reality because in the end, its all about getting to B from A.  The journey is irrelevant as long as it is safe, reliable, affordable and gets you to B on time.  That's how we'll get to this system actually delivering the safety, quality-of-life and environmental benefits that are being envisaged. Staging delivers none of those benefits.  What we desperately need is just simple old-fashioned reality and, especially, complete honesty.   Staging & photoshoping are simply too easy. 

That said, it is very impressive that we have reached the beginning of the marketing and advertising stage unleashing actual customer consumption of this mobility r/evolution as opposed to being stuck in the "pitching to investors and flipping stage". 
Waymo is really beginning to "Just Do It"... have you noticed?  (a few slides I showed at the Detroit ITS Conference)  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="24" width="174"> Super Cruise expanding across Cadillac lineup, other GM brands

N. Naughton, June 6, "General Motors Co. is expanding the use of its high-tech Super Cruise system — which allows drivers to ride hands-free on the highway in a Cadillac CT6 — to the brand's entire lineup starting in 2020 and later to other GM brands.

Super Cruise is "a feature that customers routinely come into dealerships asking about, shopping for, and specifically ordering," Mark Reuss, GM's product development chief, said in a prepared speech Wednesday to the Intelligent Transportation Society of America conference in Detroit. "Making it available in every Cadillac on the showroom floor just makes sense."

...In a note, Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley raised his valuation of GM's autonomous operations from $2 billion to $9.25 billion following the SoftBank investment. "For perspective," he wrote, "we now value GM Cruise at a net valuation to GM shareholders slightly higher than the value of Cadillac." 
Read more  Hmmmm...  Neither Mark's nor Adam's announcements are surprising.  Super Cruise is a really creative and is a responsible way to implement self-driving.  You can use it if you use it respectfully;, else, the toy is taken away until you decide to behave.  Brilliant!!   With respect to Adam, he must see the "miles market" to be so large that even the 2nd runner can do very well, thank you.  He really sees the future as he demonstrated at the 2nd Princeton SDC Summit. Link to video of his presentation, link to his slides and link to an earlier video from last year.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="36" width="118">   A 21st Century Transit Solution – Piloted in Houston Without Pilots

K. Pyle, June 6, "An autonomous first/last-mile circulator/shuttle combined with autonomous buses that connect disparate business districts could be the long-term solution to Houston’s traffic and congestion woes. Speaking at the SmartDrivingCar Summit, Sam Lott, Research Assistant Professor at Texas Southern University and Principal at Automated Mobility Services, LLC, describes a soon-to-be pilot that will launch on the campuses of Texas Southern University and the University of Houston that will provide, low-speed, autonomous mini-buses to ferry people across campus.

Eventually, these shuttles will connect directly with the METRO, high-capacity, transit system. What makes the Houston METRO system unique is that is essentially a freeway-within-a-freeway, protected from single occupancy car traffic and with separate ingress and egress points for the buses that ply this 21st century alternative to rail..." Read more  Hmmmm....Nice job Sam.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="36" width="118">  Some Innovative New Thinking and Some Big Impacts – #InnovationandImpact

K. Pyle, June 2, What was the bigger announcement? That the Valley Transit Authority is looking at how they transform the organization to become a mobility manager or that they are looking at autonomous buses in rights-of-way they own, instead of fixed rail solutions. These were just a few of the may insights from ProspectSV’s Innovation and Impact Symposium, held on May 31st, 2018 at San Jose’ City Hall...."  Read more   Mmmmm.... I agree.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class=""> Who’s Winning the Self-Driving Car Race?

Bloomberg,  May 31, "...The Clear Leaders
Waymo has run self-driving cars over 5 million road miles in 25 cities and done billions of miles in computer simulation, which it uses to update its self-driving software on a weekly basis. The Google-launched company has a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans that can navigate city streets in San Francisco and reach full speed on highways....Read more, Mmmmm...   I agree.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="30" width="41"> Scientists at a company part-owned by Bill Gates say they've found a cheap way to convert CO2 into gasoline

C. Aiello, June 7, "...Published in the scientific journal Joule on Thursday, the research demonstrates a new technique that pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and converts it into liquid gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.  Canadian clean energy company Carbon Engineering, in partnership with researchers from Harvard, used little more than limestone, hydrogen and air for the process, which can remove one metric ton of CO2 for as little as $94, the scientists say. It cleans up the environment, and produces eco-friendly liquid fuel at the same time.   Read more, .   Mmmmm...   Potentially really interesting  Alain

"Until now, research suggested it would cost $600 per ton to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using DAC technology, making it too expensive to be a feasible solution to removing legacy carbon at scale," David Keith, Harvard Professor and founder of Carbon Energy said in a statement. "We now have the data and engineering to prove that DAC can achieve costs below $100 per ton."...." Read more  Hmmmm.... Most interest    Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="23" width="94">   Big Automotive Data Analytics (BADA):  Business Models: Future Scenarios Report

M. Sena, Feb 22.  "The land transport infrastructure of the future will be much more heterogeneous than today, comprising an ecosystem of different types and combinations of transport alternatives and transport-related services. In this ecosystem, it will be decisive to have the ability to understand the interactions of all components of the infrastructure and the vehicles using it, and to manage the massive amounts of data that are being generated. Collecting and processing this data require new techniques that are referred to as Big Data Analytics. For purposes of our work, we have chosen to use the following definition of Big Data: Big data is high volume, high velocity, high variety and high veracity (reliability) information assets that require new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision...."  Read more  Hmmmm.... Slides Michael, excellent.   Jacques Amselem of Allianz suggested these two sources as relevant in describing how different the atmosphere is in Europe v USA wrt Privacy and the potential use of mobile data:   REGULATIONS ... of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data,  and  Consumer Privacy Protection Principles PRIVACY PRINCIPLES FOR VEHICLE TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES November 12, 2014   Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="38" width="61">Alphabet’s Waymo hopes to bring self-driving car service to Europe

Reuters, June 7, " lphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo wants to bring its robo-taxi service to Europe after it launches in the United States later this year.
Waymo’s Chief Executive John Krafcik said the company could enter European markets in collaboration with a partner, but did not give any timeframe.

“There is an opportunity for us at Waymo to experiment here in Europe, with different products and maybe even with different go-to-market strategies,” Krafcik said at the Automotive News Europe Congress in Turin late on Wednesday. “It’s possible we will take a very different approach here than we would in the U.S.”..." Read more Hmmmm.... Waymo wants to "be in it to win it"! Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="24" width="159"> Researchers have released the largest self-driving-car data set yet

June 7, "The BDD100K data set, made up of 100,000 videos recorded onboard autonomous cars, is now available for download from the University of California, Berkeley.

Some background: Similar data has previously been released—Baidu, for example, dropped a bunch of self-driving-car data in March—but Berkley’s set is 800 times larger.

