2017-02-10

February 10, 2017Newsletter archive →

M. Ross, Feb 8, "Technology and telecommunications groups opposed to a federal mandate that cars automatically communicate with each other are hoping the proposal is an early victim of President Donald Trump's regulatory clampdown.

The Department of Transportation rushed to publish a draft rule in the final days of the Obama administration that would mandate all new cars and light trucks be equipped to transmit data to other vehicles to warn their drivers of potential collisions. The department and automobile manufacturers have been laying the groundwork for such a rule for more than a decade, with millions of dollars in testing indicating that the radio-based technology could immediately save lives. No, that's its fundamental flaw. Even if you have it, it can't do you any good unless the other guy has it. Thus it can't do anything immediately ...The draft rule could save up to 1,365 lives each year by 2060. Immediately??? I'll surely be dead and gone. All that money spent to get such a finding.

....The total annual costs to comply with the mandate 30 years after the rule's launch range from $2.2 billion to $5 billion, according to 2016 NHTSA data. Consumers can expect to pay about an extra $300 per vehicle equipped with DSRC technology, the data show. That's a lot of 'good money to be thrown after bad'. Let's spend Billions to justify our Millions in sunk costs? Much worse than 'doubling down' ...Meanwhile, artificial intelligence, camera technology, sensors and radar, which are already being used in autonomous vehicle development, improve vehicle safety and don't require cars to be connected to each other, Paul Brubaker, president and CEO of the Alliance for Transportation Innovation,..."

Press Release, Jan 9, "Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Aspen Institute announced today that five cities have joined its global initiative to help city leaders plan and prepare for the emergence of autonomous vehicles. The cities of Helsinki, Finland; London, England; São Paulo, Brazil; Tel Aviv, Israel and Washington, D.C., USA will join the inaugural participants of the Bloomberg Aspen Initiative on Cities and Autonomous Vehicles announced last fall. Over the course of the next year, the multi-city cohort will produce a set of principles and tools that cities around the world can use to chart their own paths forward with the new technology.

At the 2017 North American International Auto Show, philanthropist and three-term New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said today, "The autonomous vehicle revolution is here - and by examining the opportunities and challenges, mayors can lead the way in adopting policies that benefit citizens and communities. We're excited to welcome five new international cities to our initiative, and we are glad to have the active participation of auto companies. Together, we can help shape the future of transportation."...Read more

L. Fusheng, Jan 16, "The city of Zhangzhou, Fujian province, is planning to build the world's largest experimental zone for autonomous driving.

The project, which was signed on Dec 15 in Beijing, will be constructed in a 56-square-km zone in the city's economic and technological development area to enable testing of autonomous cars in a city-level lab road network with complete traffic signs.

It will also cover a 600,000-square-meter closed testing ground and a two-million-square-meter open experimental field....the China Merchants Group, Frontt Capital and the CRI Intelligent Auto Research Institute have decided to set up an initial fund of 10 billion yuan (US$1.5B) for the project.

Mcity will offer technological suggestions to the project. Mcity is a test facility for evaluating the capabilities of connected and automated vehicles and systems built by the University of Michigan and the Michigan Department of Transportation. Read more

Chunk Mui, Feb 8, "Imagine if you could pick between Uber drivers based on their driving experience. Would you hire an experienced driver who has logged hundreds of thousands of road miles or one who has driven just a few hundred miles? I'll bet you'd go with the experienced driver. Now apply the same question to driverless cars. How would you pick? The same logic applies: Go with experience.

As with human drivers, experience matters for driverless capabilities. That's because the deep learning AI techniques used to train driverless cars depend on data—especially data that illuminates rare and dangerous "edge cases." The more training data, the more confidence you can have in the results....In 2016, Waymo logged more than 635,000 miles while testing its autonomous vehicles on California's public roads compared to just over 20,000 for all its competitors combined. ...

As the W. Edwards Deming principle that is popular in Silicon Valley goes, "In God we trust, all others bring data." The data shows that Waymo is not only 615,000 miles ahead of its competitors but that those competitors are still neophytes when it comes to proving their technology on real roads and interacting with unpredictable elements such as infrastructure, traffic and human drivers. ...Waymo also leads the others in terms of fewer "disengagements," which refers to when human test drivers have to retake control from the driverless software. Waymo's test drivers had to disengage 124 times, or about once very 5,000 miles... enormously impressive!...it is clear from the California DMV reports that Waymo is way ahead on the driverless learning curve. Read more

J. Cichowski, Feb 7. "Though safety potential for self-driving cars is 'tremendous,' governors group asks states to first educate a skeptical public...." Read more

J. Pelini, March 2017, "The case against human drivers.. .Driverless cars are looking better and better: They won't text with each other, or get angry. They won't play Grand Theft Auto in their off-hours. And they won't cut you off just for the hell of it. Even if they're BMWs..."Read more

P. Tanner, Feb 6, "Nvidia (NVDA) is set to report strong revenue growth in the data center space as its Tesla GPUs (graphics processing units) make their way into servers and supercomputers. Another segment where Nvidia is hitting the road is in automotive.

