[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">   Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 114

F. Fishkin, June 28, "With Apple making an autonomous tech acquisition, what plans might it have when it comes to driverless mobility? Join Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus the latest from Tesla, Ford, Waymo, BMW and more on episode 114 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast! Tune in and subscribe. "  Just say "Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!" .  Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay ...  Alain

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September 4-6, 2019
Pocono Manor, PA

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On the More Technical Side

http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/

F. Fishkin, May 18,, "From the 3rd Annual Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit, join Professor Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. In this special edition, the summit's focus on mobility for all with guests Anil Lewis, Executive Director of Blindness Initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind and ITN America Founder Katherine Freund." 

April 5, F. Fishkin, "The success of on demand transit company Via is proving that ride sharing systems can work. Public Policy head Andrei Greenawalt joins Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a wide ranging discussion. Also: Uber, Tesla, Audi, Apple and Nuro are making headlines"

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."

Recent Highlights of:

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Friday, June 21, 2019

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  Lexus Moves One Step Closer to a World Without Crashes (Lexus may have pulled the press release???)

Press Release, June 19, "...Collisions that result in injury can often be caused by a delay in a driver’s recognition of the situation and his or her ability to react accordingly.
 
In a move to help prevent such accidents before they happen, the Lexus Safety System+ will be a standard feature in all US Lexus vehicles starting with the 2020 model year. “We are working toward preventing crashes before they happen,” said David Christ, group vice president and general manager, Lexus Division.“ That's why we have developed some of the most advanced safety features on the road today, and now those systems will be standard equipment on every model we sell.  ..Nice!...

Designed to help protect drivers, passengers and pedestrians, the Lexus Safety System+ is an integrated suite of four advanced active safety packages anchored by automated pre-collision warning and braking. They include:

• Pre-Collison System with Pedestrian Detection

This system is engineered to help detect a preceding vehicle or a pedestrian ... why not also a stationary fire truck, or a car stopped at a controlled intersection, or a brick wall, or...???  NotGoodEnough!...  Below see Advanced Driver Assistance Systems: The ADAS Road to AV Reality - #SmartDrivingCar... in front of the Lexus under certain conditions . Should the system detect a pedestrian or a potential frontal collision, it’s designed to activate an audible and visual alert while automatically preparing Brake Assist for increased braking response... why not also begin immediately to brake and slow down ? (Hint..."not sure" is not the right answer.)  If the situation is sufficient for you to alert the driver why isn't it good enough to immediately start to reduce the speed of the car.  Worse case is that you added a couple of seconds to the trip.  The driver can always override the brakes by pushing harder on the gas pedal if the driver insists on tailgating or is committing suicide or ???.  NotGoodEnough!.... If the driver does not brake in time,... are you kidding??  You knew a crash was impending, and you waited until it was too late???  NotGoodEnough!... the system is designed to automatically begin braking before impact... and then you'll slam on the brakes???  NotGoodEnough!... and, in some cases... Not most/many cases; just some cases???  NotGoodEnough!..., can even bring the vehicle to a stop

• Lane Departure Alert ...OK, but not Lane Centering...
  

• Intelligent High Beams ... Great...

• Dynamic Radar Cruise Control

This system uses radar and camera technology to help maintain a preset speed and following distance from the vehicle ahead. If driving at highway speeds and the road ahead clears, the vehicle returns to its preset speed. .... Great, but a couple of questions... 1.  If the system is on and I tap the brakes, does the system turn off just the acceleration function because it understands that I tapped the brakes because I felt that I was going too fast so the system should not override my explicit signal.  Nice!! However, does it also assume that I really know what I'm doing?  Consequently, it also turns off the brake function even in situations in which I am not applying enough brake forces and a crash is imminent?  Does it again wait until it is too late and and refuse to help me in those critical moments?  Then you'll slam on the NotGoodEnough!  (Note... my S Anti-lock Braking ystem explicitly overrides the way that I'm applying the brakes and keeps me from doing the wrong thing.  Thank you ABS!  What makes the AEB situation different when the system knows better and could really help me in an as critical situation?

2.  What happens if the system is on and I'm following a car at my preset distance going 10 mph under my desired speed.  The car ahead changes lanes because she sees that a parked fire truck is in our lane ahead.  Once her car clears my lane ahead, does the Dynamic Radar Cruise Control system take into account the existence of the parked firetruck ahead and brings me to a smooth stop before hitting the Firetruck?   Or, does the system begin to accelerate to my desired speed and simply leave it to the Pre-Collison System with Pedestrian Detection system to try to "save the day" after it is too late?........"  

