2013-12-01

2013-12-01

December 1, 2013

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’86 looks to the future

Sunday, December 1, 2013 CBS New, 60 Minutes “… But during our visit to Amazon’s campus in Seattle, Bezos kept telling us that he did have a big surprise, something he wanted to unveil for the first time…

Jeff Bezos: Let me show you something.

Charlie Rose: Oh, man…Oh, my God!

Jeff Bezos: This…

Charlie Rose: This is?

Jeff Bezos:…is…these are octocopters.

Charlie Rose: Yeah?

Jeff Bezos: These are effectively drones but there’s no reason that they can’t be used as delivery vehicles. Take a look up here so I can show you how it works.

Charlie Rose: All right. We’re talking about delivery here?

Jeff Bezos: We’re talking about delivery. There’s an item going into the vehicle. I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not.

Charlie Rose: Wow!

… Read more See video starting @ 11:00. Beyond SmartDriving Cars? Very interesting! Alain

Military’s Driverless Vehicle Plans Languish Amid Technology Woes

By Colin Daileda Nov. 26, 2013. “In 2003, members of the U.S. Congress and military hatched a plan, called Future Combat System, that would revolutionize the way the army waged war on the ground.

Part of the plan was to retool the military’s ground fleet so that one third of its vehicles would be unmanned by 2015, but that timeline is now reportedly out of the question, so much so that the armed forces are even leaning on civilian technology to develop remote-controlled automobiles. A lack of funding and technological hiccups have, despite progress, put unmanned vehicles on something of a back burner…

Peter Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institute, told Mashable…“Very soon, if the current trends hold, you will have soldiers familiar with driverless cars from companies that range from Google to Volkswagen that all want this out there in the early 2020s,” Singer said. “So you’ll have this tech proliferated on the civilian side,” and not on the military side. Read more. Interesting. Another example of technology transfer from the military to the consumer. From ARPAnet to the WorldWideWeb and GPS to Turn-by-Turn navigation and location-based-services. Now from DARPA Grand Challenges to SmartDrivingCars and autonomousTaxi Transit Services. Alain

L.A. Auto Show Wrap-Up: Self-Driving Cars Steer Future Shock

“… At a series of panels held during the show, executives, industry analysts and academics were unanimous in their conclusion that technology is reshaping the auto industry as thoroughly as it has entertainment and will be just as disruptive. The changes already underway comprise demand for seamless integration between cars and personal technology to the advent of driverless cars, which experts predict will be available in limited form as early 2015 with fully autonomous vehicles arriving by 2020…” Read more Continuing the trend that started at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Alain

7 cool or disturbing things about high-tech cars

Published: November 20, 2013 04:45 PM “Experts from the auto, cell-phone, and other high-tech industries gathered in Los Angeles this week for the Connected Car Expo to discuss how to better integrate cars and smart phones, develop self-driving cars, reduce driver distraction, and other tech-driven topics…Below are some of coolest, and sometimes disturbing, insights…” Read more

Hmmm…TravelTainment, whose fundamental focused is on grabbing the driver’s attention, is the distraction whose consumption by the driver requires SmartDrivingTechnologies. It is the fiduciary, as well as the societal, responsibility of every TravelTainment company to insist on the implementation of SmartDrivingTechnologies so that their TravelTainment products can be responsibly consumed and enjoyed. Alain

Toyota Rejects Autonomous Vehicles

“Toyota has bucked the trend and declared it is not interested in developing a driver-less car despite demonstrating a slew of autonomous technologies at events surrounding last week’s Tokyo motor show.

Instead, the global automotive giant insists its focus is on driver assistance for safety rather than the driver being taken out of the equation all together. “We are not aiming to develop an autonomous drive vehicle,” Toyota safety expert Seigo Kuzamaki told motoring.com.au via an interpreter.

Toyota demonstrated several previously announced ‘automated driving technologies’ in Tokyo last week:

  • C-ACC, or co-operative adaptive cruise control. Builds on adaptive cruise control by communicating wirelessly with other C-ACC equipped cars to allow the following vehicle to automatically accelerate and decelerate to maintain an even gap.

  • LTC or Lane Trace Control which uses a mono camera, millimetre-wave radar and sat-nav to follow the road, including sharp corners, without drive input by adjusting steering, engine output and braking force.

  • An upgraded Pre-Collision System that now swerves to avoid pedestrians by adding auto-steering to the previous auto-braking function.

