2014-05-04
May 2, 2014
Opinion: The disruption of driverless cars
| Insurance Business | Apr 16, 2014 “…Vehicle owners will no longer buy collision insurance since manufacturers will be solely responsible for damage. Owners will only need theft and comprehensive coverage for hail, falling objects, flood, etc. Think about it. The experience and exposures will be similar to those of a driverless tram at the airport. To take this one step further, personal vehicle ownership may dramatically diminish. Car dealers will maintain lots full of vehicles for hire on a daily or hourly basis instead of vehicles for sale/lease. When you need a car, you’ll summon one using your smartphone and the closest unmanned vehicle will be dispatched to your home to take you where you need to go…” |
Hmmm….When done, you’ll simply push the button for the unmanned vehicle to drive itself back to the rental lot. (or go to the nearest next person who needs to go somewhere. When possible, the car will pick up others that are headed in the same direction at the same time. Alain
“…For insurance companies, their primary revenue streams will shift from personal lines to commercial lines as carriers retool their offerings to sell product liability insurance to vehicle manufacturers. The impact will be of a higher magnitude than that of Obamacare, which shifted healthcare marketing targets from employers to consumers. We should expect to see extremely competitive pricing and some very big winners and losers in the insurance industry, since there are far more insurers than there are vehicle manufacturers…” Read more Yup! Alain
Who Is at Fault When a Driverless Car Gets in an Accident?
John Villasenor Apr 25 2014 “It may seem odd, but we already have the laws we need for dealing with this inevitable situation.” Read more especially the source report:
Products Liability and Driverless Cars: Issues and Guiding Principles for Legislation
John Villasenor, April 2014 “…This paper provides a discussion of how products liability law will impact autonomous vehicles, and provides a set of guiding principles for legislation that should—and that should not—be enacted. In some very specific, narrow respects, state-level legislative clarity regarding autonomous vehicle liability can be beneficial. Vehicle manufacturers that sell non-autonomous vehicles, for example, should not be liable for defects in third-party vehicle automation systems installed in the aftermarket. But broad new liability statutes aimed at protecting the manufacturers of autonomous vehicle technology are unnecessary…” Read more This is a good one!!! Alain
The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving
April 28: “Jaywalking pedestrians. Cars lurching out of hidden driveways. Double-parked delivery trucks blocking your lane and your view. At a busy time of day, a typical city street can leave even experienced drivers sweaty-palmed and irritable. We all dream of a world in which city centers are freed of congestion from cars circling for parking (PDF) and have fewer intersections made dangerous by distracted drivers. That’s why over the last year we’ve shifted the focus of the Google self-driving car project onto mastering city street driving…” Read more
Hmmm… Continued progress! Congrats!! If they would only shift to vision instead of Lidar they might have a chance at commercialization. Alain
Self-Driving Regulation: Pro-Market Policies Key to Automated Vehicle Innovation
Marc Scribner April 23, 2014 “…But regulatory and legislative intervention also poses great risks to the development of the technology. In particular, laws and regulations that narrow the scope of permissible development, testing, and operational functionality risk locking in inferior technology, delaying adoption, and increasing prices faced by consumers. To reduce these risks, lawmakers and automakers should adopt a liberalized approach toward innovation and a cautious stance on legislation and regulation, particularly at this early stage…
Conclusion: Technical hurdles remain before developers can confidently sell their highly automated vehicle technologies to consumers. But many of the largest potential impediments are related to public policy. Politicians and bureaucrats, however well-intended, generally suffer from a variety of biases and rational ignorance. When implemented in statute or regulation, this can have profound negative effects on society. This risk of over-regulating — or regulating badly — looms large.
Policy makers must remember that their actions can produce harm. If automated vehicles are demonstrated to be significantly safer than manually driven vehicles, any misstep, convoluted law, or burdensome rule that leads to unnecessary higher costs or delays translates to increased injury and death.” Read more This is another good one!!! Alain
Rio Tinto grows driverless truck fleet
Apr 16, 2014 “Rio Tinto has grown its driverless truck fleet to 53 vehicles across four mine sites, setting a new milestone in its autonomous haulage capacity. The miner’s CEO Sam Walsh told its annual general meeting in London last night the fleet had “moved more than 150 million tonnes of material” — up from 100 million tonnes a year ago.” Read more Non-trivial advancement of the state of the art. Alain
Glow-in-the-dark roads make debut in Netherlands
11 April 14 by Liat Clark “Light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings have replaced streetlights on a 500m stretch of highway in the Netherlands…” Read more
Hmmm….We should pay attention, because, arguably the most important help a DoT can make to SmartDrivingCars is “good paint” (road markings that can be readily seen by humans.) The better we all see the lane and road markings, the better the SmartDrivingCar imaging systems will be able to see them. A perfect win-win! Why is good paint not a priority in any DoT. Too easy?? Too inexpensive?? Too boring?? It really needs to be taken seriously. Maybe glow in the dark will increase the priority of lane markings everywhere and at all times. Alain
For autonomous cars, driving dumb is key
Chris Davies, April 16 “…Humanized Driving, giving computer-controlled cars similar characteristics to the people they’re replacing so as to preserve a feeling of normality, even potentially becoming a virtual twin with the same style as the car’s owner…Drive too well, too efficiently - too much like a computer, in effect - and it only serves to highlight the scale of the difference between the vehicle’s brain and our own. Rather than becoming a beyond-human proficiency we can trust, it instead runs the risk of leaving us jittery and uncomfortable..” Read more
Hmmm… This is not half-baked; although, it needs a tremendous amount of serious consideration and fundamental research. The user MUST be comfortable with the computer, just as the person riding in the back needs to be comfortable with the pilot in an airplane and comfortable with the driver in the car.