The data: All of the approximately 40-second-long clips are taken from roads in the US. They contain an array of labeled objects, including 1,021,857 cars, 343,777 signs, 129,262 people, and 179 trains. Lane markings and driveable areas are color-coded in the video, and approximate driving paths are indicated..."  Read more Hmmmm....Valuable!  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="29" width="78"> You'll be able to ride self-driving electric shuttles in Alberta's largest cities this fall

 T. Lo, June 6, "...This is the first time in Canada that this kind of pilot program has been made accessible to the general public, according to Andrew Sedor, a transportation planner with the City of Calgary, as the projects were announced in Edmonton Wednesday.  Dubbed the "ELA," the EasyMile EZ10 will seat 12 and will travel at low speeds — roughly 12 km/h — and on separate roadways where there are no other vehicles, bicycles or pedestrians.

In Calgary, the free shuttle will run between the Telus Spark Science Centre and the Calgary Zoo along a service lane..."  Read more Hmmmm....Very nice.  Alain 

Half-baked stuff that probably doesn't deserve your time

 C'mon Man!  (These folks didn't get/read the memo)

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

[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">

3rd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit
evening May 14 through May 16, 2019
Save the Date; Reserve your Sponsorship
Photos from 2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit
Program & Links to slides from 2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit

Recent PodCasts

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="25" width="64" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 42

F. Fishkin, June 3, "Softbank makes a multibillion dollar investment in GM's self driving company and Google's Waymo orders more than 60 thousand additional Chrysler minivans for a self driving fleet. Where does Uber fit in? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser dives in along with co-host Fred Fishkin in Episode 42 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast.  Listen and subscribe."

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="22" width="55" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 41

F. Fishkin, May 31, "Artificial Intelligence may be able to drive better than humans most of the time....but is that good enough? Join Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and Co-host Fred Fishkin for Episode 41 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. More on the latest from Uber, Tesla and Nuro. Listen and subscribe."

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="22" width="55" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 40

F. Fishkin, May 25, "With the NTSB preliminary report out on the fatal crash in Arizona ...where does Uber go from here? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin tackle those issues plus more on Mobileye, Apple and the report on the dangers of push button car ignitions. Listen and subscribe!"

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="24" width="60" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 39

F. Fishkin, May 17, "How close is California to giving the green light to driverless testing on public roads? Deputy DMV Director Bernard Soriano joins Alain Kornhauser, Fred Fishkin and guest Michael Sena on Episode 39 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. And we review some highlights of the just concluded 2nd annual Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit. Listen and subscribe!"

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="23" width="57" border="0"> Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 38

F. Fishkin, May 10, "The continuing Uber crash investigation, Waymo and Ohio rolls out the welcome mat for the testing of self driving cars. All that and more in Episode 38 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast. This week Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by Bryant Walker Smith of the University of South Carolina and Stanford. Tune in and subscribe!"

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="29" width="72" border="0">Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 36

F. Fishkin, Apr 26, "Getting SmartDrivingCar companies to share their data on safety. It's a move that could benefit all says Princeton University Professor Alain Kornhauser in the latest Smart Driving Cars Podcast. He joins co-host Fred Fishkin...to chat about the move by Voyage. Also...Tesla, Waymo and more..

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="29" width="79" border="0">Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 34

F. Fishkin, Apr 13, "Should a brand new regulatory agency be formed to oversee self driving and driverless vehicles? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser says yes in Episode 34 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast with co-host Fred Fishkin. Also...Uber's CEO calls self driving vehicles are in the student driver phase....and Tesla feuds with the NTSB."

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.4&filename=fkcoajjkbhnffcof.png" class="" height="32" width="79" border="0">Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 33

F. Fishkin, Apr 4, " Waymo is making it real! In Episode 33 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast, hosts Fred Fishkin and Princeton's Alain Kornhauser are joined by Michael Sena, publisher of The Dispatcher newsletter. Take a deep dive into Waymo's deals with Jaguar and talks with Honda.. Tesla, Volvo, Uber and Ambarella. And the Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit is coming up!         "

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.16&filename=lebihbcnmgcofiio.png" class="" height="76" width="129" border="0">

Sunday, June 3,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  SOFTBANK FLIPS THE VENTURE-CAPITAL SCRIPT AGAIN WITH GM DEAL

E. Griffith, May 31, "GENERAL MOTORS, THE 10th-largest company by revenue in the US, is eager to lay the groundwork for future growth by developing self-driving technology. But its shareholders are dubious of too much spending as revenue declines—it fell 5.5 percent last year.

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has the opposite problem: a giant pile of cash but not enough opportunities to spend it. The company’s Vision Fund does not make investments smaller than $100 million, and there are only so many startups worthy of such a large check. That’s why the firm has taken a loose interpretation of its artificial-intelligence-focused investment thesis, including aspects of human needs that won’t be replaced by technology.

It also helps explain SoftBank’s $2.25 billion investment in GM’s self-driving car unit, Cruise, announced Thursday. The move further complicates the tangled web of connections among startups, automakers, big tech companies, and venture investors angling for a piece of the market for autonomous vehicles—a market that doesn’t yet exist but is expected one day to generate trillions of dollars in revenue.

The overlapping investments and alliances have become so prevalent that they border on conflicts. And SoftBank sits at the center.

To wit: SoftBank invested in Uber after it had already backed Uber competitors in India (Ola), Singapore (Grab), Brazil (99), and China (Didi). Didi, which also invested in Ola, Grab, 99, and Lyft, eventually merged with Uber’s China business. Uber continues to compete with Ola in India and 99 (which Didi acquired) in Brazil. Meanwhile SoftBank’s Vision Fund has taken investment from Apple, which has its own autonomous vehicle program, and Uber has taken investment from the venture arm of Alphabet, owner of autonomous competitor Waymo, which recently settled a nasty lawsuit against Uber and received a small slice of equity in its rival. Oh, and SoftBank portfolio company Alibaba has invested in Uber rival Lyft, along with Ford, GM, and CapitalG, the late-stage investment arm of Alphabet...." Read more  Hmmmm.... Most interesting.  Must be a realization that Uber's "Driverless Initiative" is so hopelessly 3rd rate, that SoftBank invested up to the 2nd pick in order to salvage the Uber IPO valuation.  SoftBank has a tangled web of investments but it is strategically biases in a desperate attempt to catch the breakout leader Waymo.  All the while Waymo seems to be putting the pedal to the metal. (next article).     Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  Waymo’s fleet of self-driving minivans is about to get 100 times bigger

