http://SmartDrivingCar.com/7.16-3for3-041219
16th
edition of the 7th year of SmartDrivingCars
J. Torchinsky, April 11, "For the first time ever, yesterday, SpaceX managed to land and recover all three of the Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket boosters that, when combined, form the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. While the idea of vertically landing a rocket after launch for re-use has been around a while, SpaceX was the first to actually do it, and this triple-landing, part of the Arabsat-6A launch, is the first time three boosters from one launch have been recovered...." Read more Hmmmm... If you weren't watching live, then you must watch the video. 2 side landing @ T+7:30+ (also), center@ T+9:40+ See this aerial picture. See also [log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="59" height="17" border="0"> SpaceX Falcon Heavy Sticks Triple Rocket Landing with 1st Commercial Launch.
In the 70's,
after putting
a man on the
moon, we felt
empowered that
technologically, everything was possible! However, going 3for3 on bull's
eye landings
on earth is
totally mind
boggling.
Technologically,
I'm
fully
confident we
soon can have
aTaxis serving
the mobility
disadvantaged
throughout our
communitie.
But, do we
have the the
societal/political
will to risk
even trying.
There simply
may be too
many
gatekeepers of
the status
quo. Alain
April 5, F. Fishkin, "SpaceX amazes, Uber ready for lift off, Tesla's Autopilot and Ford's CEO assesses the self driving landscape. Join Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for Episode 99 of Smart Driving Cars." Just say "Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" . Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay ... Alain
C. Teale, April 12, " Ride-hailing giant Uber officially
filed for its initial public offering (IPO) Thursday as it
submitted
its S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) ahead of its listing on the New York Stock
Exchange..." Read
more Hmmmm... The S-1
is a must read.
Be sure to
read the
footnotes.
Gains on
investments
have by far
been Uber's
best
performing
asset.
(p.19).
UberEats <
8% revenue and
declining.
(p.03).
Ridership
certainly
increasing
(p.i-1) Alain
J. Valentino-DeVries, Apri 13, "...Technology companies have for years responded to court orders for specific users’ information. The new warrants go further, suggesting possible suspects and witnesses in the absence of other clues. Often, Google employees said, the company responds to a single warrant with location information on dozens or hundreds of devices...." Read more Hmmmm... Google is distributing data about me and my stuff. Those data belong to me. That is my Intellectual Property (IP). While I'd like to be paid for my IP, "Google" should at least be required to tell me who and what they are telling about me and my stuff. How would they like it if I, like Anthony Levandowsky, got a hold of some of their IP and told someone else about it. At some point, the damage that Google may be causing me overwhelms any perceived benefit that Google may be delivering. Alain
K. Naughton, April 9, "“We overestimated the arrival of
autonomous vehicles,” Jim Hackett said Tuesday at a
Detroit Economic Club event. While Ford’s first
self-driving car is still coming in 2021, “its
applications will be narrow, what we call geo-fenced,
because the problem is so complex.”
Hackett, 63, is engineering an $11 billion overhaul of
Ford, which involves closing factories, cutting thousands
of salaried jobs and ditching tradition sedans to focus on
high profit sport-utility vehicles and trucks. In addition
to shoring up profitability, the drastic moves are borne
out of the pressure car companies are under to get
autonomous-vehicle technology on the road before rivals
inside and outside the auto industry.
“When we break through, it will change the way your
toothpaste is delivered,” Hackett said at Ford Field, the
football stadium of the Detroit Lions, owned by the family
of Executive Chairman Bill Ford. “Logistics and ride
structures and cities all get redesigned. I won’t be in
charge of Ford when this is going on, but I see it
clearly.”..."Read
more Hmmmm...
Excellent!
A. Marshall, April, 8, "...Hackett is the latest
high-ranking industry insider to engage in public real
talk about the prospects for self-driving cars, which back
in 2016 seemed just around the corner...." Read
more Hmmmm...
The
problem here
is Wired and
all of the
click-oriented
media... They
purposely
mislabel and
misrepresent.
