Tuesday Oct. 15, 2013

October 15, 2013

November 05, 2013

House to hold hearing on driverless cars

New date is November 19, 2003, 10:00am for hearing on “How Autonomous Vehicles Will Shape the Future of Surface Transportation” to be held in 2167 Rayburn Office Building, Washington DC 20515. By clicking the following you’ll be able to: Watch the live webcast of this hearing on November 19th Alain

On the Road with Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) Systems

Press Release: Brussels 29 October – “Euro NCAP releases the first results of rear-end crash avoidance systems tested against the upcoming 2014 rating protocol. Eight vehicles have been compared with respect to their performance on the test track.

Real world claims data suggest that Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems can reduce rear end crashes by one quarter or more and lead to a significant reduction of injuries. As from January 2014, Euro NCAP will in its rating scheme give credit to vehicle manufacturers that equip their models with robust forward collision warning and/or automatic braking technology…” Read more

A good summary of the tests appears in FleetDirectory First self-braking cars rated by Euro NCAP by John Simpson 30 October 2013. Eight (8) car models equipped AEB systems were tested and are reported on Euro NCAP’s website. Both “City” tests and “Inter-Urban” tests were conducted of the Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems. While the test results indicate that at least some of these systems work some of the time, only one perfect score was achieved (MB 2013 E-Class w. Given that the test environment is not really challenging (no adverse weather or obstructions; good weather and running surface, straight course) one would hope that each of these systems should be able to accurately measure distance, relative speed and friction coefficients continuously so as to avoid collisions in each of their scenarios. Apparently not! The 2013 MB E-Class with PRE-SAFE BRAKE earned a perfect score 3.0/3.0 in the slow speed “AEB City” test and 2.7/3.0 in the higher speed “Inter-urban” test. The other seven (7) cars tested were significantly worse. See table below. The model names link to a description of their test results and the video links to a video of the tests. Hopefully, their poor performance is due to the fact that the vehicles tested were from 2011-2013 and not the new 2014. Alain

How the eight vehicles’ AEB systems scored:

Video description of test

Model

Score: City

Rating: City

Score: Inter-Urban

Rating: Inter-Urban

Mercedes-Benz E-Class

3.0 points

Good

(video)

2.7 points

Good

Volvo V40

2.1 points

Good (video)

2.2 points

Good

Mitsubishi Outlander

2.1 points

Good (video)

1.9 points

Adequate

Volvo XC60

1.9 points

Adequate (video)

Fiat 500L

1.8 points

Adequate (video)

Ford Focus

1.7 points

Adequate (video)

Volkswagen Golf

2.2 points

Good (video)

Honda Civic

0.44 points

Marginal (video)

The videos which are well worth watching are at http://euroncap.synapticdigital.com/Latest-Release/on-the-road-with-autonomous-emergency-braking-systems/s/0d5f0a78-2afc-4c63-ad36-a1acdb2c0b19

Vehicle-to-Vehicle Technologies Expected to Offer Safety Benefits, but a Variety of Deployment Challenges Exist

GAO-14-13, Nov 1, 2013 What GAO Found:

“The development of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technologies has progressed to the point of real world testing, and if broadly deployed, they are anticipated to offer significant safety benefits. Efforts by the U.S. DOT and the automobile industry have focused on developing:.., 3) vehicle features that warn drivers, and 4) a national communication security system to ensure trust in the data transmitted among vehicles. … if widely deployed, V2V technologies could provide warnings to drivers in as much as 76 percent of potential multi-vehicle collisions ….

Ultimately, however, the level of benefits realized will depend on the extent of the deployment of these technologies and the effectiveness of V2V warnings in eliciting appropriate driver responses. The continued progress of V2V technology development hinges on a decision that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) plans to make in late 2013 on how to proceed regarding these technologies. One option would be to pursue a rulemaking requiring their inclusion in new vehicles.