A. Hawkins, May 31, "The size of Waymo’s fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans just got radically bigger. The Alphabet unit announced today that it struck a deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, for an additional 62,000 minivans to be deployed as robot taxis." Hmmmm.... Wow!!  What is Waymo going to do with 60,000 more aTaxis on top of the 20,000 Jaguars they ordered a few months back???  I guess that they will send a couple thousand to NJ. .   Those 80,000 aTaxis will serve about 4 million person trips/day (~50 personTrips/aTaxi-day).  That's about 0.5% of all personTrips greater than 0.5 miles in the USA on a typical day, roughly equal to the number of personTrips that Uber serves today in the US on a typical day today in the USA and is ~10% of the personTrips riding today's conventional transit systems.  Wow!!!
Moreover, the two companies have also begun discussions about how to eventually sell self-driving cars to customers as personally owned vehicles..." Read more  Hmmmm.... What????  Waymo can't be serious.  No way Waymo or anyone else is going to allow these vehicles to be in the hands of consumers.  The professional maintenance and adult supervision required by these vehicles today makes such a suggestion preposterous.  Moreover, this would be Uber's biggest windfall, to be able to buy the best driverless car rather than having to make it themselves.  No way Waymo allows Uber this windfall.  The floor price for a goose that lays golden eggs is the investment required to purchase an annuity of golden eggs.  Not only is that a big number, Uber doesn't have any secret sauce that can extract more value out of those eggs than Waymo can.  So, if Uber bids high enough to buy them, they'll lose money.  This "rumor" deserves a super C'mon Man!!! Alain

Thursday, May 31,  2018

Piekniewski's blog AI Winter Is Well On Its Way

F. Piekniewski, "Deep learning has been at the forefront of the so called AI revolution for quite a few years now, and many people had believed that it is the silver bullet that will take us to the world of wonders of technological singularity (general AI). ...We have now mid 2018 and things have changed. ..By far the biggest blow into deep learning fame is the domain of self driving vehicles ..

But by far the biggest prick punching through the AI bubble was the accident in which Uber self driving car killed a pedestrian in Arizona. From the preliminary report by the NTSB we can read some astonishing statements:...

Aside from general system design failure apparent in this report, it is striking that the system spent long seconds trying to decide what exactly is sees in front (whether that be a pedestrian, bike, vehicle or whatever else) rather than making the only logical decision in these circumstances, which was to make sure not to hit it. ...

In fact if there is anything at all we learned from the outburst of deep learning, is that (10k+ dimensional) image space has plenty enough spurious patterns in it, that they actually generalize across many images and make the impression like our classifiers actually understand what they are seeing. Nothing could be further from the truth, as admitted even by the top researchers who are heavily invested in this field....

the problem is that the input space is incredibly high dimensional, while the action space is very low dimensional. Hence the "amount" of "label" (readout) is extremely small compared to the amount of information coming in..." Read more  Hmmmm.... Very interesting.  We still have an awful lot to do.  See also,G. Marcus, below. Alain

Friday, May 25,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="48" width="48">PRELIMINARY REPORT: HIGHWAY: HWY18MH010 (Uber/Herzberg Crash)

KMay 24, "About 9:58 p.m., on Sunday, March 18, 2018, an Uber Technologies, Inc. test vehicle, based on a modified 2017 Volvo XC90 and operating with a self-driving system in computer control mode, struck a pedestrian on northbound Mill Avenue, in Tempe, Maricopa County, Arizona.

...The vehicle was factory equipped with several advanced driver assistance functions by Volvo Cars, the original manufacturer. The systems included a collision avoidance function with automatic emergency
braking, known as City Safety, as well as functions for detecting driver alertness and road sign information. All these Volvo functions are disabled when the test vehicle is operated in computer control..." Read more  Hmmmm.... Uber must believe that its systems are better at avoiding Collisions and Automated Emergency Braking than Volvo's.  At least this gets Volvo "off the hook". 

"...According to data obtained from the self-driving system, the system first registered radar and LIDAR observations of the pedestrian about 6 seconds before impact, when the vehicle was traveling at 43 mph..." (= 63 feet/second)  So the system started "seeing an obstacle when it was 63 x 6 = 378 feet away... more than a football field, including end zones!   

"...As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path..." (NTSB: Please tell us precisely when it classified this "object' as a vehicle and be explicit about the expected "future travel paths."  Forget the path, please just tell us the precise velocity vector that Uber's system attached to the "object", then the "vehicle".  Why didn't the the Uber system instruct the Volvo to begin to slow down (or speed up) to avoid a collision?  If these paths (or velocity vectors) were not accurate, then why weren't they accurate?  Why was the object classified as a   "Vehicle" ??  When did it finally classify the object as a "bicycle"?  Why did it change classifications?  How often was the classification of this object done.  Please divulge the time and the outcome of each classification of this object.  In the tests that Uber has done, how often has the system mis-classified an object as a "pedestrian"when the object was actually an overpass, or an overhead sign or overhead branches/leaves that the car could safely pass under, or was nothing at all?? (Basically, what are the false alarm characteristics of Uber's Self-driving sensor/software system as a function of vehicle speed and time-of-day?)  

"...At 1.3 seconds before impact, (impact speed was 39mph = 57.2 ft/sec) the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision" (1.3 x 57.2 = 74.4 ft. which is about equal to the braking distance. So it still could have stopped short.

"...According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control, to reduce (eradicate??) the potential for erratic vehicle behavior. ..." NTSB:  Please describe/define potential  and erratic vehicle behavior   Also please uncover and divulge the design & decision process that Uber went through to decide that this risk (disabling the AEB) was worth the reward of eradicating " "erratic vehicle behavior".  This is fundamentally BAD design.  If the Uber system's false alarm rate is so large that the best way to deal with false alarms is to turn off the AEB, then the system should never have been permitted on public roadways. 

"...The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. " Wow!  If Uber's system fundamentally relies on a human to intervene, then Uber is nowhere near creating a Driverless vehicle.  Without its own Driverless vehicle Uber is past "Peak valuation".  

"...The system is not designed to alert the operator. " That may be the only good part of Uber's design.  In a Driverless vehicle, there is no one to warn, so don't waste your time.  If it is important enough to warn, then it is important enough for the automated system to start initiating things to do something about it.  Plus, the Driver may not know what to do anyway.  This is pretty much as I stated in PodCast 30 and the March 24 edition of SmartDrivingCar, See below.  Alain 

Friday, May 18,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="36" width="118"> The Open Source Solution to Autonomous Safety #smartdrivingcar

K. Pyle, May 9, "Safety and, as importantly, the perception of safety could be the pin that pricks the expectations surrounding the autonomous vehicle future. Recognizing the importance of safety to the success of this still nascent industry, autonomous taxi start-up, Voyage, recently placed their testing and reporting procedures in an open source framework. ...Oliver Cameron, Voyage Co-Founder and CEO, is excited to see participation and says, “We can’t wait to have all of these contributions from companies from around the world; contribute to build the actual standard in autonomous safety.”  Read more, Hmmmm.... See the video that was played at the Princeton SDC Summit which generated substantial positive discussion at the Summit. See also full length video. Alain

Thursday, May 10,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  Uber Finds Deadly Accident Likely Caused By Software Set to Ignore Objects On Road 

A. Efrati, May 7, "Uber has determined that the likely cause of a fatal collision involving one of its prototype self-driving cars in Arizona in March was a problem with the software that decides how the car should react to objects it detects, according to two people briefed about the matter." Read more  Hmmmm....Uber is "leaking" this???  Is this Spin?  Fake News??   I guess Uber doesn't believe in transparency here.  Where is the official public statement of reassurance??? 

