2014-10-23
October 22, 2014
Request for Comment on Automotive Electronic Control Systems Safety and Security
Volume 79, Number 194 (Tuesday, October 7, 2014); FR Doc No: 2014-23805: ACTION: Request for comments:
SUMMARY: This notice presents the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s research program on vehicle electronics and our progress on examining the need for safety standards with regard to electronic systems in passenger motor vehicles. The agency undertook this examination pursuant to the requirements of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) Division C, Title I, Subtitle D, Section 31402, Subsection (a). In addition, and in accordance with MAP-21, we are seeking comment (through this document) on various components of our examination of the need for safety standards in this area. As MAP-21 also requires this agency to report to Congress on our findings pursuant to this examination, we intend to submit a report to Congress based in part on our findings from this examination and public comments received in response to this document.
DATES: You should submit your comments early enough to ensure that Docket Management receives them no later than December 8, 2014. Read more
More on: Restating NHTSA’s NMVCCS for Automated Vehicles
Michael Stienstra’s summary of the CAS report:
“… Despite the NMVCCS’s extremely detailed dataset, its alternative focus (determining the accident causes of human driven vehicles), its age (the data was collected from 2005-2007), and its limitations (minor accidents and accidents occurring between 12am and 5:59am were not included) prevent us from calculating a true automated vehicle safety benchmark. However, the study still provides several valuable insights and takeaways. …” Read more
Official: Fort Monmouth could be testing ground for driverless cars
By Dianne DeOliveira October 16, 2014 “With a national race underway to build driverless vehicles within the next ten years, Fort Monmouth could become a research and development hub for the East Coast, according to Bruce Steadman, executive director of the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority (FMERA)…” Read more
10/13/2014
Peter Diamandis “..5. No Ownership – Just “On-Demand” Usage: Today your car is an unused asset 95% of the day. Why own a car when you can have access to whatever car you want, whenever you want it? On-demand car usage will change the future. (Who wins? You do. Who loses? Detroit). It is estimated that at 90% AV penetration, we could actually reduce the number of cars on the road by 42.6%…” Read more
How Google plans to bring driverless cars to market
Worth watching video. Alain
Forget self-driving Google cars, Australia has self-driving trucks
Oct 20, Matthew Hall “Forget about self-driving Google cars. Australia already has automated giant trucks driving around the outback of Western Australia, perhaps the exact aesthetic and ideological opposite of the small Toyota Prius used by Google in test drives…” Read more
Bringing the Benefits of Mining-Vehicle Automation to the Masses
“…Despite Caterpillar Inc. testing the world’s first autonomous truck back in 1996, more than 10 years passed before Komatsu delivered the first automated truck to a mine site…Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton have since introduced 15 autonomous trucks and 12 autonomous haulers…” Read more
West Bloomfield police: Bus driver fell asleep, crashed into 6 vehicles
Oct 21 2014 “WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. - A Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) bus driver fell asleep at the wheel Monday evening before crashing into six vehicles on Maple Road, West Bloomfield police said. Read more Hmmm Crash didn’t have to happen. Automated Collision Avoidance would have stopped it! What a shame! Alain
Enjoy:
Silicon Valley Driverless Car
From HBO’s Silicon Valley; Thanks to Prof. Stephen Gilbert, Iowa State U. Alain
Driving Disrupted: Driverless Cars Change Everything
sparks & honey Oct 15, 2014 Read all 40 ways driverless cars will change your life. Alain
Half-baked stuff that probably doesn’t deserve your time:
Audi RS 7 concept taken to the limit with no driver
Press release 10-19-14: “… Audi scored yet another major success in the development of piloted driving: Before the season finale of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM), the latest technology pioneer was running up to its physical limit, with no driver. It took the Audi RS 7 piloted driving concept just slightly over two minutes to complete a lap on the Grand Prix track in Hockenheim – piloted with high precision and accuracy to within centimeters…” Read more. It would be better if we had press releases about the technology being available in the showroom. Alain
Calendar of Upcoming Events:
Hearings and Public Testimony
S 374
Directs MVC to establish driver’s license endorsement for autonomous vehicles.
Monday, Oct 27, 2014, Statehouse, 2nd floor, Committee Room 7
3rd Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Symposium
College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) Albany, NY
November 5, 2014
Recent Versions of:
October 10, 2014
Inaugural Automated Vehicle Summit @ Fort Monmouth
Press release. Oct 9, 2014 Princeton, NJ “New Jersey’s first summit meeting on creation of a center for research, certification, and commercialization of automated vehicle technology took place on October 3 at former Army base Fort Monmouth in Oceanport. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together stakeholders with a vested interest and the wherewithal to place New Jersey at the forefront of research into potentially life-saving technology.
More than 60 invited participants to the summit included representatives of: the insurance industry, automakers, wireless communications industry, motor vehicle regulators, public transit industry, and universities. State Senators Jennifer Beck, Thomas H. Kean, Jr., Joseph M. Kyrillos, Jr., and Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, Jr. represented New Jersey’s legislative bodies…” Read more Hmmm..Progress! Alain
October 1, 2014
Mercedes-Benz sends autonomous automobiles onto the USA’s most extensive testing ground
Sunnyvale, Calif., Oct. 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ – “As one of the first automobile manufacturers permitted to do so, Mercedes-Benz has been testing autonomously driving automobiles on public roads in the US state of California since September. In addition, the company will from now on also use Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS), the largest test bed site in the US, for further testing of its future technology.
