Monday, Feb. 3, 2014

February 03, 2014Newsletter archive →

SmartDrivingCars_012414 Detroit AutoShow

NHTSA 05-14 Contact: Nathan Naylor, 202-366-9550, Public.Affairs@dot.gov WASHINGTON – "The U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced today that it will begin taking steps to enable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology for light vehicles. This technology would improve safety by allowing vehicles to "talk" to each other and ultimately avoid many crashes altogether by exchanging basic safety data, such as speed and position, ten times per second.

"Vehicle-to-vehicle technology represents the next generation of auto safety improvements, building on the life-saving achievements we've already seen with safety belts and air bags," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. Read more

Hmmm I don't mean to be disrespectful, but that statement is simply wrong. v2v is NOT the "next generation of auto safety improvement". It may be some future generation, but it is no way the next.

The next generation is the individual autonomous (vehicle-centered) automated collision avoidance systems (ADAS) that NHTSA and DOT have to date essentially totally disregarded. This may be a blessing. While NHTSA and DOT could be very helpful in developing and promoting the proliferation of ADAS, staying out of it may actually be the next best thing. So, I will prefer to read the quote as "v2v tech represents the next generation of auto safety improvements that NHTSA and DOT are going to get involved with...."

Also stated is: "... NHTSA is also considering future actions on active safety technologies that rely on on-board sensors. Those technologies are eventually expected to blend with the V2V technology..." I guess that this is an admission that they are putting the cart before the horse. But why? One probably has to "follow the money" to ascertain the answer.

What is clear about this statement is that it

• supports entrenched interests,

• emphasizes "...provide warnings to drivers so that they can prevent imminent collisions, but do not (emphasis added) automatically operate any vehicle systems, such as braking or steering. As if any of us will know what to do or be able to follow its directions when the v2v system barks, "watch out"! Instead of simply taking over and avoiding the crash that it has seen coming for the past n seconds,

• tries to convince us that the "NSA" is not involved by: "...V2V technology does not involve exchanging or recording personal information or tracking vehicle movements....", and

• is silent about DSRC and "the spectrum".

Did I miss something? Is this just a baby step or did the door to Pandora's box just crack open? Alain

Adrianon Alessandrini adriano.alessandrini@uniroma1.it Feb 2 2014 reports via email that the European Commission has confirmed that the CityMobile2 driverless vehicle demonstrations with a showcase of Robosoft vehicles in Leon (Spain) in May. This will be followed by a three months summer demonstration in Torregrande Beach, Oristano (Italy) June first. Three or four Induct vehicles will be in service alongside the beach all summer. (A live broadcast of the operation will be attempted during this summer's TRB Automated Vehicle Conference.)

Beginning in September, the full fleet (six vehicles) of Robosoft will be in La Rochelle for the entire autumn and winter seasons. These vehicles will become part of the local transit network. As such, they will meet several urban integration challenges such as: connecting with the train at the main station, crossing a main arterial road and connect to the boat-shuttle which crosses the harbour. In fact the fastest route from the central station to the "vieux port" will become a multimodal trip: automated vehicle + electric boat.

The Induct fleet will leave Italy for Switzerland in September where they will showcase at CERN for the celebration their 60th anniversary the last week of September. On October first they will shift to serve students, faculty and visitors as main transport system linking the metro station to the campus facilities of EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne). They will be there all winter sharing their path with pedestrian and bikers and crossing several roads used by conventional vehicles during a typical Swiss winter which will undoubtedly include having to deal with snow.

In the Spring, both fleets will join in Milan where they will serve as link between the metro stop and the Expo entrance of the 2015 World Expo. 10 million visitors expected over 7 months to the end of November.

Three Robosoft vehicles will be detached and sent to Finland between 15th of July and 15th of August where they will bring people from a train station to the housing fair in the municipality of Vantaa. A new settlement, Marja Vantaa, is being built and might be served solely by automated vehicles. The Municipality will bring people to see the construction sites on board to such vehicles, much as the electric railways enticed home buyers a century ago.

Three more cities were selected for year 2016 (Trikala in Grece, Sophia Antipolis in France and San Sebastian in Spain) but which will do a demonstration and which a showcase will be decided in August 2015 pending the progress realized.

Calendar of all of the deployments. This EU Commission announcement takes a giant step. Alain

Renault-Nissan Alliance Team, Jan 28, 2014, "Watch Renault-Nissan Alliance CEO and Chairman Carlos Ghosn take a ride in Renault's autonomous vehicle prototype. In specific situations such as traffic jams up to 30 km/h, the prototype drives itself, allowing the driver to concentrate on other matters than the road ahead... Watch the video. This video begins to hit the nail on the head. Ghosn focuses on creating a car that allows the driver to do what the driver really wants to do at least during some of the "2 hours a day" that a driver sits in that car. That driver may want to have the opportunity to do something else besides drive the car during some of that time. While the focus in on "under 30 kmph jam assist" it is a start to the creation of the ultimate "TextMachine" that would allow, if the driver chooses, to do things other than driving in even more motoring conditions. For example, on uncongested motorways at, or slightly above, the speed limit. Possibly, at the enforced rather than posted speed limit. I am confident that such a vehicle would have enormous consumer appeal.

Think about it. You would be forced to drive only some of the time. At first, it will certainly be most of the time; however, you could begin to get a taste of what it is like to be able to choose not to drive some of the time. If that doesn't appeal to you, you can continue to drive all the time knowing that the car will always deliver its safety benefits by performing its emergency collision avoidance functions should you become distracted or miss something. If it does, you could try doing what you prefer.