"The car’s sensors detected the pedestrian, who was crossing the street with a bicycle, Hmmmm....Pretty much what I wrote on March 24, the sensors "Saw something" ...   but Uber’s software decided it didn’t need to react right away. ..."right away" is Fake News.  It never reacted.  Uber has not released any data indicating that the software ever reacted.  "That’s a result of how the software was tuned." ...That was a major "tuning" faux pas.  What is being divulged here is that Uber's software never became confident enough that what it was seeing was something that it should not hit and, at least,  begin to apply the brakes (or swerve, or ???).  Even the driver in the video recognized that the object should not be hit a split second before the crash.  So the Problem     is not "tuning" it is outright "fuhgeddaboudit"  Like other autonomous vehicle systems, Uber’s software has the ability to ignore “false positives,” or objects in its path that wouldn’t actually be a problem for the vehicle, such as a plastic bag floating over a road.... Is Uber suggesting that its software can't tell the difference between a plastic bag floating over the road and a pedestrian with a bicycle, even after seeing the object 30 to 60 or more times over the 3 or more seconds that the object was in view?    If this isn't Fake News then Uber is hopelessly far behind...   In this case, Uber executives believe the company’s system was tuned so that it reacted less to such objects."  It didn't react at all!... But the tuning went too far, and the car didn’t react fast enough, one of these people said.... ... It didn't react at all! If this wasn't so important I'd put it in C'mon man.

"False positives" are the symptom, not the problem.  The problem is Uber's system design and operational policy.  Uber system designers knew that the sensors under certain conditions reported "false positives" (were "spooked").  One of those conditions was possibly  the combination of "is the closing speed = car's current speed" AND "is the car's current speed greater than 30mph."  In situations in which both are true, then Uber's "tuning"  is outright "fuhgeddaboudit". This "tuning" effectively turns-off Uber's sensors to detecting anything that is stationary or moving across its lane ahead. If Uber has understood this, then Uber would/should have ...

1.  limited the operation of its cars to speeds under 30 mph,

2.  limited the operation of its cars at speeds greater than 30 mph only to roadways where pedestrians are extremely unlikely to cross, and

3.  focus on substantially improving its ability to interpret its sensor data so that the false alarm rate becomes so small that false alarms are tolerated throughout Uber's operational domain.

..."Meanwhile, the human driver behind the wheel, who is meant to take over and prevent an accident, wasn't paying attention in the seconds before the car hit..."  ...I think that this is a cheap shot against the driver.  I suspect that this car had a screen that displayed the real-time status of the automated driving system.  I would not be surprised if that screen was mounted below the radio and that the driver was actually monitoring the operation of the automated driving system prior to the crash.  Why this display wasn't on the dash so that the driver's peripheral vision could remain on the road ahead when the driver was monitoring the performance of the system is a question Uber should answer,...  if it had any interest in being transparent.

Another question that Uber could be asked: Why didn't the monitoring system warn the driver that it was "seeing something"  and ask the driver to look to see if it should be "saying/doing something".

Since it doesn't look like Uber is going to really divulge anything, it is incumbent on the NTSB to dig deeply into this "false alarm" issue.  Disregarding "false positives" in order to circumvent a little passenger/customer discomfort enables "false negatives" which kill people.  Not pretty! 

"...Uber has reached its own preliminary conclusion..."  .The problem was what the broader system chose to do with that information". .... Is Uber going to tell us????  This is way more than a "tuning problem".  This is a design and culture problem...       

"...In the collision investigation, Uber found that a vital piece of the self-driving car was likely working properly: the “perception” software, which combines data from the car’s cameras, lidar and radars to recognize and “label” objects around it. In this case, the software is believed to have seen the objects. The problem was what the broader system chose to do with that information..."  .......NO!!!!  The problem is in the "recognize & label".  If it didn't miss-recognize and miss-label then the ride wouldn't be jerky.  The "perception" software is so intent on "seeing something" in certain domains that it ends up "imagining that it saw something that wasn't there" (false positive) so the broader system  turns off the perception system in those domains.  It is the "vital" "perception" system that is at fault and needs the work. 

I suspect that this mess will be discussed at the   [log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.5&filename=lmjdiniodjkflpia.png" class="" height="21" width="18" border="0">  2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit  [log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.5&filename=lmjdiniodjkflpia.png" class="" height="21" width="18" border="0">   Uber isn't the only company with a "false alarm" issue.   Alain

Thursday, May 3,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" height="24" width="156"> As the Number of Driverless Cars Increase, So Does the Need for Car Maker Transparency

R. Mitchell, Apr 30, "...A schism is developing in the driverless-car world — but not between fans and foes of robot cars.

Instead, on one side are driverless-car advocates who believe data transparency will lead to safer deployment of driverless vehicles and help alleviate public fears about the strange and disruptive new technology. On the other are some automobile and technology companies that, for good commercial reasons perhaps, prefer to keep their workings cloaked in mystery.

The lack of transparency about the workings of sensors, logic processors, mapping systems and other driverless technology, like the debate over robot-car regulation, could shape public perception of the nascent industry, said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.  "Essentially, [the public will be] looking to see whether these companies are trustworthy," he said...

In the Uber death, a video recorded by a dashboard camera — turned over to and released by Tempe, Ariz., police — showed the driverless-car system failed to brake for the pedestrian. It left open the question of whether the system sensors might have failed to notice the pedestrian at all.

Uber's reaction was to apologize, then dip into some of its $15 billion in investment capital to pay the victim's family in a legal settlement, thus avoiding a public trial.

Uber declined to make a company executive available to discuss data and transparency on the record, as did Waymo, Tesla and Lyft. Other companies — including Zoox, Nutonomy and General Motors, parent of Cruise Automation — agreed to talk.

Even driverless-car advocates are growing concerned about the silence from the industry's major players. Grayson Brulte, a well-known consultant in the driverless industry, worries that recent polls have consistently shown the public is wary about driverless technology, while companies appear reluctant to engage with the public.  "They're like Rapunzel up in the tower," he said. "They have to let down their hair and climb down."

Alain Kornhauser, who heads the driverless-vehicle program at Princeton University, said he believes that robot cars will improve safety, reduce driver stress, add productive time to the day and offer the elderly and disabled more independence. But the technology is far from perfect, he said, and some robot-induced deaths are inevitable.

Rather than wall off the lessons learned in fatalities such as the recent Uber and Tesla incidents, Kornhauser said, the companies should be sharing crash data with one another, with outside researchers and with the general public. And not just black-box data, but driverless-system data as well. That would make driverless cars safer and faster, he said.

"Uber should not gain a safety advantage over everyone else because they were involved in this crash," Kornhauser said. "All of the video, radar, lidar and logic trails in the seconds leading up to the crash should be released to the public.

