2013-11-08

November 08, 2013

Clifford I. Nass ‘81,*86 expert on human/computer interactions, dead at 55

Tragic!! What a terrible loss. We have all taken an enormous step backwards. His simulator. Alain

USDOT ITS Joint Program Manager for Connected Vehicles and Automation

Hmmm… this is a good job listing at a more than reasonable pay ($123,758.00 to $155,500.00 / Per Year(GS-2101-15)) and it would be an even better job if the title was changed to Program Manager for “Automation and Connected Vehicles”! Alain

90% of drivers would consider self-driving cars to save on insurance, survey says

By Mark Vallet Updated Fri Nov 1, 2013 “ One in five drivers would hand over the keys tomorrow if a safe, computer-operated vehicle were available, a new survey from CarInsurance.com finds – and 90 percent would at least consider a self-driving car if cheaper insurance were part of the package…Money changes minds…

About 20 percent of drivers said they would buy a fully autonomous car if one were available, CarInsurance.com’s survey found.

The follow-up question introduced the prospect of an 80 percent discount on car insurance. Thirty-four percent of respondents said described themselves as “very likely” to buy an autonomous car for a big insurance discount, and an additional 56 percent said they would consider the option. Only 10 percent ruled out a robot car.

Money is not the only factor that turns heads. …drivers are looking forward to making better use of that commute. Asked what they will do with newly freed time, drivers chose:

Text/talk with friends: 26 percent

Other: 21 percent

Read: 21 percent

Sleep: 10 percent

Watch movies: 8 percent

Play games: 7 percent

Work: 7 percent

The “Other” category was dominated by two categories of write-ins: “Enjoy the scenery” types who welcomed the new opportunity, and worriers who wrote in “watch the road” or “hold on for dear life.”

Trust issues run deep, the survey found:

64 percent of respondents said computers were not capable of the same quality of decision making that human drivers have.

75 percent of respondents said they could drive a car better than a computer.

75 percent would not trust a driverless car to take their children to school…”

Hmmm… It is nice to learn that people may respond to money; however, an 80% discount on auto insurance is not a fair question to ask. A better approach might be to ask:

What would entice you to buy a car with collision avoidance and lane keeping options that allow you, only some of the time while traveling in the drivers seat, to text, talk and surf and only when the car “tells” you that it is OK?
If your car had such capabilities, would you buy and use a “GPS Nav System” that suggested routes that favor roads on which your car would normally allow you to text, talk and surf while “driving”?
What additional enticement to buy a car with collision avoidance and lane keeping options that allow you to text, talk and surf at essentially anytime during your trip?
Read more As well as Automotive News. Some repetition but the comments are well worth reading. Alain

Reports on Recent Events:

INTERNATIONAL TASK FORCE ON VEHICLE-HIGHWAY AUTOMATION

17th Annual Meeting, Otaku, Tokyo, Japan, Oct 13. 2013.

Informal Poll of participants at the end of day-long discussions by invited participants:

Most significant development of past year:

#1 (by a large margin): Automaker announcement of commercial availability of automated SmartDrivingCars by 2020.

#2 (tied) Japanese Prime Minister’s advocacy of SmartDriving Cars

#2 (tied) Vast increase in public-private-academic dialogue and formal exchange

Key issues to be addressed in next 3 years:

#1 Legal responsibility for crashes (chain of responsibility, how is legal responsibility evolving, how can it be made more clear)

#2 Reliability and security of automated driving; minimize false alarms

#3 Framework for testing and validation (how to certify, role of simulation, what scenarios certify, “what are the hurdles?”)

What is not being addressed:

Automated road transit alternative to private car

shared use vehicles

solving last mile problem

Automation integrated into digital infrastructure

System safety measure: “as safe as today’s driving”

– or better than human

More holistic view on what automation will contribute

– driving forces and counter-forces

– winners? losers?

Presentations: All are very interesting and containing substantive update. Alain

Myra Blanco “Human Factors Evaluation of Level 2 and Level 3 Automated Driving Concepts”

Pierpaolo Tona “CityMobil2 Automated Road Transport Systems in European Cities”

Maxime Flament “CityMobil2 WP26: Certification directive for Fully Automated Vehicles”

Maxime Flament “VRA: Support action for Vehicle and Road Automation network”

Lars Bjelkeflo “AdaptIVe: Automated Driving Applications & Technologies for Intelligent Vehicles”

Ryota Shirato, Nissan “Automated Driving Perspective”

Nissan Leaf Recent “2007 Urban Challenge”-like video

Lars Bjelkeflo “Volvo outlook on vehicle automation”

Steven E. Shladover “Development of California Regulations for the Testing and Operation of Automated Vehicles on Public Roads”

Jane Lappin “TRB Workshop on Road Vehicle Automation”

Daniel Bartz “U.S. Army AMAS: A Modular Approach to Truck Automation”

Sadayuki Tsugawa “Final Report on an Automated Truck Platoon within Energy ITS Project”

Arnaud de La Fortelle “AutoNet 2030 Automated driving in France”

Paul S. Rau “Safety Through Automation Program National Highway Traffic Safety Administration”

Raymond G. Hoogendoorn “The Dutch Automated Vehicle Initiative: Challenges for automated driving”

20th ITS World Congress Tokyo 2013-10-20

Michael L. Sena Oct. 19, 2013 “…The Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress has been held every autumn since 1994. Its location rotates among the three regions that initiated the idea for a global conference on improving mobility through technology advancements: North America, Europe and Asia. This year’s Congress, the 20th, was in Tokyo. Last years it was in Vienna and next year it will be in Detroit.

Wireless communications, GPS, in-vehicle navigation and the Internet were not yet commercialized when planning for the first Congress in Paris began, but it was in anticipation of these technologies that international cooperation was started. Automobile manufactures in the US, Japan and Europe and their suppliers, especially those developing their new navigation systems and map databases, dominated the exhibitions, demonstrations, paper submissions and presentation sessions during the first ten years of the Congress’ existence. A shift occurred following the eighth Congress held in Sydney in October 2001. Almost no Americans attended that Congress due to restrictions on travel from the US following the terrorist attacks. After Sydney, public transport and policies began to take precedence. European and US car manufacturers, navigation and data suppliers and service suppliers to the car industry, such as the automobile associations who were among the founders of the ITS initiatives, began to gradually reduce their participation. The European events, especially, have been almost totally devoid of car-centric sessions except for safety-related advanced driver assistance systems and emergency services. The Japanese automobile industry has continued to consistently supported the Congress with active participation in the exhibitions and sponsorship.

This year it was impossible for the planning committee (of which I have been a member as a European delegate for the past several years representing the interests of the automotive sector) to ignore developments in the highly automated and self-driving car domain. The first Executive Session on the first day of the Congress was devoted to the subject: Autonomous Vehicles: The Path to Implementation. While it was not the first time that a Google representative took part in the Congress, it was the first time that an executive from that company shared the Executive Session limelight with European, Japanese and US governmental dignitaries and executives from the traditional transport sector. Ron Medford, Google’s Director of Safety for Self-driving Cars, presented a case for self-driving based on the safety benefits. He did not offer an answer to the question on everyone’s mind: Will Google build self-driving cars (Ed: Of course they won’t; they will be produced and sold in completely new ways by groups of like-minded people). All he said was that Google is doing this because they want to push development further. This session which had participants from Japan, France and Germany, was organized by the US ITS committee.

There were two Special Sessions on the self-driving theme: Autonomous Vehicles – Technical Challenges; and, Roadmap to Automation. These were also organized by the US and were back-to-back on the third morning of the Congress. (Luckily, they were not on the second morning, Wednesday, when the entire Congress was shut down as a result of the typhoon that ripped through Tokyo during the night.) Steve Dellenback, Director of Southwest Research Institute led the first session and Steve Underwood, Director of Connected Vehicle Proving Center at the University of Michigan, led the second. Presenters were almost exclusively from the US. Both sessions played to standing room only crowds, and there was an unusually high degree of audience engagement.

I would have liked to have seen at least one viewpoint expressed on both the urban planning challenges for autonomous driving and the inevitable long-term effects to the design of our cities and transportation networks that will result, but I expect that this topic will be a subject that will be addressed in next year’s Detroit Congress. I plan to ensure that it is. Detroit is a showcase for the effects of the automobile’s first one hundred years. It will be fitting that the ITS World Congress marks the starting point for that city and many other like it for the next generation of the reinvented car.

Michael L. Sena

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

House to hold hearing on driverless cars

New date is November 19, 2013, 10:00am

Senate 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

Florida Automated Vehicles Summit

November 14 – 15, 2013

Marriott Tampa Waterside Hotel

700 South Florida Ave

Tampa, FL 33602

2013 ITS New Jersey Annual Meeting

December 16, 2013

MetLife Stadium

East Rutherford, NJ 07073

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

First International Workshop on Computer Vision for Autonomous Driving

Sydney, Australia December 2, 2013

Recent Versions of:

November 05, 2013

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

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:

alaink@princeton.edu

SmartDrivingCars_110513_v0