Self-driving
cars are
here. They
are called
Teslas with
AutoPilot.
Could be
better, but
not bad. What
is not here
are Driverless
cars in
geo-fenced
areas. What
will never be
here are
Driverless
cars
everywhere
("55 Chevys"
can't go
everywhere and
neither can
your Land
Rover or your
Jeep or your
F-150! So get
a grip!).
C'mon Wired!
Start being a
little more
precise
technologically.
Alain
F. Lambert, April 9, "“In the 1st quarter, we registered
one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which
drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without
Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million
miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows
that in the United States there is an automobile crash every
436,000 miles.”
Interestingly, accidents per mile without Autopilot went
down during the last quarter.
Tesla has committed to releasing those numbers on a
quarterly basis...
As I have previously stated, it’s great that Tesla is
keeping good on their promise to release those reports every
quarter even when the data is not improving.
They are not required to and we aren’t seeing any other
automakers doing the same thing. Maybe they should follow
Tesla’s lead on that front. It could become an interesting
metric to follow industry-wide, especially with the advent
of driver assist systems...." Read more Hmmmm...
Kudos to Tesla
for continuing
to release the
data. I am
troubled by
the comparison
with NHTSA
data. Teslas
in general
can't be 4x
better than
your average
driver. Also,
since not much
lane striping
goes on in the
winter, some
of that paint
gets warn away
and ... I
would very
much like to
d=conduct an
independent
investigation
of these
data. I
appeal that
Tesla releases
the underlying
data, cleansed
of Privacy
Information,
and allow me
and possibly
others to
independently
assess
autoPilot's
safety
inplications.
Alain
R. Mitchell, April 8, "It’s a sunny day in March and
“Machine Planet” is flying a single-engine Cessna over
Northern California. He’s cruising at 1,500 feet toward a
massive lot leased by electric-car maker Tesla. His mission:
to burst the Tesla bubble. And make some money doing it.
What he sees today makes his eyes widen: more than 100
car-carrier trailers, the kind you see on highways hauling
new cars to dealers. They’re lined up in neat rows. Empty.
Idle....
For as long as there have been stock markets, there have been short sellers wagering that companies will fail. Their notoriety stemmed from their dirt-digging tactics. Napoleon supposedly called them “enemies of the state.” Some blamed them for the stock market crash of 1929....
But the war on Tesla is unique. Musk has used Twitter to
cultivate a cult-like following as a tech revolutionary.
Fittingly, his nemesis is a social media swarm, made up
largely of anonymous contributors with made-up names and
colorful avatars...." Read
more Hmmmm...
This is a
reflection of
our national
politics. Two
polarized
sides with no
one in the
middle when
the middle is
actually the
nice and
comfortable
spot. Social
mMedia has
enabled too
many to see
themselves as
the National
Enquirer?
Alain
Site, April 3, "To turn what is currently a fantasy into a
reality, we need to take a different approach.
The solution is machine learning, which is surpassing
hand-engineered systems everywhere. Intelligent behaviour
cannot be hand-coded, but can be learned through experience.
We’ve built a system which can drive like a human, using
only cameras and a sat-nav. This is only possible with
end-to-end machine learning...." Read
more Hmmmm...
I'm not a fan
of "end2end"
but am a fan
of
vision-centered
machine
learning
approaches. Videos look like a good start.
I'm looking
forward to
seeing how
they
progress.
Alain
C. Fortuna, April 10, "...Autonomy. The film chronicles the human side of emerging self-driving technology, tracing what Ford VP Ken Washington calls in the film “the representative symbol of mobility” from classic cars to today’s software influence on transportation.
Autonomy had its
world premiere at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin in
March, 2019. It educates an audience which hasn’t had much
background knowledge about self-driving technology’s
remarkable origins and evolution. It looks beyond the
technical to ask pressing social questions:..." Read
more Hmmmm...
I haven't seen
it, but given
the source,
I'm real
skeptical that
this has
anything to do
with vehicles
having autonomy and certainly nothing relevant
about
driverless
vehicles and
their
opportunity to
be mobility
machines that
substantially
enhance the
quality-of-life
of the
mobility
disadvantaged.