Read more  Hmmmm... Again, very nice that these features will be standard.  It is really unfortunate that they are not better.  Hopefully, since the limitations that I expressed above are all software related, Lexus will be able to do over-the-air (or otherwise) updates of the software as soon as Lexus has put more effort into the "intelligence" that uses the data streams generated by their cameras and radars   Alain

Friday, June 14, 2019

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  Hyundai self-driving deal points to industry-wide pattern

T. Lee, June 13, "It has been a busy week for Aurora, the self-driving startup founded by veterans of the Google, Tesla, and Uber self-driving programs. On Monday, Aurora announced it had forged a partnership with Fiat Chrysler. On Tuesday, Aurora said it was ending its partnership with Volkswagen. Now Hyundai is deepening its partnership with Aurora with an equity investment.

It's the latest example of an industry-wide pattern: one after another, car companies have made big investments in self-driving startups. And these deals mean that carmakers are effectively entering into self-driving alliances with one another....

All of the recent deals between car companies and self-driving companies could put Waymo in a difficult position. Waymo has been working on self-driving technology much longer than any of its rivals, and the company aimed to introduce a driverless taxi service long before others came to market. In that scenario, Waymo would have its choice of automotive partners, so Waymo has been keeping its options open.

But the reality is that Waymo will need help from automakers to scale up rapidly. As more and more automakers commit to Waymo's rivals, Waymo risks becoming stranded—with industry-leading sensors and software but limited capacity to integrate the technology into a large number of vehicles...."  Read more  Hmmmm... Good summary of "self-driving car" partnerships but, by including Waymo in the mix, it is conflating what I continue to contend are two VERY different markets...  Self-driving and Driverless.  What makes them like oil & vinegar is that self-driving vehicles are for the Consumer market and are little different from conventional cars.  Driverless cars are for the Fleet/Business market.

Self-driving cars require a driver in order to deliver any meaningful mobility or value.  Their automation stack delivers additional comfort, convenience and safety to the auto industry's existing customer base.  As such it is a "consumer play" and requires no regulations or public oversight other than what exists today.  Any safety issues can be handled through standard  "product liability" and standard "NHTSA recall" procedures.  Its market penetration evolution is like going from manual transmission to automatic transmission, as Tesla is demonstrating with AutoPilot. From outside the car, one can't tell if it has it or doesn't.  It is a consumer choice at time of purchase.

Tesla is creating its own "automatic transmission"/"AutoPilot stack".  Other OEMs are hedging their bets by partnering with  technology provider for their self-driving technology stack. They'll continue to produce the rest of the car, as they have done for years, and possibly outsource their "automatic transmission" when the time comes. 

Driverless cars  are "mobility machines" when managed as a fleet delivering mobility to individuals.  They are  a "business play".  It is all about the economic efficiency/profitability in delivering mobility to individuals.  The fundamental value is in the opportunity to provide consistent reliable affordable mobility at scale.  The technology stack has taken the inconsistency, unreliability and monetary cost of a human driver out of the loop.  Since algorithms, rather than people, tailor the service to meet individual needs, such systems scale attractively.  All of this MUST be done safely without a driver/attendant, else the economics/affordability/scalability completely collapses. 

From outside the car one can tell that there isn't a driver in the driver's seat.  Consequently, public oversight at all levels from top to  grass roots will need to be comfortable with this thing with no driver in it going down their street and invading their neighborhood and transporting their kids, grandmas, mobility disadvantaged, ... .  Everyone is going to weigh-in with perceptions and regulations.  Consequently, the deployment of the technology is going to need to be "welcomed" .  "Uber-like swashbuckling bravado isn't going to cut is.

Driverless Mobility-as-a-Service is the market that Waymo (and GM/Cruise and Ford/Argo) have been going after.  Because of its need to be "welcomed" (or at least not disdained) by the residents and businesses that abut the streets over which these vehicles deliver their mobility, the deployment dynamics for Driverless is very different from Self-driving.  All Self-driving needs is for Madison Avenue / "Elon Musk" to convince individuals of the comfort and convenience of being able to have the car drive itself some of the time and they are sold.  Driverless requires substantial public relations/education of communities to achieve "welcoming".  A real "ground war".   That is what Waymo (and GM/Cruise and Ford/Argo) needs to conduct to just get started.  Once started Waymo need to continue it to scale (Value is achieved only with scale). 

Finding OEMs that will sell Waymo cars on which to affix its technology stack will not be the problem.  The car is the commodity. The welcoming of the technology stack by communities is the fundamental differentiator.  Waymo is sitting on an order for at least 82,000 cars from FCA and Jaguar.  The order has been announced, but not executed because insufficient "ground warfare" has even been waged, let alone been successful (except in Arizona).  With welcoming environment these 82,000 mobility machines could be serving 4 million person trips per day in communities throughout the country. (Note... our nation's transit systems today (only) serve an equivalent number of person trips; although they are longer trips taken in much more densely populated areas.  The Waymo-served trips would likely be trips that our conventional transit systems can't effectively serve and thus complement conventional transit.  Some of the trips would replace auto trips.  The others would be new trips by persons who can't or don't want to drive their own car for whatever reason and whose lives have been substantially disadvantaged because their mobility needs aren't effectively served by either the personal car or conventional mass transit.

The other elephants in the room that aren't mentioned in the article are SoftBank and Tesla. Today Tesla "owns" the Self-driving market and SoftBank is "involved" with essentially everyone except Tesla and Waymo.  Alain

Saturday, June 8, 2019

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="50" height="39">  What Truck Drivers Think About Autonomous Trucking

W. MacNaughton, June 1, "We've all heard about the advent of Autonomous Trucking - but mostly from people who work in the tech industry.  So this week, I've been visiting (and sleeping, eating and showering in) truck stops in Nevada, Utah and Idaho to hear what truck drivers themselves have to say about the future of the profession. ..."  Read more  Hmmmm... This is excellent.  One thing that was missed...  If done appropriately, (operative word here is appropriately, not really what has been done so far...) ... ""autonomy" could help me drive much more safely and really help me if it focused on reducing the stress or anxiety that driving causes me.  It would really be nice if I could relax and think about something else at least some of the time when I drive.  Much of driving is very simple... but very boring. Please help me do my job more safely.  I'll then be fresh and really be able to handle the tough hard stuff.  Do for me what automation does for pilots.  I'm just as important."  Alain

Saturday, June 1, 2019

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="50" height="39">  Uber’s First Earnings Report After I.P.O.: $1 Billion Loss

K. Conger, May 30, "Uber’s start as a publicly traded company has gone from bumpy to bumpier.  In its first earnings report since listing its shares on the stock market this month, the ride-hailing giant on Thursday reported its slowest growth in years and steep losses for the first three months of 2019..."  Read more  Hmmmm...  In its most basic form, the ride hailing business has revenue ($r) and costs ($c) proportional to number of rides (R).  Let $r = A*R and $c = B*R.  So Profitability (P) { P =  ($r -$c) = (A - B) * R } is all about (A - B) .  We know that at today's ridership, R(now), (A(now) -B(now)) is negative.  We also know that as ridership increases, new drivers will need to be paid more (B gets bigger), simply because the demand for driver services goes up.  We also know that to attract more riders, revenue per ride will necessarily go down (A gets smaller).  Yikes... Ride-hailing faces a double whammy... as it scales (gets more people to ride) it loses even more from the average rider than it does today plus that bigger negative number gets multiplied by a bigger number of rides. 

When each unit incurs a loss,  making up losses by increasing volume is known to not be a viable approach. Increasing volume when unit losses increase with increasing volume is really not viable! 

The only road to profitability, other than a major pivot, is to be more discriminating in who you serve... Serve fewer riders.  Unfortunately, when you finally get Ridership small enough so that A-B is positive, that number gets multiplied by a smaller number of riders such that the gross amount is nowhere near sufficient to justify valuations greater than that of a lemonade stand.  Uber serves about 1B trips per quarter, which means today, they loses $1/ride.  To be worth $40B they need to make $1 on each of the 4B trips they serve per year.  How Uber gets from a history of losing $1/ride to making $1/ride @ 4B rides/year is an open question.  As is making $10/ride @ 400M rides/year?  As is making $0.10/ride @ 40B rides per year?  Alain

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Saturday, May 18, 2019

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="126" height="36">  Making Smart Vehicles to Improve the Human Condition

K. Pyle, May 17, "3.5 million and 5+ million deaths per year are a couple of the statistics that stood out from the 2+ day, 3rd annual SmartDrivingCars Summit at Princeton. There are approximately 3.5 million individuals in the United States who never leave their homes and approximately 1.9M of those people have disabilities, according to Robbie Diamond, President & CEO of SAFE. He went on to say that, “Transportation is the biggest predictor of inter-generational upward mobility.”
His comments echoed the conference theme of improving mobility for all people, especially the mobility marginalized, to paraphrase Professor Alain Kornhauser. Kornhauser brought together participants from multiple disciplines and backgrounds to an event that is like no other. This year, he introduced a research element where there were a couple different opportunities to gauge the reactions of everyday people of varying abilities to various levels of autonomous vehicles...."  Read more  Hmmmm... Ken, thank you for such an excellent summary and all of the help.  Alain

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Sunday, May 5, 2019

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="140" height="17">  VW Inclusive Mobility aims to make sure tech takes care of everyone

A. Krok, May 2, "You can't please all the people all the time, but Volkswagen wants to make sure that when it moves into the next era of mobility, it won't leave any groups behind. 

