2013-12-28
December 27, 2013
Highlights of 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
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
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.
IIHS issues first crash avoidance ratings
Consumers More Likely To Use Self-Driving Cars From Tech Cos. Over Traditional Automakers
“…The KPMG research yielded three important insights into when, why and how consumers might use self-driving vehicles.
• There’s a distinct self-driving value proposition. Get it right and consumers will clamor (and pay) for the technology.
• Get ready for the post-powertrain ecosystem. Acceleration time from 0-60 mph may not matter in the self-driving era. Consumers might well buy their self-driving cars from high-tech companies.
• The growth in self-driving mobility on demand services could mark the end of the two-car family.
“We realize significant hurdles and open questions remain, including safety, liability and even cyber-security concerns,” added Silberg. “In addition, technological innovation often moves faster than legal or regulatory systems. However, we believe the market opportunities for self-driving vehicles and technologies are enormous, and innovative companies will continue to drive the technology forward.”…” Read the original report: Self-Driving Cars: Are We Ready?
It is another very good report from KPMG to go along with their Self-Driving Cars: The Next Revolution 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
Draft Final Report “Uncongested Mobility for All NJ”
Available for Download (15M) Slide Presentations (123M ppt)
If a Car’s Really ‘Autonomous,’ Why V2X?
Junko Yoshida 9/12/2013 “…The question splitting the automotive industry now is what level of V2X services – including both communication between vehicles, V2V (vehicle to vehicle) services, and V2I (vehicle to infrastructure) services – are necessary before the future of fully autonomous cars becomes reality.
In other words, as the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) used in smartcars further improves, and cellular services such as LTE proliferate, do autonomous cars even need to wait for the elusive V2X future?
Speaking of the lengthy regulatory process necessary to get the mandate done (“a minimum of eight years”) and the time it takes (“15 to 20 years”) to actually put a sufficient proportion of cars on the road to realize the V2X dream, Roger Lanctot, associate director of Strategy Analytics, bluntly told me, “Bottom line, this is really not going to happen.” Read more As well as the comments Well worth reading Alain
Driverless electric shuttle to be trialled in Singapore (video of Luxembourg Demonstration) A university in Singapore is to latest to trial the world’s first electric driverless shuttle. It’s expected that the autonomous vehicle will soon be shuttling passengers between the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and JTC Corporation’s (JTC) CleanTech Park. In a partnership between NTU, JTC and Induct Technologies, and supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the vehicle will regularly be used over the two kilometre route in a two year trial. Read more While only 12.5 mph, it is the next step beyond the La Rochelle demo and moving along one evolutionary chain by dealing with the mixed element: pedestrians. Alain
Volvo Cars Now Cheaper To Insure “Volvo’s City Safety Autonomous Emergency Braking system ensures its new cars are now cheaper to insure. Why? Because this technology – that has been retrofitted to a range of existing models – helps a motorist avoid or lessen the severity of a low speed collision. How? By monitoring the road ahead via a laser and braking if there is a hazard the driver makes no effort to avoid. As such, this system reduces the probability of the motorist making an insurance claim…” - See more at: http://www.motoring.co.uk/car-news/volvo-cars-now-cheaper-to-insure.
| July 16-19, ‘13 Stanford University, Palo Alto | Agenda | Breakout Sessions | Demonstrations |
As anticipated, the workshop was excellent. It attracted over 300 attendees most of whom not only stayed engaged for the whole 3 days but participated in both pre-and post-workshop activities. While organized by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) this workshop received no government funding and was supported entirely by the participants. All organizers, speakers and attendees paid the registration fee which was lowered substantially by support from the following Benefactors:
Among the benefactors were small research-oriented entities as well as one major insurance company and one well-known communications company. Unfortunately, the major players did not underwrite this workshop, even though they benefited mightily from the attendance and themselves attended at the subsidized rate. So it goes in the zig zag world of transportation policy where bean counters vie with creators for control over a future that can be realized.
AutonomousStuff gave one of the more compelling demonstrations of several different sensor technologies used as the “eyes” of automated vehicles. Each of these sensor technologies had been easily installed their rental car, confirming the after-market viability of these technologies and demonstrating, among other capabilities, the ability to readily identify Bobby and me.
Of the plenary presentations, the most compelling was an “off-the-record” presentation made by R.David Edelman, Senior Advisor for Internet, Innovation & Privacy, at The White House. David canvassed the opportunities and challenges of this emerging technology in a way that so lucky as to have the White House promote his view as official government policy, innovation will be accelerated, and we can look forward to a more rapid market adoption of this transformative technology that promises great rewards in safety, mobility, energy, environmental, decongestion, employment and quality-of-life enhancements.
