2014-03-08

March 08, 2014Newsletter archive →

Advocates point to safety risks related to use of smart technologies in cars…

By MOLLY WOOD

CarPlay system brings voice control, an iOS-like interface, maps and messaging into certain cars.

A public workshop on California's Autonomous Vehicles Regulations will be held on March 11, 2014. The agenda for this workshop provides an opportunity for the public and professionals to have tangible input into the regulations for Autonomous Vehicles in California. For those who can not attend comments can be emailed to LADRegulations@dmv.ca.gov. Alain

By David Cardinal on March 4, 2014 at 12:53 pm "As the once unimaginable self-driving car moves closer to becoming a reality, the next question is "When can I buy one?" At the same time, some researchers, like Princeton's Alain Kornhauser, have started to wonder whether you'll ever need to. He envisions a fleet of autonomous vehicles that will combine the convenience of not having to drive yourself with the flexibility of a scaled-up and always available Uber-like taxi service — and without the cost of hired drivers. Read more

Marion Dakers, March 3, 2014 "Driverless vehicles are either the future of motoring or the death knell for public transport, depending on whether you take your travel news from Google or the RMT.

But tucked away beyond domestic arrivals at Heathrow is a driverless transport network that has been running successfully for nearly three years and is the first of its kind in the world, with ambitions to be one of Britain's biggest exports in the industry... " Read more

Hmm... There is a 3rd side... the Enlightenment see next...Alain

A.L. Kornhauser, et al March, 2014 ".... Examined are the rail ridership opportunities that NJ Transit (NJT) might enjoy if autonomousTaxis (aTaxis) were available to readily bring customers to or from its rail stations. Such collection and distribution services would not only shower NJT with new customers but they would enable NJT to redevelop its parking facilities to more profitable "Transit Village" uses.

A pragmatic, rather than theoretical, approach is used to model the mobility needs of those living and working within New Jersey on a typical weekday in the recent past. New Jersey was selected as an ideal test state because of its widely varied land uses - from dense urban centers to rural areas as well as its mature rail infrastructure. The model draws from critically important 2010 data on land use, demographics, and travel behavior to correlate the findings to recent real experiences, rather than some speculative future. A disaggregate trip synthesizer, using cumulative probability distributions drawn from said data, generated a simulated representation of each person living or working in New Jersey, and of each of their trips taken on a typical weekday, resulting in over 32 million trips for the 9 million individuals. Of those trips, 1.1 million have one trip end within an easy walk of a rail station, are oriented along a rail corridor and are sufficiently long that rail is a more than viable means of travel, if only there existed an easy way to get to or from the other end of the trip. aTaxis could readily furnish that service. Thus, NJT could likely enjoy a ridership demand that would be almost four times (+387%) of what it serves today...." Read more

Vukan R Vuchic, Emeritus Professor of Transportation University of Pennsylvania "It is now 40 years since I wrote an article in Railway Gazette International discussing the potential for fully-automated operation of metro lines (RG 10.73 p382). Those four decades have seen the gradual adoption of driverless metros, using what is now termed Unattended Train Operation, but it has been a chequered path, with failures as well as successes along the way.... Read more

Hmm.... Well worth reading with many lessons to be learned. Of course implementation of UTO and SmartDrivingCars must be done with utmost technical care. The fundamental advantage of automation is the removal of labor cost in the provision of service. For exclusive guideway transit it means the ability to increase frequency which increases ridership which means that cost effective service can be offered to lower density corridors. Automation of cars that utilize existing roads which are required by basic emergency services (fire and police) and well as goods, means that the cost of the roadway can be shared with those basic services, thus frequent service can be offered to essentially everyone. Alain

Tue Mar 4, 2014 "Fitch Ratings believes that automated driving is a central research and development topic for automotive manufacturers and suppliers that could generate major revenue and profit growth in the medium to long term. However, we caution against the potential disappointment regarding the scale and speed of return on investment that some investors may expect in the near future. We believe that a high and sustained return on the large investments required to build a robust and profitable position in the field of autonomous driving is still more than a decade away...