“We can use the test site in Concord, California, to run simulation tests with self-driving vehicles in a secure way, including specific hazardous situations”, explained Dr Axel Gern, head of autonomous driving at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America, Inc. (MBRDNA). “Taken in conjunction with the results of our test drives on public roads, these tests will help us with the ongoing development of our autonomous cars.” The focus of research nevertheless continues to lie on the tests undertaken in a real-life environment, he emphasized….” Read more Hmmm
I’m learning that the concept of using “Fort Monmouth” to test automated vehicles is a common concept. Alain
October 1, 2014
Self-driving cars: California regulators probe insurance questions
Patrick Hoge Sep 15, 2014 “Self-driving cars are bearing down on California’s future, and state Department of Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones wants insurers and regulators to prepare now for their eventual arrival.
To that end, Jones hosted a public hearing at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose Monday morning to gather data about what automated vehicle technology will look like. …
A variety of legal and insurance experts testified, as well as a consumer rights advocate. Alain Kornhauser, a Princeton University professor of operations research and financial engineering, was enthusiastic about the potential for automated driving technologies to improve safety, unburden drivers and lower insurance costs.
Varying levels of the technology will be applied in different settings, he said. Commercial fleets, for example, could be more amenable for fully automated uses, while average drivers might use some sort of hybrid, that allows drivers to assume control when needed, he said.
Kornhauser pointed out that some automated technologies are already in widespread use, notably anti-locking brakes and stability controls that prevent drivers from turning too rapidly.
“What’s important is that these systems take over automatically and counter what I am doing wrong,” Kornhauser said. “They don’t warn. They don’t ask for permission. I can’t turn them off. They just do it.”…” Read more
Hmmm…
It was a really good session: Video of hearing; hearing’s agenda; background paper; my 5-minute prepared remarks; extended remarks by Prof. Robert Peterson. Alain
September 8, 2014
The New Commute
Mark Svenvold “…Tomorrow’s transportation solutions will be about learning to share…
“Cars arrived and waited for riders,” Minett wrote of the Oakland commuters he observed. “Riders came and got into their cars, usually two per car on a first-come first-served basis. I saw partners arrive with partners, kiss, and part. Some waited to make sure that their partners got off safely; others left without a backward glance.” He noted that more than half of the people commuting that morning were female. Two women were walking their dogs. “One got a ride, the other carried on with the dogs.” The scene he was describing, in other words, was completely quotidian: “I saw an original VW Beetle, and a lady who got into it with a huge suitcase, and they still took a second passenger.” Later on, in a coffee shop, Minett was able to conjure his quarry in greater relief. “I’d witnessed,” he says in a YouTube video about that moment, “a community of unconnected people who share a solution to their real need and are not afraid to share their trip with a different driver or rider each day.” It was, he says memorably, “a silent transit system that is based on trust.”… Read more
Hmmm… Our studies at Princeton suggest that autonomous taxis will empower high-quality demand-responsive service at a very low price to exist everywhere by facilitating the sharing of rides when and to where there exists a natural concentration of demand; else, lonesome, solitary service will be available to places, at times, when there simply isn’t anyone else around that wants to make that trip. Much like elevator service today, except horizontally from many places to essentially anywhere else. In our studies of spatial and temporal distributions of trip demand as exists today in New Jersey, such systems can double the productivity of today’s cars, yet offer essentially the same (or in the view of some, a better) level of service. This means that energy consumption is halved, as is pollution. Congestion is essentially eliminated. Alain
August 25, 2014
C’Mon Man! (These folks didn’t get/read the memo):
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards: Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Communications
“This document initiates rulemaking that would propose to create a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS), FMVSS No. 150, to require vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication capability for light vehicles (passenger cars and light truck vehicles (LTVs)) and to create minimum performance requirements for V2V devices and messages.. “
Hmmm… Fundamental problem is for V2V to have any chance of working of avoiding a crash between two vehicles is for both to have the communications. The probability that both vehicles have V2V doesn’t become greater than chance (0.5) until the technology is installed and working in greater than 70% of all vehicles. That level of market penetration will take at least 10 years after this is mandated for every new car that rolls off the assembly line. Moreover, even if both cars are equipped, the regulations require only that there be a warning given to the drivers. As if the drivers will know what to do if the warning is given soon enough. To give the warning soon enough, will invariably increase the false alarm rate, which in itself is likely to cause some accidents that would not have occurred and irritate some drivers to clip the wires as some have done with installed theft alarms. Furthermore, NHTSA recognizes that these systems will not be effective if drivers are impaired (page 266).
Given that 32 % of driving fatalities involve alcohol-impaired driving, none of these will be saved.
So after more than 10 years of the mandate we will be at <68% non-impaired of the <50% of market penetration of the <??% that haven’t clipped their wires of the <???% that are properly working of the ????% drivers that perform the correct collision avoidance maneuver minus the number of additional accidents that have been cause by false alarms. This number may not even yet be above zero! I agree…” NHTSA believes that V2V capability will not develop absent regulation, because there would not be any immediate safety benefits for consumers who are early adopters of V2V”.
Yet, if NHTSA instead “mandated” or encouraged/focused-on automated collision avoidance and automated lane keeping systems, then each of these systems would deliver some immediate safety benefits to each consumer, irrespective of any other vehicle having the system. Some benefit would also be delivered if the driver became impaired. Moreover, insurance may be willing and able to pay for much of this technology. Seems that this is the low hanging fruit. What am I missing here? Why is the sunk investment in V2V seemingly all that is steering the NHTSA ship? Alain
alaink@princeton.edu
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