"If this reveals some of Uber's intellectual property, so be it. If they want to protect their intellectual property, they shouldn't crash on public roads." ..."  Read more 

Hmmmm... Amen!  This article addresses what may well be the most important issue facing this industry.  Crashes will happen.  The industry has been holding its breath knowing that one, two, three, ... deaths are coming.  Deaths are associated with every substantial technological advance in transportation.  Deaths occurred with cable cars, with electric traction, with steam trains, with airplanes, with conventional cars, with elevators, ..., even with airbags... why do you have yellow stickers affixed to the passenger-side sun visor of your car.  That's right... airbags kill children.  No one expected that.  But when it was "tripped over", then that event was made transparent to everyone.  Similarly, total transparency needs to be created.  Uber needs to release the data that shows that their system did, in fact "see" Elaine for four (4), or however many, seconds before the crash, but didn't see her reliably enough to convince itself to apply the brakes.  The details of that decision logic and the uncertainty/stochastic characteristics of that decision process needs to be divulged.  Why wasn't it sure enough that a collision with Elaine was imminent for it to apply the brakes?  It is totally disingenuous for Uber to claim that its system never saw Elaine (Uber hasn't said that.  They've said nothing.  (They'd better not even try to say that. Their system is at least pretty good.  it was developed by competent individuals from CMU and other very good places.  It saw Elaine, it just didn't see her well enough or it chose to disregard what it saw for whatever reason.  The nitty gritty details of those uncertainties MUST be divulged in all of their minute, gory and transparent details.  Once made then everyone else in the industry can look at their comparable processes/algorithms and fix them so that the next time an "Elaine" is "seen" she will not be disregarded.  It is these situations that deserve the most serious attention.  These are infinitely more important and more challenging than the "Trolley (navel contemplation) Problem".  

We will be addressing, with some of the best people in the world, this and other fundamentally important issues at the 2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit    May 16 & 17.  Come join in and contribute to the conversations on these issues.  Russ Mitchell will be there. Bryant Walker-Smith will be there.  Grayson Brulte will be there. Raymond Martinez (Head of FMCSA) will be there.  Bernard Soriano (#2 @ CA DMV) will be there.  Nat Beuse (#2 @ NHTSA) will be there.  Oliver Cameron (CEO, Voyage) will weigh in,  Adam Jonas (#1 Auto Analyst, Morgan Stanley) will be there.  Fengmin Gong (Head, DiDi Research) will be there. Justin Erlich (Head AV Policy, Uber) will be there,  Sami Naim, (Manager, Public Policy, Lyft) will be there, Mike Jellen (President, Velodyne) will be there, Paul Brubaker (CEO ATI21) will be there, Matt Moore (SVP, Highway Loss Data Institute) will be there, Mike Scrudato (#1 AV Insurance guy, SVP, Munich Re) will be there, Ro Gupta (CEO Carmera) will be there. Insurance/risk assessment related: Ann Gergen (Exec. Dir. AGRIP), Jerry Spears ( Montana Association of Governments), Laura Kornhauser (President, Stratyfy), David Harmer, Head, Virginia transit Reliability Pool) plus many others will be there.  From the investment community: Sheldon, Sandler (CEO, Bel Air Partners) will be there.  And the list goes on...

Please come join in the discourse.  Click to register.  Alain

Thursday, April 26,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class=""> This startup’s CEO wants to open-source self-driving car safety testing

M. Harris, Apr 24, "... "I had to spend time after [the Uber crash] calming people down, telling folks at our deployments that it was an isolated incident," says Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron in an exclusive interview with Ars Technica. "But the truth is that everyone in the industry is reinventing the technology and safety processes themselves, which is incredibly dangerous. Open source means more eyes, more diversity, and more feedback.".

Starting today, Voyage will begin to share safety requirements, test scenarios, metrics, tools, and code that it has developed for its own Level 4 self-driving taxis. Five Voyage cars are currently deployed carrying passengers within two retirement communities in California and Florida..."  Read more  Hmmmm... This is a very positive step taken by Voyage's Oliver Cameron to address the enormous safety aspects of this technology.  It isn't obvious how everyone involved in this industry needs to work together to assemble the best "...safety requirements, test scenarios, metrics, tools, and code....".  There are serious concerns about collusion and protecting fundamentally valuable IP.  

None the less, what is important is that it is in everyone's best interest to have everyone be safe.  The Uber crash negatively affected everyone, even Waymo.   Everyone would be better off today, had Uber not crashed.  Similarly with the Tesla crashes.  They've also had a negative impact on everyone.  This is a market where the faster the better products are available in the marketplace, the larger the sum of benefits to society, and, arguably, the large the accumulated benefits to each individual contributor/producer.   That argues for everyone working together, aka sharing: "...safety requirements, test scenarios, metrics, tools, and code....".  Whether  "open-source" his the exact right mechanism for "optimal sharing" , or it is Standards Committees, or Regulations (heaven forbid), working together for Safety rather competing on Safety is absolutely necessary in this r/evolution.  Kudos to Oliver for this initiative.  Alain

Thursday, April 12,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class=""> The way we regulate self-driving cars is broken—here’s how to fix it

T. Lee, Apr 10,"...Federal car safety regulation has traditionally been based on a thick book of rules called the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). These regulations, developed over decades, establish detailed performance requirements for every safety-related part of a car: brakes, tires, headlights, mirrors, airbags, and a lot more....

Federal regulations don't say much about how companies develop and test cars before bringing them to market. ... But that approach doesn't work for driverless cars. Companies can do some testing of driverless cars on a closed course, but it's impossible to reproduce a full range of real-world situations in a private facility. So at some point, carmakers need to put self-driving cars on public roads for testing purposes—before a manufacturer is able to clearly demonstrate that they're safe. In effect, this makes the public involuntary participants in a dangerous research project.

But updating the FMVSS is neither necessary nor sufficient for effective regulation of driverless cars....  Read more  Hmmmm...What needs to be recognized is that Driverless cars (much more so than Safe- and Self-driving cars) are really a NEW MODE. They are in many ways closer to an elevator than a conventional car.  Sure they run on conventional roads and not vertical shafts and they can run into each other and have to deal with conventional drivers and "pedestrians". but they will not be owned nor operated by consumers, but fleet operators (think buildings) .  They will serve demand upon request to everyone and anyone, be shared when appropriate and convenient and don't even have a driver's seat, let alone the controls of a conventional car. Driverless cars are enormously different than conventional cars. 

Just as railroads and airplanes have their own safety legislation and regulatory administration tailored to their needs, so should Driverless cars.  The best way to approach regulation of Driverless is to start fresh by declaring them as a new mode.  Alain

Thursday, April 5,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.34&filename=cehhneiahdkhjibi.png" class="" height="22" width="60" border="0">Waymo Isn’t Going to Slow Down Now

M. Bergen, "Apr 2, " Waymo, the self-driving car company started by Google, did nothing after an autonomous vehicle run by Uber killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. It didn’t pull back on tests in the nearby suburb of Chandler, where passengers are already taking rides with no one behind the wheel. Its fleets elsewhere didn’t abandon public streets, a precautionary move made by Toyota.   For Krafcik, the crash video validated the philosophy Waymo had been following long before he joined, back when it was still part of Google: Never trust humans in cars....