The deployment of V2V technologies faces a number of challenges, …3) ensuring that drivers respond appropriately to warnings of potential collisions; … and 5) addressing any concerns the public may have, including those related to privacy…” Read more

Hmmm…In the above I have listed only the items that should convince “U.S. DOT and the automobile industry” that they should change gears and pursue “autonomous collision avoidance systems” (NHTSA Level 2 and Level 3 technologies, aka SmartDrivingTechnologies) with a substantially greater priority than “V2V”. The reasons are obvious…

We know that the first car with V2V will accrue zero benefit. As do the 2nd, 3rd, and … Individual V2V cars don’t begin to accrue measurable safety benefits until a significant portion of the other cars on the road have “V2V”. Consequently, there are no incentives for early adopter to willingly purchase “V2V”. On the other hand, autonomous (individually focused) SmartDrivingTechnologies deliver essentially the same safety enhancements to the purchaser of the first SmartDrivingCar as the “10 millionth” purchaser. (Each will accrue a “76 percent” reduction in probability that the driver of a SmartDrivingCar will cause of an accident. Most car accidents are “caused” by driver inattentiveness of what would otherwise be readily “seen”.) Drivers that actually recognize that their attentiveness isn’t all that it should be all of the time will likely value these safety features and can be expected to enthusiastically step up as early adopters and willingly pay for SmartDrivingTechnologies without requiring “rulemaking”.
As pointed out in the report, the 3) and 5) “challenges” above are actually deal breakers. It is unsubstantiated that the drivers are better than SmartDriving Algorithms at avoiding accidents. In fact, challenge 3) is actually a call to develop SmartDriving Technology before V2V. V2V needs SmartDriving Technology to deliver measurable safety. SmartDriving Technology can deliver most of its safety value without V2V communications. Also, given the current public displeasure with the NSA, it seems unlikely that significant numbers of car owners will allow the operation of their cars to be closely monitored and managed by some centralized systems. Personal freedom has been one of the attributes that has underpinned the automobile’s success in the consumer market. Overt oversight and management, even for the sake of safety, is unlikely to tolerated, let alone accepted, in the marketplace.

The real focus of V2V, including V2I:I2V, should shift from the public/governmental sector to the private sector. In the private sector, V2I:I2V has a strong B2C (Business-to-Consumer) value proposition in TravelTainment, nCommerce (Navigation-Based Services) and Safety. V2V has a strong B2B (Business-to-Business) value proposition within Commercial/Public-services Fleets. For years truckers and limo drivers have been sharing congestion and incident information in real time. Car-sharing, limo and taxi companies as well as public-safety manage their fleets with V2V. In each there is a well-defined set of vehicles that are the responsibility of a well-defined central entity whose mission is substantially enhanced by intelligent real-time supervision, orchestration and management of not only individual vehicles but its entire fleet. It has the mandate and the authority. “Is it worth it” is the only question.

One mode that should vigorously pursue V2V is the freight railroad industry. It has the authority (it owns/controls its tracks and locomotives). It essentially has in each of its locomotives the “where am I” and communications technologies that allow its train management centers to know the status of every train. It simply needs to install the automated control systems to remove the crew from the head end. (For year, it has been remotely controlling locomotives in yard operations as well as multiple locomotives in train sets for years 1, 2, 3.) Of course this would incite issues with the labor unions; however, the objective of this automation should not be to reduce the ranks of labor, but instead, to substantially increase the level of service provided by the railroad company through the operation of many new short trains. Train crews are a very small element of the operating cost of large unit trains which are the current “bread & butter” of the current rail freight business. Not so for short trains. Automation of those short trains could make them competitive to shippers and profitable to rail carriers. What is interesting here is that this mode has an existing dedicated right of way, much of which is seldom used. Transport on this existing right-of-way is extremely energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Its challenge has been its fixed-charge labor cost irrespective of the size of the train; a situation which is similar to that which exists in conventional public transportation.

Driverless cars have the opportunity to revolutionize public transport. Driverless trains have the opportunity to revolutionize freight rail transport. Technologically and organizationally, driverless trains are much easier to achieve than driverless cars. The tracks and driverless locomotives are owned and controlled by a private entity to which the benefits of automation will accrue. If it is worth it, that private entity can make it happen. Alain

Preparing a Nation for Autonomous Vehicles: Opportunities, Barriers and Policy Recommendations

Eno Center for Transportation, Oct 2013. “…AVs have the potential to dramatically change the transportation network…”

The Self Driving car revolution should begin with Trucks

November 04, 2013 “Nextbigfuture was looking at how and where to operate robotic cars to accelerate their introduction back in 2008. Robotic car only zones in city centers would have enabled robotic cars to have more simplified and controlled environments to navigate. We had also looked at having robotic cars waiting or going to users. Robotic electric cars can go to a charging station when not carrying passengers. The robotic car only areas could encompass an entire city… If I had the chance to accelerate the adoption of driverless cars, I wouldn’t focus on either of those markets: I would look at trucking. Specifically, I would look at long haul trucking, the subset that usually does not travel to urban nor suburban areas in the first place.