I do strongly disagree with the here team that autonomous cars need precise positioning. While I’m not a good driver, even the best Formula 1 driver does not have “precise positioning” To take the correct next turn you only need to know roughly where you are and to stay in the lane and not hit anything you need somewhat accurate relative positioning, differential velocity, angular velocity, and acceleration and angular acceleration. Alain
Why Data from Automated Vehicles Needs Serious Protection
Janice Partyka April 24, 2014 “…
Automated vehicles require multiple types of sensors to obtain information about the vehicle, its movement, and the surrounding environment, which includes the roadway, other vehicles, obstacles and infrastructure. All sorts of ambient information may be captured. Perhaps activity outside of your house, or your kids on their way to school, or the licenses of cars in your driveway will be caught on camera.” Stationary cameras are already capturing this information. Alain
“The massive amount of data collected needs to be crunched, and only some of it will be processed within the vehicle. Other captured data will be sent off-board to the cloud for handling, with results then returned to the vehicle.” I disagree. essentially everything will be done on-board. The technology that requires substantial off-board process is doomed because off-board connectivity is way too unreliable. Alain
“The amount of data that will be created by automated vehicles is uncertain, but I’ve seen estimates of 1 GB per second…” Read more
Hmmm… It is very important that the data captured and the implemented controls be uploaded and shared widely in order to uncover bugs, fix them and improve the system. Users who share these data must be indemnified from self-incrimination. Legislation must be passed that disallows shared data to be used against the best interest of the person that shared it. Alain
Bankrupt???
From page 106, item 1642 of http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/PDFs/Induct_EBODACC-A_20140003_0001_p000(1).pdf courtesy of Adriano Alessandrini. Alain
2014 National Conference
Atlanta April 26-30 Session on Planning for Automated Vehicle Technologies
Louis A. Merlin, AICP Univ of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Alain L. Kornhauser Princeton University
Stanley E. Young Univ of Maryland, CATT
Half-baked stuff that probably doesn’t deserve your time:
Americans More Excited for Self-Driving Cars than for Google Glass, Not Psyched for Drones
| By Nancy Scola | Next City | April 17, 2014 “…But far more women than men — 59 percent to 46 percent — think that devices like Google Glass will actually make life worse…” I knew women were in general much smarter than men.. Alain “…And bit more popular… are self-driving cars …. The public is about evenly split about whether or not they’d like to take a ride in an autonomous vehicle. There’s a geographic twist. While just about half of urban and suburban Americas are interested, among rural Americans that response drops to 36 percent. … Read more |
Hmm.. Seems right. We’ve reached new heights, SmartDrivingCars are more exciting than Goofy Google Glasses. I have a renewed appreciation for American opinion as measured by Pew. The source report follows:. Alain
U.S. Views of Technology and the Future
Aaron Smith April 17 “…riding in a driverless car: 48% would like to do this if given the opportunity, while 50% say this is something they would not want to do. College graduates are particularly interested in giving driverless cars a try: 59% of them would do so, while 62% of those with a high school diploma or less would not. There is also a geographical split on this issue: Half of urban (52%) and suburban (51%) residents are interested in driverless cars, but just 36% of rural residents say this is something they’d find appealing…” Read more
Hmmm…Pew put driverless cars in a category with brain implants to improve memory and eat meat grown in a lab. Those are strange bedfellows. A driverless car is really not a very wild concept. No one has a problem riding in a driverless elevator or the driverless people movers that exist at every major airport. Why the hangup about SmartDrivingCars? What if Pew were first to ask, have you ever ridden in an elevator? Did you press the buttons, or was there an operator who pressed the buttons? Have you ever ridden in an airport people mover? Did you see a driver? Then ask the question: Would you be interested in riding in a driverless car?! The percentage positive may well jump to 75% or more? Alain
Calendar of Upcoming Events:
The Future of Transportation Technology
May 8th & 9th, 2014
Hyatt Regency Coconut Point
Bonita Springs, FL
2014 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium
June 8 - 11, 2014, Dearborn, Michigan, USA
Sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society