Another compelling item was Anthony Levandowski’s (Google) affirmation of Sergey Brin’s intention to avail the public to “Level 4” mobility within 5 years. This is compelling because of the time frame. Sergey made the claim last year, meaning that by as early as 2017 the “public” (not “research” or “demonstration”) would begin to have access not only to the safety benefits of Levels 1, 2 and 3 but more importantly to the mobility, environmental and other quality-of-life benefits of a future when vehicles no longer need drivers to deliver demand-responsive mobility utilizing of our existing roadway infrastructure. Google’s intention to make this transformative opportunity a “public” reality in as few as four (4) years is diametrically opposite of its view as a species of Science Fiction by most of the policy and planning community as well as the general public. To be sure, Anthony made NO statement as to how Google intends to bring “Level 4” technology to market. This led several of us to speculate and debate: Will they buy a car company?, Will they buy Tesla?, Will they partner with Lexus or some other car company?, Will they test market these as they’ve done with Google_Glass?, Will they create a “PRT-like” autonomousTaxi (aTaxi) service on the Google campus?, or ??? We had a lot of fun with the speculation. However, one thing is clear: regardless of Google’s game plan for bringing “Level 4” to market, it is time for the planning community to begin to view “Level 4” technology as a reality that is upon us. Long range planning was mandated and implemented many years ago and is the foundation of all public sector expenditures in surface transportation. Yet, essentially none of our existing surface transportation plans contemplate the existence of “Level 4” entities on public roads at any time in the future, let alone as early as 2017 (which next year makes them eligible for inclusion in short-range plans). There needs to be a wake-up call to the planning community. I participated in the Transit & Shared Mobility breakout group and the need for this was central to our deliberation as summarized below.
A third rewarding takeaway from the plenary sessions was the openness and collegiality of the participants from the Federal DoT. I’ve attended many conferences and workshops, including every TRB annual meeting since 1971, and found this workshop to be, without question, the most open and collaborative. Credit must be given to Mike Schagrin of the DoT ITS Joint Program Office for setting the tone and creating an environment where there was true engagement by all participants. DoT staff listened intensively and engaged in meaningful discussion.
As mentioned above I participated in the Transit & Shared Mobility breakout sessions, a synopsis of which will appear in a paper to be presented at the TRB annual conference next January. Presentations and draft research statements can be found at the workshop website: http://www.vehicleautomation.org/program/agenda. I took away two important concepts:
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Traditional Transit (buses) can save money by the near-term adoption of Level 1 and 2 automation technologies and can revolutionize its service offerings in the longer term implementation of “Level 4” roadway technologies, and
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Evolution of “Level 4” (aka driverless) transit technologies can proceed from two existing beginnings:
a. “high speed driverless” vehicle technologies that currently exist but are constrained to exclusive guideways, such as the automated people movers that function perfectly well at all major airports, including the Heathrow PRT system and the Morgantown PRT. They have all been crashless and totally safe, and
b. “low speed driverless” vehicles that operate on roadways that also serve pedestrians, bicyclists and traditional roadway vehicles, as was demonstrated at La Rochelle and will be placed in service by CityMobile2
Between these two extremes lies the “Level 4” transit opportunity for high speed driverless vehicles sharing existing roadways with existing road users. Such autonomousTaxis (aTaxis) could provide auto-like service where demand is diffuse in space and time while facilitating casual ride-sharing to serve demand that happens to be correlated spatially and temporally. This casual ride-sharing substantially improves efficiency and eliminates congestion. Such systems could emerge from smaller precursor exclusive guideway system whose vehicles could emerge onto existing roadways to serve a broader spatial scope of travel demand. Or, they could emerge from a broader, but less intense suburban service using existing roadways to serve more concentrated urban areas by creating exclusive guideways to deliver higher capacity services in the dense core. Each of these could be done by demand responsive management of a fleet consisting of various sized driverless vehicles. At the Friday morning session on Emerging trends in Public Transportation and Vehicle Automation I presented my results on the conceptual implementation of aTaxi service throughout New Jersey, “Smart Driving Cars: Transit Opportunity of NHTSA Level 4 Driverless Vehicles”. I focused on the shared-ride opportunities that such a system could capture as it served the 32+ million trips that are taken in NJ on a typical weekday. 2+ million of the trips are short and are readily served by walking and biking. 1+ million of the trips can readily use NJ Transit’s rail service for at least a portion of the trips. A large portion of the remaining trips are so diffuse spatially and temporally that shared ridership is not practical and are served individually by the aTaxi system. The remainder, occurring in the denser locations during peak hours, has substantial ride-sharing that would correspondingly decongest these roadways at these times while delivering excellent mobility at reduced energy and environmental consequences.