Let’s get the obvious advantage out of the way first: Compared to driverless cars, driverless trucking is technically way simpler. When going from one warehouse in a sparsely populated area to another warehouse in a similarly sparsely populated area, there’s a lot less that can go wrong….” Read more

Hmmm… As I have pointed out above, the lowest hanging fruit for driverless cars is in fact driverless freight trains. Talk about being technically simpler. The guideway is restricted to one technology, owned and controlled by the same entity that profits from managing the driverless trains. Seems like a no brainer with only existing labor unions and at-grade crossings as solvable challenges. Alain

Hackers Offer Advice To Automakers On How To Prevent Attacks

From Owen P. Curtis, Curtis Transportation Consultants: Police are finally starting to catch up to crafty thieves who are using a cheap wireless fob to hack into cars. The device, which has been used in other break-ins around the world, had confounded authorities until now.

After being burglarized last year, Rick Henzel of Winnipeg, Man. installed security cameras and trained them on his driveway. The cameras caught a group of men as they walked up to his Lexus and unlocked the doors with a mysterious electronic instrument. They then helped themselves to the contents.

Michael Legary, a security expert with Seccuris, told CBC News that the thieves hacked into his car using a device that emits an electromagnetic pulse. The thieves used it to trick the car into thinking it was a legitimate key fob, enabling them to gain entrance and steal his valuables in mere minutes.

Manufacturers of the device told CBC that it sells for five dollars, and that at least 19 have been shipped to Winnipeg in the past three months.

Unfortunately, as it stands, the only way to protect yourself from this threat is to have your keyless entry disabled by a mechanic. As more electronics are integrated into car design, hacking has the potential to become a global crisis on roadways.

Reports on Recent Events:

“Autonomous Vehicles Competing with Autonomous Pedestrians and Everything Else – Where Might it Work in Manhattan’s Crowded Streets?” A. L. Kornhauser, @ Transportation Alternatives, 10th Fl., 127 W26th, NYC. I made the above presentation in Manhattan. Most of the slides are ones that I use to bring the audience up to speed on the current status and my perspective on SmartDrivingCars. However, beginning with Slide 61 (and contained in this abbreviated pdf) I suggested that there are corridors in Manhattan where the coming generation of Driverless Vehicles could not only coexist with pedestrians on some Manhattan’s crowded streets but substantially enhance mobility in those corridors.

For example, if most conventional traffic was to be prohibited from 42nd St. during most of the and 5 European cities as part of the EU’s CityMobil2 project could provide efficient and effective cross-town mobility along a “Pedestrian-enhanced 42nd Street”.

Moreover, such low-speed pedestrian-friendly Driverless Vehicles should be tried BEFORE one spends the money to put street car tracks down the middle of the street and buy light rail vehicles. The driverless vehicles could be strategically managed to provide sufficient capacity during peak times as well as efficient high-quality low-cost service during off-peak hours. A successful demonstration could lead to the expansion of local mobility services along the length of 2nd Avenue. It could also double back along 8th Street/Greenwich/+, and up 11th Avenue to complete a loop. Technologically, one could readily deploy the follow-on vehicles to CityMobile2: CityMobile3. These pedestrian-focused corridors could be ideal sites for a larger-vehicle shared-ride implementation Google’s Driverless car technology. Such an implementation would transform urban public transportation.

As I’ve written previously, and I commented on at the PodCar7 Conference last week, there are other less dense corridors that should seriously investigate similar Driverless Vehicle shared-ride public transport modal alternative. This includes the “Purple Line” and “Columbia Pike Corridor” in Washington DC, Greenville, SC and San Jose, CA to name a few. In fact, probably every Light Rail and Bus Rapid Transit proposal should be re-evaluated in the light of this emerging urban mass transportation technology. Read more Alain

“SmartDrivingCars: Financially Attractive to the Insurer and Insuree” A. L. Kornhauser

Monday Oct. 21, 2013, @ Mirage, Las Vegas NV. My presentation was a part of a panel that was chaired by Scott Kipper, Nevada State Insurance Commissioner, and included Prof. Bob Peterson, University of Santa Clara Law School, Anthony Levandowsky, Product Manager, Google Car and Chris Schultz, CA Dept. of Insurance.