This may be an ideal situation for the automaker. It is likely that the software is the limiting element of an evolving TextMachine. The sensors, actuators and processors that are physically installed in the car are likely to be sufficiently robust to handle many more motoring conditions than have been certified by the initial software release. If only software upgrades are necessary to enable the car to drive itself in more motoring conditions, delaying the obsolescence of this feature and making it more compatible with the service life of the hardware. The car would hold its value longer. Future software upgrades that extended the functionality might actually even generate downstream revenue opportunities. The fundamentals are complementary.

The Chairman's view is substantially different than that of the Chief Performance Officer's view as presented in the 2nd video at this site: Renault's Stoll on high-potential markets and driverless cars. In this video, (jumped forward to 2:40), he seems to question the rationale for anyone wanting to purchase an autonomous vehicle. Why would anyone want to buy a car to just be driven by the car? He almost suggests that public authorities might be the best end customers for such a product. However, he decides instead to pitch for the public authorities to put technology in the infrastructure to have the roads communicate with autonomous/driverless cars (that he's not sure that his customers really want). This quandary is at the divide between "Level 3 Texting Machines" that the Chairman is talking about and "Level 4 Driverless/Autonomous Cars" that the Chief Performance Officer is dealing with. To do the "Texting Machine" (what customers are likely to really want) the only infrastructure improvements are better "paint" (lane markings) and better readable signs (using normal vision), both of which also provide valuable help those who wish to continue to drive. To do "driverless/autonomous", (what fleet operators want), one may need massive infrastructure investment (what road and empire builders want using, someone else's money).

Seems clear that the Chairman has the better view. Alain

Susan Thurston, Friday, Jan. 31, 2014 Tampa — "...The Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority said Friday the Selmon Expressway has become one of 10 sites nationwide where researchers can study the safety and performance of automated vehicles.

But don't expect driverless cars to join traffic any time soon. Most likely, the vehicles would be tested on the expressway's elevated lanes during non-peak hours when officials could close the lanes to regular traffic. The designation gives the Tampa area access to the businesses, automakers and researchers developing the technology, said the authority's executive director Joe Waggoner. Long term, the goal is to make Florida a leader in driverless transportation systems..." Read more

By Julie S Jan 26, 2014 "...The patented algorithm would consider things like user's current location, route and possible forms of transportation such as taxi, train, personal car, rental car or a shared vehicle to the advertiser's business location. Other things such as the user's daily agenda and "the price competing advertisers are willing to pay for the customers to be delivered to the alternate locations" are also considered..." Read more

Humm... This is patentable? Hasn't this been in the literature for a very long time? Patent office must be broken. Alain

With Walking, Cycling, aTaxis and Trains; Mobility, Congestion and Environmental Consequences. Very interesting student PowerPoints and Drafts of Chapters. A little rough in places but still well worth browsing. Alain

Drafts of chapters: http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/NJ_aTaxiOrf467F13/Orf467F13_FinalReports/

Marie Claude Ouimet, Université de Sherbrooke February 11, 2014 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Room 219 Center for Transportation Studies

University of Minnesota 200 Transportation & Safety Building 511 Washington Ave. SE Minneapolis, MN

Andrew Chatham, Principal Software Engineer, Google will lead the plenary session on Tuesday, March 11. Chatham leads the offboard software and mapping efforts for Google's self-driving cars. He joined the project in 2009 and has helped the team achieve over 500,000 miles of autonomous driving. He is especially interested in the intersection of Google's technology and the existing transportation world. He joined Google in 2002 and is a graduate of Duke University.

January 26, 2014

by Emily Badger, Jan 17, 2014 "...The great promise of autonomous cars is not that we could each own one in our own driveway – the 21st century's version of owning your own Model T, or your own color TV, or your own bulky Macintosh – but that no one would need to own one at all..." Read more In fact read the whole thing as well as the 266 Comments. This may be the first time that these concepts have received any attention in any of the public press, the better reports by KPMG and Rand or the Congressional hearings. Alain

January 17, 2014

by James M. Anderson, Nidhi Kalra, Karlyn D. Stanley, Paul Sorensen, Constantine Samaras, Oluwatobi Oluwatola

This report is excellent

January 6, 2014

Jan. 2, 2014 "Accident rates will plunge to near zero for SDCs, although other cars will crash into SDCs, but as the market share of SDCs on the highway grows, overall accident rates will decline steadily". Self-driving cars (SDC) that include driver control are expected to hit highways around the globe before 2025 and self-driving "only" cars are anticipated around 2030, according to an emerging technologies study on Autonomous Cars from IHS Automotive, driven by Polk.

In the study, "Emerging Technologies: Autonomous Cars—Not If, But When," IHS Automotive forecasts total worldwide sales of self-driving cars will grow from nearly 230 thousand in 2025 to 11.8 million in 2035 – 7 million SDCs with both driver control and autonomous control and 4.8 million that have only autonomous control. In all, there should be nearly 54 million self-driving cars in use globally by 2035. Read more

December 27, 2013

December 20, 2013

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?

Mailto:alaink@princeton.edu Unsubscribe | Re-subscribe

Monday, Feb. 3, 2014

By far the BEST Super Bowl Commercial Play video Alain

Some other reports on the "V2V announcement"

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

Recent Versions of: