2013-07-25
Summary of:
July 16-19, ‘13
Stanford University, Palo Alto | Agenda | Breakout Sessions | Demonstrations
As anticipated, the workshop was excellent. It attracted over 300 attendees most of whom not only stayed engaged for the whole 3 days but participated in both pre-and post-workshop activities. While organized by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) this workshop received no government funding and was supported entirely by the participants. All organizers, speakers and attendees paid the registration fee which was lowered substantially by support from the following Benefactors:
Among the benefactors were small research-oriented entities as well as one major insurance company and one well-known communications company. Unfortunately, the major players did not underwrite this workshop, even though they benefitted mightily from the attendance and themselves attended at the subsidized rate. So it goes in the zig zag world of transportation policy where bean counters vie with creators for control over a future that can be realized.
AutonomousStuff gave one of the more compelling demonstrations of several different sensor technologies used as the “eyes” of automated vehicles. Each of these sensor technologies had been easily installed their rental car, confirming the after-market viability of these technologies and demonstrating, among other capabilities, the ability to readily identify Bobby and me.
Of the plenary presentations, the most compelling was an “off-the-record” presentation made by R.David Edelman, Senior Advisor for Internet, Innovation & Privacy, at The White House. David canvassed the opportunities and challenges of this emerging technology in a have the White House promote his view as official government policy, innovation will be accelerated, and we can look forward to a more rapid market adoption of this transformative technology that promises great rewards in safety, mobility, energy, environmental, decongestion, employment and quality-of-life enhancements.
Another compelling item was Anthony Levandowski’s (Google) affirmation of Sergey Brin’s intention to avail the public to “Level 4” mobility within 5 years. This is compelling because of the time frame. Sergey made the claim last year, meaning that by as early as 2017 the “public” (not “research” or “demonstration”) would begin to have access not only to the safety benefits of Levels 1, 2 and 3 but more importantly to the mobility, environmental and other quality-of-life benefits of a future when vehicles no longer need drivers to deliver demand-responsive mobility utilizing of our existing roadway infrastructure. Google’s intention to make this transformative opportunity a “public” reality in as few as four (4) years is diametrically opposite of its view as a species of Science Fiction by most of the policy and planning community as well as the general public. To be sure, Anthony made NO statement as to how Google intends to bring “Level 4” technology to market. This led several of us to speculate and debate: Will they buy a car company?, Will they buy Tesla?, Will they partner with Lexus or some other car company?, Will they test market these as they’ve done with Google Glass?, Will they create a “PRT-like” autonomous Taxi (aTaxi) service on the Google campus?, or ??? We had a lot of fun with the speculation. However, one thing is clear: regardless of Google’s game plan for bringing “Level 4” to market, it is time for the planning community to begin to view “Level 4” technology as a reality that is upon us. Long range planning was mandated and implemented many years ago and is the foundation of all public sector expenditures in surface transportation. Yet, essentially none of our existing surface transportation plans contemplate the existence of “Level 4” entities on public roads at any time in the future, let alone as early as 2017 (which next year makes them eligible for inclusion in short-range plans). There needs to be a wake-up call to the planning community. I participated in the Transit & Shared Mobility breakout group and the need for this was central to our deliberation as summarized below.
A third rewarding takeaway from the plenary sessions was the openness and collegiality of the participants from the Federal DoT. I’ve attended many conferences and workshops, including every TRB annual meeting since 1971, and found this workshop to be, without question, the most open and collaborative. Credit must be given to Mike Schagrin of the DoT ITS Joint Program Office for setting the tone and creating an environment where there was true engagement by all participants. DoT staff listened intensively and engaged in meaningful discussion.
As mentioned above I participated in the Transit & Shared Mobility breakout sessions, a synopsis of which will appear in a paper to be presented at the TRB annual conference next January. Presentations and draft research statements can be found at the workshop website: http://www.vehicleautomation.org/program/agenda. I took away two important concepts:
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Traditional Transit (buses) can save money by the near-term adoption of Level 1 and 2 automation technologies and can revolutionize its service offerings in the longer term implementation of “Level 4” roadway technologies, and
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Evolution of “Level 4” (aka driverless) transit technologies can proceed from two existing beginnings:
a. “high speed driverless” vehicle technologies that currently exist but are constrained to exclusive guideways, such as the automated people movers that function perfectly well at all major airports, including the Heathrow PRT system and the Morgantown PRT. They have all been crashless and totally safe, and
b. “low speed driverless” vehicles that operate on roadways that also serve pedestrians, bicyclists and traditional roadway vehicles, as was demonstrated at La Rochelle and will be placed in service by CityMobile2
Between these two extremes lies the “Level 4” transit opportunity for high speed driverless vehicles sharing existing roadways with existing road users. Such autonomous Taxis (aTaxis) could provide auto-like service where demand is diffuse in space and time while facilitating casual ride-sharing to serve demand that happens to be correlated spatially and temporally. This casual ride-sharing substantially improves efficiency and eliminates congestion. Such systems could emerge from smaller precursor exclusive guideway system whose vehicles could emerge onto existing roadways to serve a broader spatial scope of travel demand. Or, they could emerge from a broader, but less intense suburban service using existing roadways to serve more concentrated urban areas by creating exclusive guideways to deliver higher capacity services in the dense core. Each of these could be done by demand responsive management of a fleet consisting of various sized driverless vehicles. At the Friday morning session on Emerging trends in Public Transportation and Vehicle Automation I presented my results on the conceptual implementation of aTaxi service throughout New Jersey, “Smart Driving Cars: Transit Opportunity of NHTSA Level 4 Driverless Vehicles”. I focused on the shared-ride opportunities that such a system could capture as it served the 32+ million trips that are taken in NJ on a typical weekday. 2+ million of the trips are short and are readily served by walking and biking. 1+ million of the trips can readily use NJ Transit’s rail service for at least a portion of the trips. A large portion of the remaining trips are so diffuse spatially and temporally that shared ridership is not practical and are served individually by the aTaxi system. The remainder, occurring in the denser locations during peak hours, has substantial ride-sharing that would correspondingly decongest these roadways at these times while delivering excellent mobility at reduced energy and environmental consequences.