I focused on the reduced liability/risk exposure that SmartDrivingCars may well bring to the personal automobile sector of the economy. I based my analysis on the expected safety implications of the Google Driverless Car technology that has been reported by Levandowsky. I combined Google’s analysis with accident cost values estimated by the AAA Foundation, to conclude that a complete transformation of the personal automobile sector to a Google Driverless Car could deliver an annual savings of $183Bn to the US economy (slide 28). 50% of those savings would accrue to the car insurance industry in the form of reduced claims. While we may never reach a full penetration of SmartDrivingCar technology, the benefits of this technology accumulate linearly with increased adoption because the enhanced safety is centered on the defensive actions of the individual vehicle and not some complicated coordination of all the neighboring vehicles in the stream. The benefits are captured by each individual vehicle which I have chosen to normalize on a per-licensed-driver basis. Thus, each licensed driver that purchased a “Google-type” SmartDrivingCar can be expected to reduce his or her annual liability by an average of $475. Consequently, an insurer should be willing to offer that level of discount to the average purchaser of a “Google-type” car.

I went on to “guestimate” that a 2014 Mercedes S-class with Intelligent Drive may deliver close to 2/3rds the collision avoidance of a Google-type car. If so, the annual reduction in liability is greater than the increased lease payment to cover the $2,800 cost of the Intelligent Drive Option. That means that it is more profitable for an insurer to bundle insurance with a car + Intelligent Drive at the same price as insurance with just a car (without Intelligent Drive) (Slide 39). In other words, by paying for the Intelligent Drive upgrade for the car buyer as the means of delivering the “discount”, the “intelligent Drive” customer will be more profitable for the Insurer. The benefit to the customer, is that the Intelligent Drive will substantially reduce that the probability that the customer will be killed or injured and save an additional $165/year in deductible self-insurance. (slide 41).

Chris Schultz did point out that many state insurance regulations have not anticipated such technological improvements and do not permit insurance companies to offer substantial discounts for such technological advances. Eventually, one can expect that regulations will catch up; however, in that interim, insurance companies may well be able to maintain higher rates and reap windfall profits. Even without the discounts, my view is that the improved safety is more than worth the option cost of Intelligent Drive. Read more Alain

Emerging Transportation Technologies - R&D

Thursday, October 24, 2013 @ George Mason University, Alexandria VA. I moderated a panel focused on emergence of this new form of urban mobility based SmartDrivingCars

Dr. Jerome Lutin, Former VP of Research at New Jersey Transit focused on “Opportunities to Leverage Advances in Driverless Car Technology to Evolve Conventional Bus Transit Systems”. Jerry pointed out that Transit Agencies are mostly self-insured and his estimated are that the incremental cost of SmartDriving Technology is likely less than what these technologies will save in self-insurance expenditures. Thus, as with personal autos, it may well be that these collision avoidance technologies pay for themselves from savings in line-budget expenditures. This basic financial incentive should motivate Transit Agencies to embrace NHTSA “Level 2” and “Level 3” collision avoidance systems. Adoption of these systems will naturally lead to the perfection of “Level 4” driverless systems that will completely revolutionize the Urban Transit Industry by allowing it to become to mode of choice to a much larger segment of the traveling public. Read more Also see Lutin & Kornhauser “Application of…”
Dr. Ingmar Andreasson, Logistikcentrum, focused on “Synergies Between PRT and Driverless Cars”. He argued that substantial urban capacity and throughput could be achieved by “Dual-mode” personal vehicles. These vehicles would be conventionally driven on public streets and be capable of automated operation on exclusive automated high-throughput corridors connecting linking conventional surface street sub-networks. The only drawback to this concept is that the conventional driving local collection and distribution does not embrace shared-use which limits its “mass transit” aspects. Read more
Dr. Samuel Lott, Kimley Horn, focused on “Evolving APMs to ATNs Using Driverless Car Technology” from the perspective of the safety standards that have been created at great expense for APMs. He argued that this investment in standards should be leveraged by Driverless car technology to allow it to more readily evolve to offer public transit mobility. Read more
Dr. Adriano Alessandrini, University of Rome, focused on the existing and near term demonstrations of driverless transit in his presentation “Evolving Today’s Low-speed Driverless Shuttles to Area-wide Transit Service”. While these systems are low speed (up to 25 mph) they are demonstrating that they can operate safely in well-designed pedestrian environments. Such demonstrations will allow for the evolution from low-speed pedestrian environments to higher speed more general shared-roadway area-wide systems. What is needed to make this transition is proper International Legal Framework for automated road vehicles and road transport systems. Read more

Gaining Traction,

summary of PodCar7 Conference by Lawrence Fabian

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7ECVAD2013/

First International Workshop on Computer Vision for Autonomous Driving

Sydney, Australia December 2, 2013

Recent Versions of:

October 18, 2013

11, 2013

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

October 4, 2013

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

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:

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SmartDrivingCars_110513_v0

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