All three systems are expected to start appearing in top-end Toyota and Lexus production vehicles from 2015-16, before they trickle down the range. Both Toyota and Lexus Australia are eager to add the technology to their line-ups as soon as possible….Kuzamaki said Toyota regarded the terms autonomous driving and automated driving technology as two separate concepts. “Autonomous driving is more or less driver-less driving,” he said. “Automated driving technology by contrast is a group of technologies for more intelligent driving and the technology to monitor what is outside the car.

“The system is for long and high-speed drives and we are using automatic functionality to relieve the stress of driving in that environment,” insisted Kuzamaki. Read more

Hmmm. Seems like Toyota realizes that “safety” doesn’t really resonate with consumers, but “relieving stress” might. An additional emotional measure that might resonate with consumers is “multi-tasking”, aka “texting”. Stress and the desire to multi-task are human emotions that drivers experience essentially every time they are behind the wheel (as does the comfort of “Corinthian Leather”). Safety (the lack thereof) is rarely experienced, so it rarely has the opportunity to resonate (even though when it does, it resonates off the chart). Maybe that is why safety doesn’t really sell (and has to be imposed by society/regulators), but anxiety relief and the ability to text might sell. While Toyota and others have praised the anxiety relief aspects of SmartDivingTechnologies, none have yet uttered the thought of enabling multi-tasking which is what some (many, most?) drivers really want to do. - Alain

House hearing on driverless cars

November 22, 2013 issue of SmartDrivingCars. Read more from others about the hearing. Alain

ITS Podcast: Daimler and KIT Berta Benz Route Autonomous Drive

“…a three way interview with scientists from Karlsruhe Technical University and Daimler on autonomous driving through Bertha Benz Memorial Route in the south of Germany…and a news minisection, this time about the autonomous electric four seats pods they are using in London’s Heathrow airport, and their plans on using them on an actual British city, Milton Keynes…” Listen more Read more Video of MB Autonomous Concept Car driving the Bertha Benz Memorial Route SmartDrivingCars

9, 2013. Also, a history of MB SmartDrivingCar efforts can be found at “A Short History of Mercedes-Benz Autonomous Driving Technology”. Alain

Call for Papers & Abstracts:

2014 TAC conference & Exhibition

September 28 - October 1, 2014 ~ Montreal, QC

TAC celebrates its 100th Anniversary in 2014. The Geometric Design Standing Committee is organizing a full session on Autonomous Vehicles and invites the SmartDrivingCars community to submit abstracts on this topic relevant to Geometric Design. Abstract deadline is Dec. 31, 2013. Call for Papers ; Prospectus

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

2013 ITS New Jersey Annual Meeting

MetLife Stadium

December 16, 2013, East Rutherford, NJ 07073

Bernie Wagenblast interview of Dennis Motiani

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

First International Workshop on Computer Vision for Autonomous Driving

Sydney, Australia December 2, 2013

Recent Versions of:

November 22, 2013

Auto Correct: Has the self-driving car at last arrived?

by Burkhard Bilger November 25, 2013: An absolutely great article featuring Anthony Levandowski, Product Manager, Google Self-Driving Car and more. A MUST read. Alain

House hearing on driverless cars

November 19, 2013, House hearing on “How Autonomous Vehicles Will Shape the Future of Surface Transportation” held by the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, chaired by U.S. Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI)

Click: toWatch the webcast of this hearing

Here are a few overriding comments:

  1. Neither Google nor any of the European autonomous vehicle efforts, such as CityMobil2 or VisLab.IT, were part of this hearing. Google’s name may have been uttered only once in the entire 2 hour hearing. Interesting!

  2. The word “Transit” was never mentioned even though this is a hearing of the Subcommittee of Highways and Transit!

  3. All witnesses continued to push for V2V and some witnesses (Strickland and Streudle) seemed to promote V2V ahead of automated collision avoidance systems.

  4. The questioning by the congressman/women was very insightful. Some excellent questions seemed to not be understood by any of the witnesses.

Summary of the Questioning of the witnesses

Summary of the Testimony of the witnesses Alain

Florida Automated Vehicles Summit

November 14 – 15, 2013, Marriott Waterside Hotel, Tampa, FL. This was an excellent conference. I highly recommend that each State do something similar in terms of form, substance and commitment. This Summit had the right balance of in-state and out-of-state presenters. The 1.5 day format was perfect. Most everyone was there for the entire program. The exchange and discussion between the podium and the audience was excellent. All contributed and learned. The focus went beyond personal cars to encompass commercial freight and near term opportunities to test and begin to deploy driverless transit vehicles in Florida’s many retirement communities. Alain

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

November 29, 2013

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.

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.”

Read more See Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=omHES8mqtW4

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

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:

SmartDrivingCars_110813v0

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