2013-10-10

October 10, 2013

11, 2013

Mercedes’ September sales best in company’s 87-year history

“Even though new-car sales continue to rebound, that pace seemed to slow a bit in the US for September, but Mercedes-Benz had plenty to brag about. Last month, the automaker sold 142,994 vehicles around the world marking the best sales month ever in its 87-year history.” Read more Given that Mercedes continues to air the “Imagine” commercial and their focus on Intelligent drive especially with respect to the new E-class, does this mean that safety is really driving customers to the showrooms and buying cars. There seems to be a correlation. Is it casual or causal? How the rest of the industry views this in the coming months may give us some indication. Alain

The Ethics of Autonomous Cars

Patrick Lin Oct 8 2013, “If a small tree branch pokes out onto a highway and there’s no incoming traffic, we’d simply drift a little into the opposite lane and drive around it. But an automated car might come to a full stop, as it dutifully observes traffic laws that prohibit crossing a double-yellow line….” Read more Good article as are some of the comments that follow. I’ll add mine: Yes, ethics are really important here, but we also need to not be sophomoric. Laws, even traffic laws, are created and interpreted with human behavior in mind. They haven’t been written as deterministic absolutes. There are nuances. It is necessary that those who are writing the logic and code for these SmartDrivingCars (They are NOT autonomous, nor will they be in my foreseeable future.) understand that these laws are NOT absolutes and that they direct and constrain in a real-world context. Code that applies traffic rules rigidly and without regard for context will fail in the marketplace. If these cars are going to do some of the driving for us, their behaviors are going to have to meet our minimum expectations. Some of us actually rode with our teenagers when they began to drive. We pointed out mistakes, we pointed out that “Yes” you can cross the yellow line when there is a branch in the road and no car is coming. Code writers for the smart driving vehicles will build these kinds of cues into the system. Sometimes rule-breaking is the right choice on the road because our legal rules necessarily oversimplify to cover the generality of cases. The beauty of code is that nuances that cannot be captured in law can be accounted for in algorithms. The Smart Driving Car challenge is not an ethical challenge it is a computer code generating challenge. Alain

Nissan Demonstrates Autonomous Drive Vehicle in Japan [Video]

Read More See Video Marginally impressive, Little else one can do at exposition. Easy to fake. Doing demo on Tokyo streets would have been really impressive, but I suspect that we aren’t there yet. Alain

A Short History of Mercedes-Benz Autonomous Driving Technology

“Few people know this, but back in the 1980s and 1990s, Mercedes-Benz was already experimenting with driverless vehicles that can accelerate, brake, steer, and pretty much make a trip through traffic by themselves and not crash into anyone…” Read more

A.M. BestTV: Road to Driverless Cars Pocked with Liability Potholes

OLDWICK, N.J. – “This A.M. BestTV episode looks at autonomous cars and the speed bumps the insurance industry will have to sort out in the areas of privacy and liability, despite an expected drop in collisions should the driverless vehicles one day become road-worthy. … Both Kornhauser and A.M. Best Senior Associate Editor Lori Chordas spoke about some issues insurers would have to face, including just who would be held liable should a loss occur, and privacy concerns. Click on http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=driverless1013 to view the video program.” Read more Oct 9, 2013 10:00am Postponed!! Indefinitely?? (Smart Driving Cars are not a Federal Government Priority. Not to be cynical, but probably the best thing that could happen at this point. The industry doesn’t seem to need, nor want government assistance and not enough has happened to require regulation. So this is good news. Alain)

167 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515

Live webcast: http://transportation.house.gov/hearing/how-autonomous-vehicles-will-shape-future-surface-transportation

New self-driving cars from Volvo and Mercedes tout ‘injury-proof’ driving

Jim Motavalli Oct 7. “Volvo, which showed off a (nearly) autonomous car in Washington, D.C. last week, believes that the future of driving is hands-off…” Read more Not much here except Volvo video which summarizes their position. Alain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jjsVE2JfFA0

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

International Task Force On Vehicle-Highway Automation

October 13, 2013

Alpine Electronics

1-7 Yukigayaotsukachou

Otaku, Tokyo 145-0067

http://www.sitaonline.org/conference.htm

October 20-23, 2013

Mirage Hotel

Las Vegas, Nevada

http://www.podcarcity.org/washington/

Washington DC Oct 23-25

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CVAD2013/

First International Workshop on Computer Vision for Autonomous Driving

Sydney, Australia December 2, 2013

October 4, 2013

Car Fire a Test for High-Flying Tesla

BILL VLASIC Published: Oct. 3, 2013 DETROIT —”It’s an automaker’s worst nightmare: graphic video footage of one of its cars engulfed in flames after an accident. The driver told the police that he hit metal debris on the freeway before the Tesla Model S caught fire. In the case of Tesla Motors, the fire that destroyed a Model S electric car on Tuesday is a stunning reality check for a company that has garnered almost unanimous praise for its battery-powered vehicles. The fire, on a highway exit in Kent, Wash., poses a serious challenge for Tesla and, at the same time, prompts new questions about the safety of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars. Read more

