2013-08-28

August 28, 2013

August 27, 2013

Remarks of Acting Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman, NTSB, Governors Highway Safety Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, California

August 27, 2013 “…Forward collision, lane departure and electronic stability control systems should be required on both commercial and passenger vehicles. The NTSB does not believe that important, lifesaving equipment such as collision avoidance technologies should be optional when purchasing a vehicle. Safety equipment needs to be for everyone – not just for those who can afford it…” Read more This is a REALLY major announcement that was made at the same conference that had David Strickland of NHTSA continuing to warn “…At this point, the Agency, with full acknowledgement of the promise of automated driving, does not see current technology that would allow removing the human completely from the control loop. The car – no matter how automated – is not yet ready to be more than a co-pilot. And every co-pilot needs a pilot….” and “.. We believe V2V offers substantial crash avoidance potential by warning drivers of imminent crash risks…” Seems to me that NTSB is leading and that NHTSA is dragging. Read more Also, Ron Medford, Director of Safety @ Google was another keynote speaker at the Governors Highway Safety Association Annual Meeting in San Diego this week. While these three speaker focused on what is in my opinion the best opportunity ever for highway safety, the rest of the three day program seemed to have never heard of this opportunity. Hopefully these keynote speakers will get this organization on board to foster the commercialization of this technology. Alain

NISSAN ANNOUNCES UNPRECEDENTED AUTONOMOUS DRIVE BENCHMARKS

Nissan will be ready with revolutionary commercially-viable Autonomous Drive in multiple vehicles by the year 2020
Program underway in Japan to construct first dedicated, purpose-built autonomous drive proving ground
The goal is availability across the model range within two vehicle generations
Video of Nissan Announcement
Video of Interview with EVP Andy Palmer about announcement

Read more This announcement certainly raises the bar for the auto companies. First we have Mercedes introducing “Intelligent Drive” with automated lane keeping in today’s 2014 S-Class, followed by Google reaffirming at last month’s TRB/Stanford Vehicle Automation Conference that they will have driverless (“Level 4”) cars commercially available by 2018. Now today, a major auto manufacturer, Nissan, announces that they will have “commercially-viable Autonomous Drive in multiple vehicles by the year 2020” and the NTSB head says that collision avoidance systems should be required. Next week Alberto Brioggi will show his video of his PROUD car and show that he has a car today that can drive itself. This is really getting serious. What are BMW, Volvo, Cadillac, Tesla, Ford, Subaru, Lexus, Hyundai, VW… going to do to leapfrog these initiatives? Alain

Prof. Alberto Broggi, Univ. of Parma will present the PROUD2013 event on Sept 3, 2013 in Las Vegas, NV, as the plenary opening of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference. See the updated video!

Prof Broggi’s presentation is essentially the only presentation at the whole conference on Smart Driving Cars. There is a DoT workshop but it seems to be focused on connected vehicles and one panel session on Wednesday “Releasing the Steering Wheel: Learning to Let the Car Drive by Itself” Oh well! At least there is Alberto’s talk and his participation in the one panel. Alain

UK Taking Lead on Driverless Cars with New Program

“…The British government recently approved a program to test driverless vehicles on “lesser used” roads in the UK. As part of a $42.5-billion program aimed at reducing traffic congestion, the Department of Transport is allowing Oxford University to tackle the project.

There is one caveat: a driver must be in the vehicles to take over in the event something goes wrong. Oxford has already conducted some preliminary tests using a Nissan Leaf.

With the British government pushing for a dramatic improvement in traffic flow, including the integration of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, by 2040 could the unthinkable happen: the British gaining technological leadership in this arena over the U.S.?..” Read more Unfortunately, if they’re fixating on 2040 they wont be leading anything. Alain

Video of Tesla’s Assembly “Line”

There has been a lot of popular press suggesting that Google and Tesla might be getting together to produce a driverless car. Given the amount of automation that currently exists in the Tesla manufacturing process, Tesla might well feel that the automation of driving is a piece of cake. Alain

This is actually what a typical low density aTaxi stand might look like. The only difference would be that the cars would have no driver. Higher volume aTaxi stands might have a waiting area where patrons to common destination would gather for a few minutes and then directed to the next arriving vehicle, which would take the individual or the group to their common destination. Alain

More on Pneumatic Tube Transportation:

Joseph Brennan’s Beach Pneumatic: Alfred Beach’s Pneumatic Subway and the beginnings of rapid transit in New York

Larry Edward’s 1971 Evacuated Tube Transport patent

Joseph Flynn’s 2012 Pneumatic Mass Transportation patent

Daryl Oster’s 1999 Evacuated Tube Transport patent

Daryl Oster’s sales pitch video for his Evacuated Tube Transport(If you thought Elon Musk was out there, hold on! Alain)

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

Washington DC Oct 23-25

August 20, 2013

Draft Final Report “Uncongested Mobility for All NJ”

Available for Download (15M) Slide Presentations (123M ppt)

My students and I have been conducting a quantitative assessment of the mobility implications of autonomousTaxis (aTaxis), the ultimate in Smart Driving Cars. The task was simple: How well could a truly safe fleet of self-driving cars serve the demand for personal mobility? Rather than just focus on the mobility needs of cities, or suburbs the decision was to assess the full spectrum of today’s land uses. New Jersey was selected not only because we live here, but also because it embraces essentially all uses of land from extremely rural farms and preserved spaces, through a wide variety of suburban developments to both old and new high density urban living….Table 1 summarizes how each and every of the 32+ million person trips that take place on a typical weekday can be served efficiently and effectively. Short trips (a 10 minute walk or less) are served by Walking & Cycling (with Door2Door aTaxi service is provided to elderly and handicapped). All other trips are served by the appropriate combination of aTaxis and NJ Transit’s existing commuter rail lines. To appropriately serve all of the 30+ million daily non-walk/cycle trips, a fleet of about 1.8 million aTaxis would be needed. (In 2010, 3.9 million cars were registered in NJ plus an additional 2.5 million trucks.) At peak hours state-wide average vehicle occupancies reach the 3.0 level while during most off-peak times average vehicle occupancies are very close to 1.0. In those off-peak times few people wish to travel between the same places at the same time so that there is very little opportunity for trips to coincidentally share an aTaxi. Because the aTaxis provide excellent demand-responsive service to and from NJTransit rail stations, many trips (almost 5 million) are best served by aTaxi <-> Rail multi-modal combinations. In fact NJ Transit’s rail system plays a part in serving over 6 million trips each day, more than 20 times what it currently served today. This is a reflection of the large amount of activity that takes place within a short walk of NJT’s train stations, if only there existed an efficient system, like aTaxis, to bring passengers to/from the station at the other end of the trip.