Waymo is now nearing a final deal with a third automaker, Honda Motor Co., in a move that will test the company’s ability to compete in the $164 billion delivery and logistics market. The delivery focus of the alliance with Honda hasn’t been previously reported. The companies have been silent since announcing talks in late 2016, but results are coming soon. ...
For his first initiative, Krafcik tried to cut an ambitious deal with a former employer: Ford. The two companies conceived a plan with new self-driving vehicle designs and a multi-year business alliance. The talks collapsed after Mark Fields, Ford’s then-CEO, flew to Google’s headquarters for a dinner with Page where he pushed for a faster timeline, according to a person familiar with the episode.

Krafcik said Waymo walked away because the terms were unfair. “It just wasn’t the right one for us,” he said. “We already had the risk of the technology. We’re also deciding on vehicle formats for years and years and years. There was significant capital risk on our plate, not shared equally.” A Ford spokesman declined to comment. This was also the moment when Krafick discovered brewing rancor within Waymo. Anthony Levandowski, a founding engineer on the Google self-driving project, had simmering disputes with Chris Urmson, the program’s longtime leader. Krafcik was brought in to “referee a cage match,” a former employee said. Tensions boiled over, and Levandowski left—but not before sending an email to Page that criticized Krafcik and the attempted Ford deal and proposed splintering the car team.  ...
Krafcik said that future deals with Hyundai, Ford and others are all possibilities, and he has talked to companies in China, too. (He said he hasn’t spoken with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi since the settlement of the lawsuit.) He now sees Detroit, after years of fearing Google, feeling less threatened. “Very much so,” he said.

Some onlookers question if Krafcik will be around to see Waymo’s alliances through. “You can’t meet John,” said Noble, the consultant, “and not think he’s someone that would have fun running a carmaker.”

For now, though, Krafcik looks to be having fun running a company that’s resolutely not making cars. On the convention floor in Las Vegas, he spotted a Ford Transit Wagon. It’s a hulking eight-seat model he worked on years ago that looks best suited for shuttling around a troop of Girl Scouts or a military platoon.

Krafcik leaped into the second row and turned to the nearest Ford employee: “Do you have a self-driving version?” The answer was no.  “Coming soon,” Krafcik said with a laugh."  Read more  Hmmmm... Wow, this is more info than has been put out by Google/Waymo in the previous 9 years combined.  Looks like Waymo has entered the market/sales phase of its metamorphosis.  By the way, who gets to benefit from the deployment of the 1st 20k  of the Jaguars.  Phoenix and Mountain View don't have enough demand.  Is there going to be a competition a la the frenzy created by the "who wants the 2nd Amazon HQ”?   Alain

Saturday, March 31,  2018

[log in to unmask]" class="" height="19" width="61" border="0">The Most Important Self-Driving Car Announcement Yet

A. Madrigal, Mar 28, "On Tuesday, Waymo announced they’d purchase 20,000 sporty, electric self-driving vehicles from Jaguar for the company’s forthcoming ride-hailing service.... But the company embedded a much more significant milestone inside this supposed announcement about a fancy car. With orders now in for more than 20,000 of these vehicles and thousands of minivans that Chrysler announced earlier this year, Waymo will be capable of doing vast numbers of trips per day. They estimate that the Jaguar fleet alone will be capable of doing a million trips each day in 2020.

You could quibble with their math (will it really be that many daily trips per car?) or their overall utilization rate (how many cars will be lost to maintenance per day?), but if Waymo is even within 50 percent of that number in two years, the United States will have entered an entirely new phase in robotics and technology.

The company’s autonomous vehicles have driven 5 million miles since Alphabet began the program back in 2009. The first million miles took roughly six years. The next million took about a year. The third million took less than eight months. The fourth million took six months. And the fifth million took just under three months. Today, that suggests a rate on the order of 10,000 miles per day. If Waymo hits their marks, they’ll be driving at a rate that’s three orders of magnitude faster in 2020. We’re talking about covering each million miles in hours.

But the qualitative impact will be even bigger. Right now, maybe 10,000 or 20,000 people have ever ridden in a self-driving car, in any context. Far fewer have been in a vehicle that is truly absent a driver. Up to a million people could have that experience every day in 2020.

2020 is not some distant number. It’s hardly even a projection. By laying out this time line yesterday, Waymo is telling the world: Get ready, this is really happening. This is autonomous driving at scale, and not in five years or 10 years or 50 years, but in two years or less...."   Read more  Hmmmm...Yup!! This is HUGE!  It will change the city and the key to making it so it doesn't make thing worse is Ride-sharing.  If we ride-share we'll reduce energy, pollution & GHG by more than 50% and provide high-quality, affordable mobility indiscriminately for all.  It becomes the new high-quality, low-cost mass transit.  If it's kept/operated as another alternative for the 1%ers to be chauffeured alone, then the outcome is UGLY.  Ride-sharing is KEY!  Alain

Saturday, March 24,  2018

[log in to unmask]" class="" height="25" width="156" border="0">Experts say video of Uber's self-driving car killing a pedestrian suggests its technology may have failed

R. Mitchell, Mar 22, "Police late Wednesday released a video that shows an Uber robot car running straight into a woman who was walking her bicycle across a highway in Tempe, Ariz. The woman was taken to a hospital, where she died Sunday night.

The video, shot from the car, is sure to raise debate over who's to blame for the accident.   In the video, the victim, Elaine Herzberg, 49, appears to be illegally jaywalking from a median strip across two lanes of traffic on a dark road. But she was more than halfway across the street when the car — traveling about 40 mph, according to police — hit her. The car did not appear to brake or take any other evasive action....

Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor and driverless specialist at the University of South Carolina, said: "Although this appalling video isn't the full picture, it strongly suggests a failure by Uber's automated driving system and a lack of due care by Uber's driver as well as by the victim."..."  Read more  Hmmmm...  "..."What we now need is for the release of the radar and lidar data," Princeton's Kornhauser said in an email. (Lidar is a sensing technology that uses light from a laser.) "Obviously, the video of the driver is extremely bad for Uber and probably implies that Uber should suspend all of its 'self-driving' efforts for a while if not for a very long while.

"The 'self-driving' systems are supposed to have 'professional' overseers who are really supposed to be paying attention during these 'tests'. Apparently Uber didn't make it clear in this case."

Kornhauser questioned the police description of a situation that would have been difficult to avoid. He said Uber should reveal what its collision-avoidance software was doing during the couple of seconds before impact.

"The front-facing video suggests that this person was crossing the lane at a slow speed and should have been noticed by the system in time to at least apply the brakes, if not stop the vehicle completely," he said. "While a human may not have been able to avoid this crash, a well-designed, well-working collision avoidance system should have at least begun to apply the brakes."..."
"  ...  Again, my sincerest condolences to Elaine Herzberg's family and friends.