Volkswagen this week unveiled its Inclusive Mobility Initiative, which sees the automaker working directly with outside groups to ensure that its future vehicles are capable of catering to people with disabilities..."  Read more  Hmmmm...This is fantastic and may well be in line with the focus we've taken with the upcoming 3rd Annual Princeton SmartDrivingCar Summit 10 days from now.  Our focus is on all people who have been marginalized by the unnecessary/non-inclusive/exclusive designs of our current forms of mobility, .  These designs are especially irresponsible when one no longer needs a person to drive... to keep the car from crashing while on its way from where people are to where the want to go.   What an enormous opportunity to be of service to so many that for what ever reason don't want or can't perform that task.  Yes, there are situations in which a professional is required.  At times, we all need we all need that the help of a professional.  But for all of those situations in which a professional is not needed, we have an enormous opportunity to be so much more inclusive by removing the other unnecessary exclusivities  that have consciously or unconsciously crept into our cars and transit systems.  Our mobility systems no longer need to be big and hold many people to make them affordable, no driver needs to be paid.  They no longer need to be constrained to only go between the few places than many want to go between at only certain times.  They can readily serve where only a few, even one, want to go between at whatever time.  The skill set needed to use and be served diminishes to the skill set needed by the easiest to use elevator. And so on...

Be sure to look VW's Inclusive Mobility Initiative.  Hopefully it encompasses and levels the mobility field  for the people that its cars have marginalized for 100 years.  Alain

Friday, May 3, 2019

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  Congestion Pricing Plan for NYC is Coming!

Friday, March 29, 2019

Friday, February 15, 2019

Thursday, November 22, 2018

 [log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="94" height="29"> Market Framework and Outlook for Automated Vehicle Systems

R. Mudge, A. Kornhauser, M. Hardison, Nov, 2018 "The surface transportation industry is in the early stages of a series of profound changes, stimulated by the development of increasingly sophisticated driving safety and automation technologies.   Considerable uncertainty exists regarding the speed with which these changes will take place and the nature of their impacts on safety, the overall demand for travel, vehicle sales, and vehicle ownership.  This report does not attempt to forecast the pace of these changes, instead advancing a list of “trigger points” that might serve as leading indicators of change....

What might these changes mean for actuaries and the insurance industry? Since Driverless vehicles will most likely be available only to fleet operators and not the general public, their actuarial and insurance implication will differ substantially from the implications of Safe and Self technologies that will be on vehicles purchased by consumers. But, will these vehicles continue to be insured in the same way as personal vehicles are today or will this practice change in some way. For example, if the burden of
liability shifts to the technology rather than the driver, then should actuaries focus on product liability rather than personal liability? To what extent does technology rather than personal behavior or demographics become the important link to liability? " Read more  Hmmmm....  This is a very good report. Listen to SmartDrivingCar Podcast 68 with Dick Mudge. (Of course, I'm biased. )  Alain

Thursday, November 1, 2018

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="">  A Green Light for Waymo’s Driverless Testing in California

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

New Jersey Pending Legislation re: Autonomous Vehicles

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)

Oct 16, Directs MVC to establish driver's license endorsement for autonomous vehicles A4541 Sponsors:  Zwicker (D16); Benson (D14); Lampitt (D6)..."  Read more Hmmmm.... Things are beginning to move in New Jersey.  Alain

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="39" height="43"> Testimony of Alain Kornhauser, Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology - Monday, October 22, 2018 - 10:00:00 AM

[log in to unmask]" alt="" class="" width="42" height="39"> Audio Recording of Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology - Monday, October 22, 2018 - 10:00:00 AM

Friday, June 15,  2018

Tuesday, June 12,  2018

 CPUC AUTHORIZES PASSENGER CARRIERS TO PROVIDE FREE TEST RIDES IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES WITH VALID CPUC AND DMV PERMITS

Sunday, June 3,  2018

  Waymo’s fleet of self-driving minivans is about to get 100 times bigger

Friday, May 25,  2018

PRELIMINARY REPORT: HIGHWAY: HWY18MH010 (Uber/Herzberg Crash)

May 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.Thursday, May 10,  2018