Hmmm. Let this be a wake-up call to all in the SmartDrivingCar community that we need to be careful and be prepared to address accidents involving SmartDrivingCars. There will be accidents; nothing is perfect. We should/must continue to advance SmartDrivingTechnologies, take risks, be ready to keep everyone aware of the enormous benefits, and yes, nothing comes for free, not even Google; some prices will need to be paid.

What this article fails to bring out is that highway vehicle fires are “common”.

From Highway Vehicle Fires (2008-2010) FEMA Topical Fire Report Series Vol 13, Issue 11, Jan 2013:

“…an estimated 194,000 highway vehicle fires occurred in the United States each year (1.6 per hour!)
…an annual average of approximately 300 deaths (~1 per day), 1,250 injuries and $1.1 billion in property loss.
…highway vehicle fires accounted for 14 percent of fires responded to by fire departments across the nation.”

Special Issue

September 28, 2013

IIHS issues first crash avoidance ratings

IIHS News

Sept. 27, 2013 ARLINGTON, Va. — “A new test program by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) rates the performance of front crash prevention systems to help consumers decide which features to consider and encourage automakers to speed adoption of the technology. The rating system is based on research by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) indicating that forward collision warning and automatic braking systems are helping drivers avoid front-to-rear crashes.

The Institute rates models with optional or standard front crash prevention systems as superior, advanced or basic depending on whether they offer autonomous braking, or autobrake, and, if so, how effective it is in tests at 12 and 25 mph. Vehicles rated superior have autobrake and can avoid a crash or substantially reduce speeds in both tests. For an advanced rating a vehicle must have autobrake and avoid a crash or reduce speeds by at least 5 mph in 1 of 2 tests… The Institute awards as many as five points in the autobrake tests, based on how much the systems slow the vehicle to avoid hitting the inflatable target or lessen the severity of the impact. In the case of an unavoidable collision, lowering the striking vehicle’s speed reduces the crash energy that vehicle structures and restraint systems have to manage. That reduces the amount of damage to both the striking and struck car and minimizes injuries to people traveling in them.

“We decided on 25 mph because development testing indicated that results at this speed were indicative of results at higher speeds — and because higher-speed tests would risk damaging the test vehicles,” Zuby says. “As such, we expect crash mitigation benefits at higher speeds as well.”

Hats off to Subaru for leading the pack in this first round of tests!

Be sure to look at the scoring table at the bottom of the IIHS news release. It is disheartening to learn that for the most part, these systems didn’t work! Only Subaru, Cadillac and Volvo didn’t crash in the 12 mph test and only Subaru in the 25 mph test. The purpose of these systems is crash avoidance! Each knew the crash was coming.

Why would manufacturers that took the effort to include automatic braking would wait until it is too late to avoid a collision or apply the brakes too lightly, allowing a crash to occur. Even a slight crash causes a high “cost” (least of which requires you to pull over, talk to the person that you just ran into); whereas no crash incurs zero “cost” (except an elevated heart beat). Alain

September 27, 2013

House to hold hearing on driverless cars

By Keith Laing - 09/25/13 “The House Transportation and Infrastructure will hold a hearing next month about “the future role of autonomous vehicles in U.S. transportation,” officials with the panel announced on Wednesday. Transportation Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) proclaimed driverless cars were “the future of transportation” after riding in one in his home state earlier this month. “This technology has significant potential to make transportation safer and more efficient,” Shuster said in a statement after his ride. “We have to figure out how to embrace technology, in the way we build our infrastructure, comply with existing and future laws, and ensure the safety of the public.” Read more

Hmm…but there are no details as to when and whom they’ve requested to appear. It does seem to have an appropriate positive thrust of “… how to embrace technology…” Also, driverless cars is an unfortunate label for all of this. “All” of the safety and comfort benefits and most of the convenience benefits of SmartDrivingCar technology are likely to be captured without ever getting to driverless (Level 4). In fact, driverless (Level 4) will likely exacerbate some of the safety benefits gained by Levels 1 through 3 in return for very modest gains in personal convenience (It’ll send my car back home for my spouse to use, or fetch my car from some remote parking lot. Not a big deal!?).