The simple arithmetic is:  She crossed more than a lane and a half before being struck or more than 15 feet.  Average walking speed is about 4.6 ft/sec which means that she was "visible" on this stretch of road for more than 3 seconds.  Uber's speed of 38 mph =  55.7 ft/sec means: Uber was 150 ft away when she began crossing the left-hand lane and could have been visible by an alert driver.  The car's lidar and radar surely must have "seen" her beginning at about that time.   Car stopping distance including "thinking time used in The Highway Code" @ 38mph is 110 feet.  The driver should have been able to stop 40 feet short.  Any Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) system should have been able to stop the car in little more than the stopping distance of 72 feet, half way to Elaine.  This simple arithmetic suggests that there may be a very fundamental fatal flaw in Uber's AEB.

And the driver was not paying attention.  At 3 seconds prior to impact, Elaine was within a 12 degree field of view when she began to cross the left lane. While outside the fovea, this is well within a normal gaze had the operator been looking out the window. 

The released video is from a "dash cam" and is unlikely to be the video captured by Uber's "Self-driving" system (or whatever Uber calls it).  That video may well be at a much higher resolution and frame rate.  Uber MUST release that video (not just the dash-cam video) as well as the radar and lidar data that was being used by their "Self-driving" system.  Uber was testing its system at the time of the crash and therefore MUST have been logging those data in case something went wrong.  Uber needs those recorded data in order to have a chance to learn what went wrong and fix it.  Something did go wrong, very wrong.  Uber and everyone else MUST also have the opportunity to learn from this tragedy.  So Uber MUST release all of the data.  Alain

Tuesday, March 20,  2018

[log in to unmask]" class="" height="25" width="156" border="0">Robot drivers may be safer than humans, but tech companies are way behind in proving it

R. Mitchell, Mar 21, "As long as robot cars roam public streets and highways, they will occasionally kill people. That's an ugly truth that no one in the driverless vehicle industry can deny.

Will those robot cars kill people at significantly lower rates than drunk, stoned, tired or distracted human drivers do now? Automakers, technology companies, politicians and regulators are betting they will, as driverless vehicles are rolling out faster than almost anyone expected as recently as a year ago.  But the Sunday night incident in Tempe, Ariz., in which an Uber robot car hit and killed a woman walking her bicycle across the street, makes clear the industry is much further behind in making its case to the public.

"It's likely there will be far fewer deaths with driverless cars," said Marlene Towns, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. "But getting to the point where people will be convinced of that will be tough."

Speculation by Tempe's police chief that the robot may not be at fault in the crash may temper any public or political backlash.

Uber was testing the robot car in autonomous mode with a human engineer, who was behind the wheel but not driving. Elaine Herzberg, 49, walking a bicycle, stepped in front of the car from a center median, according to video evidence, police said...."  Read more  Hmmmm...  "...Carmakers and technology companies need to be far more transparent as they push forward, experts said. "It's important that we all learn from this accident and we make these technologies even better, said Alain Kornhauser, a professor at Princeton University and a leading authority on driverless cars. "To that end Uber must release all of the data leading up to this crash. All of the video, radar, lidar and logic trails for the three or so seconds leading up to the crash. If this releases some of Uber's intellectual property, so be it."..."
"  ...  My sincerest condolences to Elaine Herzberg's family and friends.  I hope that Uber with its "$60"B  valuation will make a very generous contribution to homeless charities and think even more seriously about "buying" (by partnering) rather than "making" this technology.  Alain

Tuesday, March 13,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.29&filename=plniedlciijelnkn.png" class="" height="20" width="39" border="0">Waymo shows off what it is like to ride in a truly driverless self-driving car

G. Kumparak, Mar 13, "...."  Read more  Hmmmm... This is REALLY big news.This marks the real beginning of on-demand mobility provided by vehicles without a driver or an attendant on-board, only the passengers and the vehicles used normal public roadways that operated in normal everyday manner and used by conventional cars and trucks.  Ng Waymo to their o police escorts, no warning signs, just normal everyday operating conditions.  Except for the one trip given to Steve Mahan in November 2015 in Austin Texas, this is the First time that it kind of mobility service has been delivered anywhere in the world.  Waymo has achieved 5 million vehicle miles of Self-driving (automated driving on normally operating public roadway; however, with a driver/attendant in the car ready to take over should the automated system begin to fail.  Many others including Uber, Lyft/Aptiv, GM/Cruise, nVIDIA, Apple, Tesla, Nissan and many others have also done many miles of Self-driving on normal roads but each an everyone had a driver/attendant in the vehicle ready to "save the day" should something go bad.  Nobody else anywhere in the world is doing what Waymo is now doing in Chandler AZ. Now that the first one has been done, any community that is similar to Chandler AZ can now think seriously about inviting Waymo to provide affordable on-demand mobility to everyone in their city.

Be sure to see the video.  Congratulations Waymo!!!!! Alain

Wednesday, February 28,  2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.29&filename=plniedlciijelnkn.png" class="" height="20" width="39" border="0">California to allow testing of self-driving cars without a driver present

D. Etherington, Feb 27,  "California’s Department of Motor Vehicles established new rules announced Monday that will allow tech companies and others working on driverless vehicle systems to begin trialling their cars without a safety driver at the wheel. The new rules go into effect starting April 2.

Until now, the DMV has allowed companies approved for autonomous vehicle testing to run their cars on the roads, with autonomous driving systems engaged, provided that there’s a trained safety driver behind the wheel ready and able to take over manual control. Now, the regulators are updating their rules to allow for fully driverless test, which is a key step along the route towards actually deploying self-driving vehicles in a commercial capacity.

This doesn’t mean test vehicles will be out there on the roads without any kind of human intervention backup – the DMV will require that those testing autonomous cars without a driver present have a dedicated communications channel that ties the car to a remote operator, who can take over if needed. ..." Read more  Hmmmm... Even though we have been expecting this, it is a major hurdle for it to actually have occurred.  How long after April 2 will Waymo take to begin this type of testing.  Again this is only testing and deployment, but NOT commercial service, which may happen first in Arizona, but it is a major step in this r-evolution.  Commercial services are regulated by other agencies in California, not CA DMV.  It is those other agencies that will need to grant/award the licenses for the various commercial operations where these driverless vehicles would be used.  This regulation allows properly licensed commercial operations using CA DMV certified driverless vehicles to have those vehicles use California public roadways in delivering the otherwise licensed commercial activity. Note: CA DMV does not license the commercial transport of people or goods.  That is the purview of other CA regulatory agencies.  Alain  

Friday, February 23, 2018

[log in to unmask]" class="" height="24" width="78" border="0">  Broadening Understanding of the Interplay Between Public Transit, Shared Mobility, and Personal Automobiles

Friday, February 16, 2018

[log in to unmask]" class="" height="30" width="73" border="0">Billionaire Bets On a World Without Car Crashes

Thursday, February 1, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.15&filename=ndbfegdelfddpnfl.png" class="" height="18" width="101" border="0">Waymo strikes a deal to buy ‘thousands’ more self-driving minivans from Fiat Chrysler

Andrew Hawkins, Jan 30, “Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, has reached a deal with one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers to dramatically expand its fleet of autonomous vehicles. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced today that it would supply “thousands” of additional Chrysler Pacifica minivans to Waymo, with the first deliveries starting at the end of 2018.