Likely it is
focused on
providing more
to those that
already have
too much.
I've become
such a
pessimist. :-( Alain
J. Healy, April 4, "The black sedan glided up to the Las
Vegas hotel where Elizabeth Suarez was waiting to take an
Uber home after a night of gambling. She recalled asking the
driver: Are you waiting for Liz? Yeah, he responded. Get in.
She had done it countless times. But that night in July
2018, as the man veered off course toward a deserted parking
lot, as he cranked up the radio and ignored her questions,
as her real driver called her wondering where she was, Ms.
Suarez said she realized with horror: This was not an Uber.
“That’s when he said, ‘Give me your wallet, give me your
phone, give me everything you have,’” Ms. Suarez, 28, said.
On busy streets outside bars or clubs, people often hop into
a car without a second thought. But the killing of Samantha
Josephson, a 21-year-old college student in South Carolina
who was stabbed to death after getting into a car she
mistook for her Uber last weekend, has brought national
attention to a rash of kidnappings, sexual assaults and
robberies carried out largely against young women by
assailants posing as ride-share drivers.
There have been at least two dozen such attacks in the past
few years, according to a tally of publicly reported cases,
including instances where suspects have been charged with
attacking multiple women. In Connecticut, a man was
arraigned last week on charges that he kidnapped and raped
two women who believed he was their ride-share driver. In
Chicago, prosecutors said a man who posed as an Uber driver
sexually assaulted five women, climbing into the back seat
and pinning them down.
These attacks turn a simple mix-up into a nightmare, showing
how easily bad actors can exploit the vulnerabilities of a
ride-sharing culture that so many people trust to get them
home safe...." Read
more Hmmmm...
Nothing is
easy, nothing
is perfect. We
now need to
work even
harder to make
sure that this
happens even
more rarely.
(I could have
said that this
is another
reason for
autonomousTaxis;
however, they
will have
their own
nightmares
that will need
to be cleaned
up.) Alain
T. Moeller, Dec 2018, "We believe 2018 could represent a
distinct tipping point from thinking, talking about, and
planning for future mobility to implementing it. It’s the
year when a firework of electric-vehicle (EV) launches began
and charging infrastructure became solid in key regions;
when cars enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) began to
replace “dumb” ones; when we moved from advanced
driver-assistance systems to autonomous vehicles (AVs) in
real life; when the automotive and mobility industries
shifted from a driver- or owner-focused value proposition to
a customer-centered one; and when micromobility started to
scale up. ..." Read
more Hmmmm...
Report
contains some
very good
charts but you
have to use
them carefully
because there
is a lot of
fluff and
McKinsey has
little
appreciation
of the vast
differences
between
Safe/Self-driving
vehicles and
Driverless
vehicles. You
would think
that McKinsey
would pick up
on the stark
difference,
but when the
focus is on
those that
already have
the most, then
this and Smart
Cities and IoT
and .. are
what you get.
Alain
A Efrati, March 22"ar tried to turn left into oncoming
traffic, driver had to avoid collision,” wrote a customer of
Waymo, the unit of Alphabet, in early March after taking a
ride in one of the company’s experimental self-driving taxis
in suburban Phoenix. The customer was referring to the human
backup driver who sits behind the wheel and is supposed to
take over if a potential safety problem arises.
According to internal Waymo data reviewed by The
Information, there were several technical problems on that
ride that caused the driver to take over twice: The Waymo
minivan robotaxi got “way too close” to another car, moved
“super slow” at one point, made an “unnecessary” lane change
and, lastly, experienced the apparent near-collision.
Despite the close call, the customer gave the ride four
stars out of five.
The majority of the several hundred Phoenix area residents
who ride in Waymo’s robotaxis, which are considered to be
the most advanced of their kind, have nice things to say
when their rides end. But close to 40% of the time ..." Read
more Hmmmm...