Releases Policy on Automated Vehicle Development
NHTSA Preliminary Statement of Policy Re: Automated Vehicles http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Automated_Vehicles_Policy.pdf contains the details of this preliminary policy. I highly recommend that you read it. My interpretation is as follows:
- This is NHTSA’s first effort to play catch-up in what it has finally recognized as a crash avoidance oversight responsibility. This is a major extension of its traditional focus on crash mitigation. Up to now, for crash avoidance, NHTSA has largely concentrated on modifying driver behavior rather than on the testing and certification of technologies that compensate for human frailties. The notable exceptions are anti-lock brakes and active vehicle stability control. Some in the automobile industry as well as others such as Google are far ahead of NHTSA in the development of technologies that override driver actions or inactions that would otherwise have resulted in a crash. I have 6 more points at: http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/CommentOnNHTSA_PrelimStatement.pdf
Continental and BMW Group Working Together to Develop Freeway-Grade Highly Automated Driving
This is BIG, not only because they have “an agreement to jointly develop an electronic co-pilot for this purpose”, but because…
• It aligns a component supplier with a manufacturer. Where does this leave Daimler and VW/Audi? To join up with Bosch?? What about Delphi? Join back with GM on this one?? Where does this leave the other manufacturers; will they align? The competitive race to attract consumers to the showroom has really heated up.
• They’ve realized that safety is now clothed in comfort & convenience. Together, they make a powerful message to the car buying public. This technology will draw people into the showrooms. The wake-up call was delivered by the emergent competitor, rather than government edicts or rule-makings. “… [I]n capitalist reality…, it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology…- competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.” Joseph A Shumpeter (1883-1950)
Chunka Mui, Contributor Forbes Magazine: 1/30/13:http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/30/googles-trillion-dollar-driverless-car-part-3-sooner-than-you-think
Comments are also good. Mine was: Alain L Kornhauser 1 hour ago Two points:
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Even before driverless the advantages of the driver assist functions can be captured, tested, improved and evolve naturally to the driverless state. Most if not all of us rarely enjoy driving. When we do, we’ll take over, otherwise, we’ll just enjoy the ride.
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The easiest thing to overcome may well be the insurance issue. Liabilities are proportional to the carnage that takes place on the roadways, 92% of which involves human error, irrespective of who is at fault. Sure, deeper pockets tend to increase the payments, but not by much. Since the Smart Driving Technology must result in a substantial decrease in carnage (otherwise the technology won’t see the light of day) insurance liabilities will be substantially reduced for those that utilize the technology while using their car. In fact, manufacturers should be willing to purchase product liability insurance to cover liabilities while in automated mode (tampering of which violates the coverage). This cost would necessarily be passed on to the consumer; however, personal coverage discounts should more than offset this pass-through, since the overall liability is so substantially reduced. This incentivizes the manufacturer to install the safest technology, for nothing more than price competition, and the driver to use the technology, because of the higher discounts on personal premiums the quicker he realizes (she already knows) that a computer can deliver enhanced safety.
Called-out comment
The future of the car: Clean, safe and it drives itself
Milan opens its first driverless metroline
European Update: Workshop: Automation in Road Transport (contains links to participants & presentations)
The Business Case for SmartDrivingCars: For the consumer, SmartDrivingCars have three main values: increased safety, comfort and convenience. Of these safety is most easily quantified because damages are largely adjudicated in monetary terms. AAA estimates that traffic fatalities and injuries amounted to $256B in 2011, or a cost of about $1,328 in ‘05 dollars for each licensed driver. Of this amount approximately 50% ($664) is paid by private insurance, the pass-through portion of insurance premiums. Individual crash victims absorb 26% ($340) of the cost (basically the deductible of what the insured has to absorb if involved in an accident), other 3rd parties absorb 14% ($185), the Federal treasury absorbs 6% ($80) and local municipalities 4% ($50). Google’s simulation of the operation of its self-driving car on the range of real crash scenarios resulted in a forecast of 81% fewer fatalities and 65% fewer injuries. This substantial reduction in car crashes would save in the US $183 billion annually. Moreover, these safety improvements would be enjoyed proportionally by each owner/user of a Google car. Thus, the insurer of the average licensed driver switching to a “Google car” could expect to reduce its pass-through liabilities by an average of $475 per year. Since these are simply pass-through dollars, one could expect that an insurance price-leader might readily offer discounts of up to, say, $450, keeping the expected remaining $25 for its “generosity”. The Google car user would also forgo $247 in expected “deductible self-insured” obligations.