Waymo currently has 600 of FCA’s minivans in its fleet, some of which are used to shuttle real people around for its Early Rider program in Arizona. The first 100 were delivered when the partnership was announced in May 2016, and an additional 500 were delivered in 2017. The minivans are plug-in hybrid variants with Waymo’s self-driving hardware and software built in. The companies co-staff a facility in Michigan, near FCA’s US headquarters, to engineer the vehicles. The company also owns a fleet of self-driving Lexus RX SUVs that is has been phasing out in favor of the new minivans. (The cute “Firefly” prototypes were also phased out last year.)…” Read more  Hmmmm... We’ve all been wondering”  Who’s going to make the cars?  How will that evolve?Will they magically appear???

Well….Looks like it is FCA for now. We've gone from a handful 5 years ago, 2 years ago added 100, added 500 last year, “thousands” this/next year, …  Beginning to look like exponential growth! (A Bit Coin Bubble??)   What is also most interesting: no parallel announcement that Waymo was hiring “thousands of attendants” to ride around as "drivers" in these “thousands of minivans”.  Guess what that means… The Kornhauser Scale is going to start really going up!!! J 

While ultimately they’ll need about 35 million of these to provide affordable mobility to all in the US, this is a real start at making this into a business as opposed to an NSF-style study that collects dust on a shelf or, worse yet, a digital manuscript that is never downloaded by anyone outside a "group of three". This is a major announcement!  

From Stan Young: It will be interesting to watch.  It probably has the OEMs, Uber and Lyft scared out of their wits.  Based on any objective comparison of accomplishment with automated vehicles, there is not a close second to Waymo, despite all the claims to the contrary by trade rags – and the competition knows it.   Still a huge unknown concerning the ‘social side’ of riding in an un-attended vehicle, but we will likely get over it like we did with elevators.   ‘Thousands’ of vehicles if deployed in one city will put it on scale of Uber and Lyft – an interesting study when/if it comes to that.

...An issue is:  where will Waymo choose to deploy (and for Waymo, the word "deploy" is the right word...  they make the decision where to place these, in some sense take it or leave it... as opposed to waiting for people to show up at a dealership to buy or have it stay on the lot or have some governmental agency thinking that it actually has a role/power/where-with-all to “deploy”) where, when and how many.  They could "flood/concentrate" on Chandler/Phoenix/Tuscon  area with scale to be really relevant and  substantively demonstrate the evolution of mobility, or they could sprinkle them out nationwide and remain irrelevant everywhere.  I like the "flood/concentrate" approach in a state (Arizona) where they seem to be truly welcomed and whose climate, topography and road network are "easy".  More importantly it would demonstrate the viability/challenges of the at-scale approach.  From our simulations we uncovered that at-scale, one might need to be managing as many as 20,000 aTaxis in a 2.5x2.5 mile area  (the extreme in Manhattan, which may be the last place that you want to try this) but it can be large. We’ll drill down in our data and take a look at Chandler/Phoenix and report back as to what we think it would take to provide mobility for all.  Alain

Monday, January 29, 2018

[log in to unmask]" class="" height="20" width="193" border="0">Didi Chuxing looks beyond ride-hailing to help Chinese cities tackle transport challenge

Sunday, January 14, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.3&filename=amfndgbljfoobiik.png" class="" height="39" width="47" border="0">Say hello to Waymo

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

Saturday, December 2, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.19&filename=pnnmfilnfldgacje.png" class="" height="29" width="63" border="0">  Personal Sedan Sales in Jeopardy as U.S. Auto Market Transitions to “Islands” of Autonomous Mobility: KPMG Research

Sunday, November 26, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.20&filename=llkakmemphmaamem.png" class="" height="24" width="156" border="0">Volvo to supply Uber with up to 24,000 self-driving SUVs for taxi fleet

Friday, November 17, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.21&filename=pljpdefgdfalbick.png" class="" height="23" width="222" border="0">THE TECH & DESIGN ISSUE: LIFE AFTER DRIVING

Friday, November 10, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.20&filename=llkakmemphmaamem.png" class="" height="24" width="156" border="0">Waymo will now put self-driving vans on public roads with nobody at the wheel

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

Saturday, November 4, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.22&filename=igeboonchfmfnafc.png" class="" height="31" width="86" border="0">APNewsBreak: Gov't won't pursue talking car mandate

Friday, October 27 , 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.23&filename=kdcpkpfeflmnnepe.png" class="" height="34" width="35" border="0">Strategic Plan for FY 2018 -2022

Sunday, October 15 , 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.26&filename=kdoagilhbhbiliok.png" class="" height="27" width="38" border="0">Proposed Driverless Testing and Deployment Regulations – Released October 11, 2017

 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

Friday, October 6 , 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.23&filename=kdcpkpfeflmnnepe.png" class="" height="34" width="35" border="0">FHWA Awards $4 Million Grant to South Carolina’s Greenville County for Automated Taxi Shuttles

Friday, September 1, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.27&filename=gcpfjpplbdkjplbn.png" class="" height="21" width="133" border="0">Automated Vehicles: Are We Moving Too Fast or Too Slow?

Friday, August 25, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.28&filename=heghnhhbdldfllgi.png" class="" height="19" width="61" border="0">Inside Waymo's Secret World for Training Self-Driving Cars

Monday, August 21, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.10&filename=kienajpoinkongdk.png" class="" height="39" width="50" border="0">Driverless-Car Outlook Shifts as Intel Takes Over Mobileye

Monday, August 7, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.29&filename=plniedlciijelnkn.png" class="" height="20" width="39" border="0">Cadillac’s Super Cruise ‘autopilot’ is ready for the expressway

Sunday, June 25, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.31&filename=jlblhiilkfodmohp.png" class="" height="39" width="38" border="0">NTSB Opens Docket on Tesla Crash

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

Monday, June 19, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.10&filename=kienajpoinkongdk.png" class="" height="39" width="50" border="0">Amazon Deal for Whole Foods Starts a Supermarket War

Sunday, May 28, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.32&filename=cghgagjkncegolbb.png" class="" height="27" width="52" border="0">Rethinking Mobility: The 'pay-as-you-go' ca: Ride hailing, just the start

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

[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">Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit

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

Tuesday, April 17, 2017

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.34&filename=cehhneiahdkhjibi.png" class="" height="22" width="60" border="0">  Don't Worry, Driverless Cars Are Learning From Grand Theft Auto

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.36&filename=ajafjpkfaclhelpc.png" class="" height="50" width="44" border="0">Extracting Cognition out of Images for the Purpose of Autonomous Driving

announce historic commitment of 20 automakers to make automatic emergency braking standard on new vehicles

Sunday, December 19, 2015

[log in to unmask]" alt="imap:[log in to unmask]:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E3022058?part=1.38&filename=ccalfjfhllohpdpa.png" class="" height="63" width="96" border="0">Adam Jonas' View on Autonomous Cars

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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