If NJ Transit
did exit
interviews of
riders, close
to 120% of the
time..." That
said, we still
have a lot of
work to do,
but we are at
least asking
actual users
some
questions.
We'll also be
asking
mobility
disadvantaged
individuals
similar
questions
after they
"kick the
tires" of some
demos during
the 3rd Annual Princeton SDC
Summit.
Alain
Ken Pyle, April 5, "Thermal imaging has been around for
decades in various industrial and military applications, but
could it be the extra sense that makes autonomous mobility
machines safer than human-driven vehicles? AdaSky’s Sharon
Fiss, Director of Sales Engineering, makes a convincing case
that detecting thermal signatures and fusing with other
sensor data will provide for a super-human vision and
perception.
In the above video filmed on the streets of Las Vegas at
CES2019, Fiss details some of the specifications for
AdaSky’s FIR (Far Infrared) sensor with dedicated Image
Signal Processor), which include:..." Read more Hmmmm...
See video.
Very
interesting.
Alain
April 9, "The retirement village on the south coast that's
proving age is no barrier when it comes to new technology.
Its residents have embraced a new driverless vehicle that's
helping them get from A to B." Read more Hmmmm...
See video.
Alain
J. Barron, April 11, "...Exxon’s arrangement in Texas
reflects, in miniature, our national state of indecision
about the best approach to climate change. Depending on whom
you ask, climate change doesn’t exist, or is an engineering
problem, or requires global mobilization, or could be solved
by simply nudging the free market into action. Absent a
coherent strategy, opportunists can step in and benefit in
wily ways from the shifting landscape. Tax-supported
renewables in Texas take coal plants offline, but they also
support oil extraction. Technology advances, but not the
system underneath. Faced with this volatile and chaotic
situation, the system does what it does best: It searches
out profits in the short term.
Unlike almost every other future event, climate change is
100 percent certain to happen. What we don’t know is
everything else: where, or how, or when, or what the changes
mean for Facebook or Pfizer or notes of Chinese-government
debt. Navigating these thickets of complexity is
theoretically what Wall Street excels at; the industry
prides itself on its ability to price risk for the whole
economy, to determine companies’ values based on their
likelihood of generating earnings. But traders are
compensated on their quarterly or yearly performance, not on
their distant foresight. It takes confidence to walk into
your boss’s office talking about sea levels in Mozambique in
2030, when your colleague has a reason to short-sell the
Turkish lira this week. Practically no one in the financial
system is directly incentivized in the near term to worry
about the biggest risk conceivable...." Read
more Hmmmm...
None of this
is easy, nor
pretty. Alain
Press Release, April 12, "Friedrichshafen/Shanghai. ZF
today announced the debut of ZF coPILOT, an intelligent
advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) leading to enhanced
safety and driving comfort opportunities. Leveraging the
power of AI and equipped with a comprehensive sensor set,
vehicles can perform various automated driving functions,
especially on freeways. In addition, ZF coPILOT can be
operated with voice commands and is designed to recognize
traffic conditions, sense vehicle handling and monitor the
driver, helping to pre-empt hazardous situations through
active control intervention. ZF coPILOT is powered by the ZF
ProAI central computer and the NVIDIA DRIVE platform. It is
designed for volume production and will be available from
2021...." Read
more Hmmmm...
This is an
advanced
product
announcement
which is
properly
focuses on
Safe &
Self-driving
cars providing
safety,
comfort and
convenience.
It stays away
from grandiose
promises of
"autonomy
this" and
"autonomy
that".
(Although at
the bottom it
feels
compelled to
talk about SAE
levels. They
also need to
look at
possible
trademark
issues
associated
with
"coPILOT"
(IBM may well
own (and
protect)
"i-Bm".)
Alain
A. Davies, 6/14/17, "ON A CLEAR, sunny day at a vineyard in
the Northern California town of Ukiah, a most unusual train
chugs through a field of barely budding syrah grapes. Well,
it doesn't chug so much as whoosh, because this
train—actually, a one-sixth scale train—doesn't rely upon a
diesel engine or electricity to get around. It uses vacuum
power and heavy duty magnets.
The 89-year-old man who built it believes it could change
how the world moves.
That man is Max Schlienger, an accomplished engineer who
owns the vineyard and leads his family-run company, Flight
Rail Corp. Its sole product, the Vectorr system, uses a
propulsion method like no other: Between the rails lies a
PVC pipe, 12 inches in diameter, connected to a pump that
can draw all of the air out of the pipe or fill it. Within
the pipe you'll find something Schlienger calls a thrust
carriage, which is connected to the train with powerful
magnets. This carriage is about the size and shape of a
large watermelon and moves back and forth through the pipe
under vacuum power, bringing the train with it.
This weird but clever product works something like the
vaunted hyperloop, but rather than shooting a pod full of
people through a tube it shoots a carriage through a
tube...." Read
more Hmmmm...
You gotta love
it!! Why not
(switching
isn't easy in
any of
these). Alain
3rd
Annual
Princeton SmartDrivingCar
Summit
evening May 14 through May 16, 2019
Apply to Participate; Reserve your Sponsorship
Catalog
of Videos of Presentations @ 2nd Annual Princeton
SmartDrivingCar Summit
Photos
from 2nd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit
Program
& Links to slides from 2nd Annual Princeton
SmartDrivingCar Summit
[log in to unmask]"
alt="" class="" width="89" height="52">
April 5, F. Fishkin, "Here comes congestion pricing in New York City...but what will it mean? Former city Taxi and Limousine Commission head and transportation expert Matthew Daus joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Also...Tesla, VW and even Brexit! All on Episode 98 of Smart Driving Cars."
March 28, F. Fishkin, "The Future Networked Car? From Sweden, The Dispatcher publisher, Michael Sena, joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for the latest edition of Smart Driving Cars. Plus ...the Boeing story has much to do with autonomous vehicles and more. Tune in and subscribe."
March 21, F. Fishkin, "NVIDIA unveils Constellation Drive and more at the company's GPU Technology Conference. NVIDIA's Director of Automotive Danny Shapiro joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a special edition of the Smart Driving Cars podcast!"
March 18, F. Fishkin, "Autonomous vehicles and a new world of mobility for those who need it most. That plus a new poll from AAA, the grounding of Boeing's Max 8 aircraft, Lyft's IPO and more in this edition of the Smart Driving Cars podcast with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. " Just say "Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" . Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay ... Alain
March 10, F. Fishkin, "What was missing from the Geneva Auto Show? Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser takes aim on that, plus, Volvo, Waymo Tesla and more along with co-host Fred Fishkin. Tune in and subscribe! "
Feb. 22, F. Fishkin, " Should Elon Musk stop promising truly self driving cars next year? That plus more on Waymo, Apple and a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists in this edition of the Smart Driving Cars podcast with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin."
Feb. 15, F. Fishkin, , "What can autonomous vehicle companies learn from the Amazon HQ2 cancellation in NY? Plenty, says Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser. That and more in Episode 91 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast with co-host Fred Fishkin. "
Feb. 10, F. Fishkin, , "Special
edition with Matthew Daus former Commissioner of NY Taxi
& Limousine commission to discuss NYC's congestion
pricing and efforts to improve mobility for all in he NY
metropolitan region."
Feb. 1, F. Fishkin, , "The National Transportation Safety Board unveils the 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements. Put down the mobile device, stop speeding and make new safety technology standard equipment. NTSB Office of High Safety Project Manager Dr. Ensar Ecic joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin to discuss. "Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" . Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay. Alain
Feb. 1, F. Fishkin, , " New York
begins data collection on Uber and Lyft rides,
AutonomouStuff continues to grow, another arrest in
alleged theft of Apple self driving secrets...and more
in episode 87 of Smart Driving Cars. Join Princeton's
Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin and
subscribe!"
F. Fishkin, Jan. 18, "Ride Systems and Double Map combine to form Journey ..providing real time transit information. CEO Justin Rees chats with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Also in this episode VayaVision's technology to fuse sensor data for self driving with CEO Ronny Cohen."