Nonetheless, in our view, a major difference with electric vehicles is the ability for suppliers and manufacturers to offer a gradual move towards fully self-driving cars. We believe that automated driving is an expanding topic driving a material increase in investment efforts from major auto suppliers. In our view, automated driving fits perfectly within the current thriving themes in the auto supply industry, which include fuel-efficiency, safety and connectivity..." Read more

Hmm... They come close (They do see that evolution rather than revolution is the only way forward and that each step along that evolutionary path enjoys a viable consumer-oriented business model; however, they fail to see two important external economic forces that should substantially accelerate this evolution to at least the NHTSA Level 3 "textingMachine". One is the decreased cost of insurance through rebates that return to the consumer the part of the economic value of the "safety bump". The other is the investment that the advertising and entertainment industry will need to make to ensure that Level 3 automation is achieved economically; else, this industry will be precluded by either government or litigation from achieving the profits that they expect to reap from their presence inside the car. Alain

A. Kornhauser, March 2014 "As I was taking my first spin accompanied by a young MB "intern" I asked if the "experiences" of the "997 Package" were being captured and, if so, was there a way to turn that feature off and back on? At first he didn't understand the question (not that he should have), but then went into politically-correctness mode reassuring me that my privacy was not being violated.

My privacy wasn't the point of the question. That would be protected by the "off" feature. My point was: my car, as well as each other Mercedes with the "997 package", is likely to experience situations and nuances that none of us have anticipated. Situations where the package works well and others...not-so-much. It would be really valuable if those situations were available to those who are struggling to advance the state-of-this-art. From day one in August 1997, CoPilot had an on-off feature that allowed, at the owners discretion, the capture of CoPilot's experiences, and, again if so desired, as a good Samaritan, to share them with ALK to help improve CoPilot. These "crowd sourced" contributions were invaluable in helping CoPilot evolve. The same approach is even more important in this safety critical application.

If I liked NHTSA to impose stuff, the top of my list would be for them to grant "immunity from prosecution" for anyone that allows such information to be captured and shared. Since such an imposition by NHTSA is very unlikely and it seems as if Mercedes has not included this feature, I am launching the next best thing: a depository for customers of these features to share their experiences with these "997 packages" using email. Granted, that isn't much better than snail mail, but please bear with me. If you own a car with SmartDrivingCar features, then please email, where CARMAKE is the Make. Hmm.... Stay tuned for more comments after I've gotten over 1st impressions. Alain

Wed March 5, 2014 "... The larger point is that futuristic visions distract us from the ways in which cars are already making decisions for us. Each new generation of vehicles is taking on more and more tasks, proving the vehicles can handle specific situations. By the time Google's cars arrive in your driveway, you'll be acclimated to the idea of an artificial intelligence grabbing the wheel because you'll have handed over control tens of thousands of times. ..." Read more

10:00 AM Assembly Room

Department of Motor Vehicles

2415 First Avenue Sacramento, California

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.

Sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society

February 28, 2014

Issue 641 Feb 2014 Scott Le Vine, Centre for Transport Studies: "...Autonomous cars, driverless cars, automated cars – whatever you call them (and yes, it does make a difference) they are the hot topic in transport today. Carmakers are investing millions of pounds in research & development, mock towns are being built to test automation concepts, fact-finding hearings are taking place, laws are being passed – even international treaties are being re-opened..." Read more This is a lead/summary of the next item. Alain

February 21, 2014

BY Sarah Silbert @sarahsilbert February 20th, 2014 at 2:25PM ET "Google's just announced Project Tango, a 5-inch Android smartphone prototype equipped with Kinect-like 3D sensors and other components to track motion and map your surroundings. ..." Read more

February 14, 2014

Eric Jaffe Jan 13, 2014 "...The problem with buying the drink today, says Kornhauser, is that the labor cost of on-demand taxi service is enormous. As a result, we buy the bottle just in case we want a drink. Driverless cars change the whole equation. Read more

February 9, 2014

I prefer to call this: Volvo's "Texting Machine" concept video. It demonstrates very clearly that it is the "NHTSA Level 3" feature that will be needed to make the car as good as transit; otherwise everyone is simply going to take transit. Who cares about far the walk, how long the wait and the ride and the crowded conditions. I can be in my own world doing what I want to do during that whole process. Without Level 3 I have to be off the grid focused on keeping the hulk between two white lines and not running into things. Transit wins. Play video Alain

February 4, 2014

European Commission agreed upon the demonstration schedule Adrianon Alessandrini adriano.alessandrini@uniroma1.it

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.

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. Read more

December 27, 2013

2014-03-08

2014 S-Class with the "997 Package" Finally Arrives

Half-baked stuff that probably doesn't deserve your time:

Calendar of Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

June 8 - 11, 2014, Dearborn, Michigan, USA

Recent Versions of:

By far the BEST Super Bowl Commercial Play video Alain