The $450 insurance discount could readily finance, if not the expensive Google “lidars”, the lower cost radars and cameras contemplated by the auto industry for its initial wave of automated lane keeping and “always-on” collision monitoring and avoidance systems. For example, the Mercedes “jam-assist” system is expected to be available on 2014 models as a $3,000 “driver assistance safety option”. While jam-assist doesn’t have all of the features of a Google car, it may be able to capture as much as two-thirds of the safety benefits through the collisions that jam-assist can be expected to avoid during the car’s lifetime. If so proven, then the $300 discount that Flo, or the Gecko, or Good Hands or the General or some other insurer can readily offer would essentially finance this $3,000 safety feature. In fact Flo should escort you to the Mercedes dealer and pay for the option if you agree to buy a Mercedes and continue your current policy payments. (Remember, in giving Mercedes $300 per year over say 12 years, she is also keeping that $25 “generosity” for her effort, so she is happy.) In addition to substantially reducing the probability that this car is going to kill you, what’s in it for you? Well, how about the two-thirds of the $247 self-insurance expected obligation that you would avoid each year. More importantly you get the anxiety-relief that flows from having driving assistance while traveling in some of the most tedious, boring and unpleasant roadway conditions. Finally, society wins because we can’t really place a value on the injuries and fatalities that will be prevented. They are priceless!
Going all the way with Google Cars (or even just two thirds of the way with “jam-assist”) would mean for New Jersey an annual avoidance of 500 (340) fatalities and 28,000 (19,000) injuries “valued” at $3.55 ($2.38) Billion per year.
We MUST make this happen. Everybody wins. Alain
Another Senseless Avoidable Tragedy: Princeton
crash leaves one person dead, two with life-threatening injuries. The 30,000+ yearly US roadway deaths are but a grim statistic until one is a friend or loved one. Then it hits home like a ton of bricks. It is even more tragic when one realizes that existing inexpensive technologies, like those summarized in these pages, could have intervened and prevented, or at least diminished the severity, of this accident. A BMW, with a young man in the driver’s seat, traveling on a residential street posted as a school zone, crashed head-on into an unoccupied car parked on the other side of the on-coming lane. The crumbled cars continued into a 3rd car parked in a driveway killing one of its occupants and severely injuring the other. Everyone in the community is devastated, as am I, not only because I know and revered both, but also because this is a perfect example of an accident that market-ready technologies could have prevented. The automotive research community has developed technologies that can keep cars in their lane of travel, can sense in a timely manner impending collisions and warn the driver to brake. Most importantly, if the driver fails to apply sufficient brake force, the technology will tighten the seat belts and automatically increase the brake force to avoid, or at least reduce the severity, of the collision. It is imperative that each of us do all we can to accelerate the availability and market acceptance of these technologies so that we can begin to put an end to such tragedies. It is essentially a certainty, that each so equipped car will not allow a driver to cause this kind of carnage: 1 dead, 2 seriously injured, one charged with death by auto. All senseless and technologically avoidable!
The Best Videos of 2013
Subaru: Crash Test
VisLab.IT PROUD 2013 Self-Driving Video
Video: World Premier INTELLIGENT DRIVE
This is how Daimler chose to spend a substantial amount of money to introduce its automotive products at the 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show on September 9, 2013. They must believe that consumers are ready to spend money on Smart Driving Cars. Alain
S 500 MB Intelligent Drive (Self-Driving) TV footage
Video Describing MB Intelligent Drive Feature:
2014 Mercedes Benz S-Class Collision-Avoidance Testing Video
Mercedes “Hard to Imagine” Commercial. I watch little TV, but I am pleased that Mercedes continues to hit prime spots with this ground-breaking commercial. NBC had it right after the running of the Kentucky Derby and it aired several times in the New York market during the Rangers Playoff games. They are even playing this spot on during the Daily Show. They must be seeing traction.
Volvo Truck Emergency Braking
Grim Reaper
Calendar of Upcoming Events:
2014 TRB 93rd Annual Meeting
January 12-16, 2014
Washington, DC
42nd Annual Princeton University Transportation Program Reunion Banquet
January 14, 2014
Washington, DC
Recent Versions of:
December 20, 2013
“The New Killer Apps
How Large Companies Can Out-Innovate Start-Ups” by Chunka Mui and Paul B. Carroll Now Available Highly Recommended. See also Chunka’s Dec. 19 Forbes article Will The Google Car Force A Choice Between Lives And Jobs? My my question would be: what happened to all of he elevator operators that had “good” jobs. One still exists at Tiffany, but the others? “Manhattans” are better today because of the elevator’s automation. See also the comments, especially Dick Mudge’s. I might add that his observation of “…universal use of GPS.” likely caused a significant loss of jobs at paper map companies such as Rand-McNally (at one time, one of the most-recognized brand name) but the created many better jobs at places such as ALK. :-) Alain
Application of Autonomous Driving Technology to Transit
Presentation by Jerome Lutin and Alain Kornhauser at 2013 Annual meeting of ITS-NewJersey @ Met Life Stadium, Dec. 16, 2013. Slides 35 & 36 outlines a substantial proposal for advancing SmartDrivingTransit. Alain
December 13, 2013
December 6, 2013
December 1, 2013