The benefit of driverless is captured not by the individual car buyer/owner, but by the emerging “mass transit” company that has purchased a fleet of these vehicles for the purpose of making them available to the traveling public on a “per ride” basis. This corporate entity will manage its fleet to best serve its potential customers without incurring a labor cost with each vehicle. Conventional mass transit does something close to this with large vehicle carrying lots of people. This is the only way they can keep the labor cost per individual customer at an acceptable level. These new “mass transit” firms, call them autonomousSharedTaxis (aTaxis), will be able to afford to offer mobility services using much smaller vehicles, each carrying many fewer people to a degree that they could offer inexpensive Point2Point on-demand mobility services to all. This would make “mass transit” competitive and possibly the mode of choice for many more, if not most trips. If so, investors would find it attractive to acquire sizable fleets of driverless vehicles and offer “mass transit” mobility that could replace most current personal auto mobility. The enhanced ride-sharing that would naturally emerge from such offerings could substantially reduce congestion, energy and pollution while not substantially degrading safety. Creating a welcoming environment for such investments in driverless vehicles that have the potential to yield very valuable societal benefits should be a major focus of these hearings.

To achieve the “safety” objectives, the hearing need only to “embrace” Levels 1-3 technologies. Here “embracing” may only need to make sure that “driverless hurdles” (Level 4) are not placed as roadblocks to Levels 1-3 market availability. Alain

September 20, 2013

At Frankfurt Auto Show, the Driver Began to Take a Back Seat

By JACK EWING Sept. 15, 2013 FRANKFURT —” A wide grin beneath his bushy mustache, Dieter Zetsche, the chief executive of Daimler, did as car executives often do at auto shows, cruising onto the stage in the company’s newest model. But at the Frankfurt motor show last week, Mr. Zetsche added a surprise: he sprang from the back of a Mercedes S-Class that had no one in the driver’s seat…” Read more This is how Daimler chose to spend a substantial amount of money to introduce its automotive products at the 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show on Sept. 9, 2013. They must believe that consumers are ready to spend money on Smart Driving Cars. Alain

Video: MB Self-Driving Manheim 2 Pforzheim 2:08 long

S 500 MB Intelligent Drive (Self-Driving) TV footage:

September 13, 2013

Race is on as automakers embrace self-driving cars

David Shepardson September 12, 2013 Frankfurt, Germany — “ The race to build an autonomous car by 2020 is on. Several global automakers at the international auto show here vowed that they are in the lead — and trying to one-up each other…. Mercedes-Benz — which touts its safety advances — is ramping up its efforts as it adds additional crash mitigation technology to current vehicles.

“Those who want to drive themselves are free to do so, and that won’t change in the future, either,” Weber said…” Read more

Well worth reading Alain

2013

A New Product Category: the PCwD !

Personal Collision-warning Device (PCwD) Available at under $850

The market for Collision Warning Systems may well be developing in a manner similar to that of turn-by-turn navigation where consumer-grade after-market systems are cheaper and better than “factory installed” versions sold as options with new cars. The popularity and adoption of navigation systems was fueled by their availability to all car users as inexpensive stand-alone Personal Navigation Device (PND) that could be used in any car or as less expensive, even “free”, application programs that leverage the capabilities of one’s existing device, be it a notebook, tablet, iPad, or smartPhone. Mobileye is out with what I’d like to call a “Personal Collision-warning Device” (PCwD). It is a self-contained unit that uses embedded stereo cameras to monitor the road ahead and warn the driver of forward collision, pedestrian collision, lane departure and read speed limit signs. At a price of just under $850 it is substantially cheaper than comparable systems available as options on new cars. More importantly, the product is available to everyone, not just buyers of a few models of new cars. Given the universal desire to “text” and the allure of other distractions while driving, everyone needs the help of a PCwD to be constantly vigilant of potential dangers ahead.

While this is the first such device, I see Collision-warning Systems following the market adoption path blazed by Navigation Systems. The main difference here is that stereo cameras have replaced the GPS receiver. The user-interface, computing and memory are each essentially the same. Other producers with their own image processing (routing software), object recognition (digital maps) and user interfaces will emerge and propel the market adoption of PCwDs. At some point, communications with some evolution of the “OBD II” port could be established with the a car’s electronic throttle, brake and steering systems to create a PCaD that provides active Collision-avoidance (Ca) and lane-keeping rather than simply collision-warning.

The final step would be to merge the PCaD with the turn-by-turn navigation system to create the ultimate new product category, the Personal Driverless-car Device (PDcD) that could behave as a Valet or as a Chauffeur and allow you to catch a few zzzz. Whew! Alain

See following videos for more information:

2013_Commercial_Teen About Mobileye Links to Videos of individual capabilities available @ https://us.mobileye.com/products/mobileye-560/