http://www.auvsi.org/avs2014/register
Recent Versions of:
April 18, 2014
Newly Available Drafts of Recent Student Theses
Wyrough, Alexander Penn Hill Jr.: A National Disaggregate Transportation Demand Model for the Analysis of autonomousTaxi Systems
Included is one synthetic realization for each of the 308.7 Million individuals contained in the 2010 Census and each of the 1.01 Billion trips {oLat, oLon, oTime, dLat, dLon} these individuals were synthesized to have made on a typical weekday in October. Persons are organized in individual Home County Files (All 186,49 persons that lived in Peoria County, Il., or the 1,585,873 persons that lived in Manhattan, for example). Trips are available in files for each person residing in a county (with many trips diffusing into other counties, states and even countries) as well as by oCounty (the 649,781 trips that originate in Peoria County or the 8,085,055 trips that originate in Manhattan, many of which are made by 1.5 million persons that don’t live in Manhattan.). For example, one can get all the trips made by the residents of Manhattan or by all trips originating in Manhattan. The user is left with the task of finding all trips that either originate, terminate or go through Manhattan. Note, trips to work where the work place was greater than 200 miles from the home location were routed via the nearest major airports. Alain
Sun, Zhuyi (Judy): Causal Price Discrimination: An Analysis of the Healthcare Costs Associated with Motor Vehicle and Transportation Collisions
Rhodes, Brandon Xavier: An Analysis of Economically Efficient Insurance Schemes for Automated Vehicle
April 11, 2014
Hands-On: 2015 Hyundai Genesis Flirts with Autonomous Driving
By Scott Schaen on April 7, “…Lane keep assist worked very well if you’re slow to make a slight turn. It doesn’t work for the bigger turns. Similarly, smart cruise control and the automatic emergency breaking system would slow you down a lot, but it won’t bring you to a complete stop. They’re SAFETY features; they’re not intended to auto-drive (yet)…” Read more
April 4, 2014
Webinar on the 3DV product
Thursday, March 27, 2014 Video of Webinar. Excellent presentation by Prof. Alberto Broggi Alain
March 28, 2014
Millennials & Mobility: Understanding the Millennial Mindset
“…millennials, with their relative propensity for urban lifestyle components (whether they live in cities or in suburbs), dexterity with technology, while starting careers during economically constrained times can leave a lasting impact on society….” Read more
March 21, 2014
Toyota Is Fined $1.2 Billion for Concealing Safety Defects
By BILL VLASIC and MATT APUZZO MARCH 19, 2014 “Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, talked in impassioned tones on Wednesday about Toyota’s behavior in hiding safety defects from the public, calling it “shameful” and a “blatant disregard” for the law. A $1.2 billion criminal penalty, the largest ever for a carmaker in the United States, was imposed. Read more
Hmmm… As I wrote last week with respect to GM, the industry can not respond in this manner during the evolution of SmartDrivingCars. “Defects” are inevitable, as will improvements to the systems. In fact, instead of a “defect recall”, the industry might create a “performance enhancement” recall process where software upgrades and some hardware upgrades may be made to the systems to improve their performance. The industry might/should be able to charge for these improvements. This would be like installing new and better “wiper blades”. Not that the old ones didn’t work, the new ones work better. And the industry could charge for it. A whole new revenue source. Your SmartDrivingCar could get a real “tune up”. :-) Alain
March 14, 2014
303 Deaths Seen in G.M. Cars With Failed Air Bags
By DANIELLE IVORY and HILARY STOUT MARCH 13, 2014 “As lawmakers press General Motors and regulators over their decade-long failure to correct a defective ignition switch, a new review of federal crash data shows that 303 people died after the air bags failed to deploy on two of the models that were recalled last month…Read more
Hmmm… This is tragic for many reasons; however, we in the SmartDrivingCars world need to learn very clear lessons… More importantly (and as is obvious to the most casual observer) we can’t wait for “…303 victims…” of the “we didn’t think of that” problem to occur before we fix it…. Alain
March 7, 2014
http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/
Hmmm. Just what we need in our cars, an easier way to be distracted from driving. Maybe this should be called “Apple CarCrash”. Alain
New Jersey Rail Ridership Opportunities If a Taxis Are Available…
A.L. Kornhauser, et al March, 2014 “…. Examined are the rail ridership opportunities that NJ Transit (NJT) might enjoy if autonomous Taxis (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. Read more