F. Fishkin, Jan. 18, "In this episode from CES 2019, Princeton University's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin welcome guests Michael Fleming, CEO of TORC Robotics, Regulus Cyber CEO Yonatan Zur and Arbe VP Bill Latino. Tune in to the Smart Driving Cars podcast and subscribe!"
F. Fishkin, Sept 6, "The coming new world of driverless cars! In Episode 55 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast former GM VP and adviser to Waymo Larry Burns chats with Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and Fred Fishkin about his new book "Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car and How it Will Reshape Our World"
M. Daus, Esq, April 1, "Over the weekend, the New York State legislature agreed to pass congestion pricing legislation as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget bill for FY 2020. The legislation was finalized in the early hours today, and the Governor is expected to sign the bill into law immediately. The toll is intended to reduce traffic congestion while raising $15 billion between 2020 and 2024 to fix NYC subways and commuter rails. Starting no sooner than December 31, 2020, motorists will be charged a toll to drive into Manhattan south of 60th street, excluding the FDR Drive and the West Side highway....
Only two categories of vehicles are specifically exempt from the law: emergency vehicles and qualifying vehicles transporting a person with disabilities. The law does not specify what qualifies as a “vehicle transporting a person with disability,” leaving any such determinations to the TBTA. A recent Bloomberg article discusses exemptions for people with disabilities (click here to review full article)..." Read more Hmmmm... Congratulations NYC!!! I've never understood why this isn't called "Value Pricing". Was it the SAE??? or is it just that I don't seem to ever like the semantics used by others? This has been a long time coming and is a tribute to William Vickery, the Canadian-born Columbia University Professor of Economics and Nobel Laureate who tragically passed away shortly after being announced as the winner of the 1996 award in Economics. AlainE. Niedermeyer, March 18, "he single most important moment in the world of self-driving cars was around 10 PM on a Sunday evening, one year ago today. On that fatal evening, Elaine Herzberg stepped out into Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona and was struck and killed by a Volvo XC90 that was testing Uber's self-driving car technology. Herzberg's death has cast a pall over what had been a white hot race to develop world-changing technology that promised to both save lives and create billions in value for the winners, changing public perceptions of autonomous vehicles and internal practices at the firms developing the technology alike. Though this shameful moment won't stop the march toward autonomous vehicles, it does provide an important opportunity to stop and reflect on how it happened and what lessons must be learned to prevent it from happening again.
Lesson #1: This Is Not A Race...
(1)
Lesson #2: Culture Matters. (3)
Lesson #3: Humans Are Bad At Overseeing Imperfect
Automation. (9)
Lesson #4: Vulnerable Road Users Require Extra Care.(5)
Lesson #5: Regulation Beats The Alternative. (7)
Lesson #6: Legal Liability Must Catch Up With
Technology. (10)
Lesson #7: Leaders Need To Listen. (8)
Lesson #8: Infrastructure Matters. (6)
Lesson #9: Autonomy Has Opponents. (2)
Lesson #10: Trust Is The Currency Of Autonomous Drive
Technology. (4)
Lesson #xx: Be totally transparent about what happened leading up to the crash. (3.5)
Lesson #yy: Learn about safety from others and help others learn from you (3.6) Read more Hmmmm... Very worth reading. I've provided my own ranking and added a couple of other lessons. What is being disillusioned is the fairy tale / Sunday supplement aspects of this technology, which no one ever believed anyway. What remains substantive is that Safe-driving car technology is being incorporated into new cars and it is beginning to work. Self-driving technology is being championed by OEM, especially Tesla and Volvo and it is being purchased to the satisfaction of OEMs. And Driverless technology is being tried in goods delivery and, at least at Princeton University, is being focused to serve Mobility Disadvantaged communities whose quality-of-life this technology can most enhance. While this technology is in its infancy with little scale or bandwidth, it is prudent that it focus on delivering mobility to those who can most benefit from the technology, rather than try to convert those that are indifferent or disdain. Alain
Press release, March 19, "To ensure self-driving cars
are safely integrated on New Jersey roads, legislation
sponsored by Assembly Democrats Daniel Benson, Andrew
Zwicker and Pamela Lampitt to establish a task force
to evaluate autonomous vehicles was signed into law by
the Governor Monday.
“As major auto companies explore developing semi and
fully autonomous cars, we need to prepare for the day
when we’ll see only self-driving vehicles on our
roadways,” said Benson (Mercer, Middlesex). “The goal
of this task force will be to assess how we can
introduce autonomous vehicles to our roadways while
keeping drivers safe.”
The new mandate (formerly bill AJR-164) creates the
New Jersey Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Task Force,
comprised of eight members. The panel will be
responsible for conducting a study of autonomous
vehicles and recommending laws, rules, and regulations
that the state may enact to safely integrate these
vehicles on the roads..." Read
more
Hmmmm....
New Jersey is now
started. Hooray!! Alain
A. Kornhauser, March 13, "The following testimony was provided to the New Jersey State Assembly’s Transportation and Independent Authorities Committee on Monday, March 11....
What we need, what my ask is, that we create in New Jersey a “welcoming environment” for the research, testing and demonstration of this technology and work to focusing it on improving the mobility of the mobility disadvantaged...
While such a demonstration is not prohibited in New
Jersey, it is not permitted.
Consequently, this provides excuses and hurdles to
bringing such mobility to our communities and
tarnishes any other welcoming efforts aimed at
enabling New Jersey to lead instead of follow in what
may well address the fundamental objective of this
hearing." Read
more
Hmmmm....Seems
so simple. I have found
it so incredibly hard.
Alain
Press Release, March 4, "Volvo Cars, as a worldwide
leader in safety, is sending a strong signal about
the dangers of speeding and will limit the top speed
on all its cars to 180 kph from 2020.
The company’s Vision 2020, which aims for no one to be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020, is one of the most ambitious safety visions in the automotive industry. But realising that technology alone will not get it all the way to zero, Volvo Cars is now broadening its scope to include a focus on driver behaviour...
Apart from limiting top speeds, the company is also
investigating how a combination of smart speed
control and geofencing technology could
automatically limit speeds around schools and
hospitals in future.... " Read
more
Hmmmm....
Bravo Volvo!!! I
appreciate this
ground-breaking
initiative by an OEM.
Over the years Volvo
has proven that
"Safety" doesn't sell,
now Volvo is doubling
down against the
German Speed Fantasy.
Is Volvo crazy?
I applaud you. Hopefully, this is just the first step Why not 135 kph (~90mph). Or "9 over" with ability to "buy a '24 over'" at an exponentially increasing higher price. Alain
March 1, "Improve people's lives with the world's best transportation. ...44% of rides start or end in low income areas.... Just think what that number could be if the rides were even cheaper and you didn't have to deal with driver apprehensions... . 30.7M Riders, 1.9 M Drivers, $8.1B Bookings, $2.2B Revenue, 1+B Rides, 300+ Markets in US & Canada...
We are laser-focused on revolutionizing transportation and continue to lead the market in innovation. We have established a scaled network of drivers and riders, or users, brought together by our robust technology platform that powers millions of rides and connections every day. We leverage our technology platform, the scale and density of our user network and insights from over one billion rides to continuously improve our ridesharing marketplace efficiency and develop new offerings. For example, we pioneered a shared ride offering, or Shared Rides, providing lower-cost rides to riders traveling similar routes while improving the efficiency of our network. More recently, we were the first to launch a publicly-available commercial autonomous offering in the United States..." Read more Hmmmm...."... A commercial autonomous offering" ... Talk about an "offering" that is un-scalable without a non-trivial pivot.. elimination of the attendant. Oh well... Lots to learn in the filing. The very brief and necessarily shallow CliffNotes are at LYFT’S IPO FILING SHOWS RIDERSHIP IS SURGING—SO ARE LOSSES .. Alain
Feb 1, "The Congestion Surcharge (Tax Law Article 29-C) was enacted on April 1, 2018, with collection of the surcharge scheduled to begin on January 1, 2019. The onset of collections was delayed due to a temporary restraining order (Taxifleet Management LLC, et al. v. State of New York) that was lifted by the Court on January 31, 2019. Accordingly, the Congestion Surcharge must be collected beginning at 12:01 am on Saturday, February 2, 2019....
... Recordkeeping
Persons or entities liable for the surcharge must keep
records that are sufficient to determine whether the
surcharge was properly applied, and must electronically
transmit those records to the Tax Department upon
request. This includes, but is not limited to, the
following for all transportation that is subject to the
surcharge:
A. Marshall, Jan 31, "In 2007, New York City’s Taxi and
Limousine Commission, in a belated embrace of the 21st
century, required that every taxi plying the streets of
the five boroughs start taking credit card payments....
For the TLC, they made work more interesting, because
along with those readers came GPS trackers that became a
cornerstone of the agency’s growing data
operation....axis provided insight into the city’s
transportation ecosystem. Are cabs speeding along a
certain stretch of street? Time to review the street
design. Getting stuck at the same intersection every
rush hour? Maybe rethink the traffic light timing.
And starting Friday, New York will start clawing in the
same kind of data from the ride-hailing companies that
have stormed its streets in recent years. ... " Read
more Hmmmm...
It will be very interesting to
observe the real behavior of Lyft
& Uber, especially in the outer
boroughs. To date, the Lyft &
Uber data have not divulged {O,
oTime, D, dTime} of individual trips
to the level of precision that the
T&LC has been for years
collecting from Yellow (and Green)
cabs . Can't wait to look at
precise individual {O, oTime, D, dTime} data
of Lyft & Uber trips and
compare/contrast with conventional
cabs. It will be very interesting.
Alain
Oct 16, Establishes
fully autonomous vehicle pilot program A4573
Sponsors: Zwicker (D16); Benson (D14)
Oct 16, Establishes
New
Jersey Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Task Force AJR164
Sponsors: Benson (D14); Zwicker (D16); Lampitt (D6)
Waymo team, June 13, "Ariel rides
after school. Neha hops to the grocery store.
Barbara and Jim zip around town while kicking back.
They’re all part of the Waymo early rider program we
launched last April. Today, over 400 riders with
diverse backgrounds use Waymo every day, at any
time, to ride all around the Phoenix area. Their
feedback helps us understand how fully self driving
cars fit into their daily lives.
One year in, our early rider program and our
extensive on-road testing is helping us build the
world’s most experienced driver. In fact, our fleet
of cars across the U.S. is now driving more than
24,000 miles daily; that’s the equivalent of an
around the world road trip! Here’s a quick report on
how our riders use Waymo, what we’ve learned, and
what’s next....As some of the first people in the
world to use self-driving vehicles for their
everyday transportation needs, our early riders are
helping shape this technology. Thanks to their
feedback, we’re refining the rider experience to
make sure that: ... nobody wants to carry grocery
bags a block down the street... " Read
more Hmmmm....
Yipes!! The personal car isn't bad enough
in its focus on private single-occupant
parkingSpot2parkingSpot mobility? Are we now
going to have Waymo providing it Door2Door
with zero opportunity to share rides and
while delivering negative public benefits of
increased energy, pollution and congestion
with all of its empty vehicle
repositioning. No wonder the CPUC voted to
forbid ride-sharing. Did Waymo made them do
it since Waymo hasn't done ride-sharing in
Phoenix? Having 2 or more people in the car
isn't ride sharing if they would have all
gone together in their own car had Waymo not
been there. So Bad!!! Without
ride-sharing, this is just
expensive, energy inefficient and
environmentally challenged private
chauffeuring for the entitled
privileged class:
See
video Just like watching Oszzie
& Harriet or Leave
it to Beaver.
For Waymo to "Win it", they'll need to
embrace ride-sharing because no "Blue-state"
PUC is going to be as impressionable as as
California's. Alain
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".
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. ..." 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
"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&qu ot; 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
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
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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