Nvidia's Automotive segment has been reporting sequential growth since fiscal 3Q16 as in-car electronics increase. The segment has reported sequential growth as high as 21.5% in fiscal 1Q17, and in fiscal 3Q17, Automotive revenues rose 7% quarter-over-quarter to $127 million, driven by strong demand for premium infotainment and digital cockpit features in mainstream cars...." Read more

Ray W, Feb 3, "...A new study from the Danish Road Directorate has suggested that the driverless vehicles will eventually be so popular that any space freed up would quickly be filled with – wait for it – more cars. By the time all cars in Denmark are self-driving, traffic could actually increase by 14 percent across the country, and even more in metropolitan areas....Read more

T. Kalanick, Press release, Jan 31, "I'm excited to announce an agreement with Daimler, one of the world's top auto manufacturers with more than a century of experience designing some of the world's best and most iconic vehicles. In the coming years, Daimler has planned to introduce and operate their own self-driving cars on Uber's ridesharing network.

We are incredibly excited by the potential for self-driving cars to further our mission of bringing reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere. They will also help to reduce traffic accidents, which today kill many people a year; free up the huge amount of space currently used to park the world's billion-plus cars; and cut congestion, which is choking our cities...." Read more

B. Raven, Feb 8, "The driver in a double-fatal crash of a Tesla had a blood-alcohol content measurement of 0.21 percent at the time her car crashed and burned in Indianapolis in November 2016...."However, had Autopilot been engaged it would have limited the vehicle's speed to less than 35 mph on this street, which is inconsistent with witness statements and the damage sustained." Read more

D. Etherington, Feb 8, "The video includes a handy on-screen indicator showing when it's in autonomous mode, which appears to be throughout the entire course of the sped up footage. Kyle Vogt, Cruise CEO, provided the following statement about the conditions of the drive in an emailed statement:

This video was captured from one of our autonomous vehicles during a series of back to back test rides. No advance planning was done, and this was captured in a single take. The operator selected a random destination using the Cruise mobile app, pushed a button, and the vehicle started moving. Rides like this occur hundreds of times per day across our test fleets.

The point Vogt is making is that this Cruise demo video shows real-world capabilities, in unpredictable circumstances. Of course, GM still gets to choose what videos it release, but that's still impressive ..." Read more

A. Hawkings, Feb 9, "Luc Vincent, senior director of engineering at Google, has been hired by Lyft to lead the ride-hail company's maps and marketplace division. He is the latest Google Maps engineer to migrate to the world of ride-sharing, where many companies are staffing up their mapping divisions in the interest of making the art of connecting rider and driver as precise as possible. While at the search giant, Vincent helped pioneer Google Maps' wildly popular Street View, which provides panoramic views of many of the world's roads. At Lyft, Vincent said he will be helping the ride-hail company "rethink" transportation. That includes improving dispatch, pick-ups and drop-offs, and helping drivers get to where they need to go more precisely. ...Vincent is a major score for Lyft, considering many of Google's engineering experts have gone to work for Uber. A few weeks ago, Amit Singhal, the former Google engineer who helped perfect the search engine's ranking algorithm, went to work for Uber as senior vice president of engineering. He joined Manik Gupta, the former head of Google Maps product division, and Brian McClendon, who once ran Google's entire mapping division. It comes at the same time that Uber is pumping $500 million into building a map of the entire world, a crucial step toward using autonomous vehicles. Read more

Comments..

respect to my comment in the previous issue:

other thoughts that deserve your attention

T Warren, Feb 9, "It takes a team of 20 people six months to assemble..."Read more

http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/

stuff that probably doesn't deserve your time

D. Etherington, Feb 8, "Self-driving cars require self-driving car software, and Udacity's helping to feed that need with its nanodegree program in the field. Now, the online education company is also making available its self-driving car simulator via open source license, allowing anyone with a working knowledge of Unity to gab the assets, load its preexisting scenes and create their own tracks for virtual testing..." Read more

the memo)

Upcoming Events:

Highlights of:

February 4, 2017

J. Hedlund, Feb 2017Fully autonomous vehicles – cars and trucks that can drive themselves, without a human

at the controls – are coming soon. In fact, they already are on the road. Yes! ...Autonomous vehicles will change our lives in many ways. Yes! ... But all vehicles on the road will not be autonomous for a very long time, perhaps never. Until then, autonomous vehicles must share the road with vehicles driven by humans. Yes! How can this be done safely? States are responsible for safety on the roads – for licensing drivers, registering vehicles, and establishing and enforcing traffic laws. So states must take the lead in dealing with the many traffic safety issues that a mix of driver-operated and autonomous vehicles will bring. Yes! In particular, states should help educate the public about the benefits that autonomous vehicles will bring and the risks that they may present, educate drivers of semi-autonomous vehicles about their driving responsibilities, and educate all drivers about how to share the road safely with autonomous vehicles. Yes! This report should help states understand and address these issues. It's written for state Departments of Transportation (DOTs), Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMVs), and State Highway Safety Offices (SHSOs)....Great!

The public's views on new technology can change quickly. AVs today may well be similar to automobiles a century ago or smart phones only 10 years ago: a new technology with a few ardent supporters and many skeptics initially but which quickly became both acceptable and highly desirable. As Henry Ford is purported to have said regarding automobiles (probably incorrectly), "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Also, today's teenagers are more accepting of AVs: in the Kelley Blue Book survey, 48% of respondents age 12-15 said they would be comfortable riding in an AV compared to 36% of all respondents....Yes!

Laws or regulations formed in haste may hinder rather than help AV testing and implementation. (p17) Yes! " Read more

A. Kornhauser, Jan 14, "Orf467F16 Final Project Symposium quantifying implications of such a Nation-wide mobility system on Average Vehicle Occupancy (AVO), energy, environment and congestion, including estimates of fleet size, needed empty vehicle repositioning, and ridership implications on existing rail transit systems (west, east, NYC) and Amtrak of a system that would efficiently and effectively perform their '1st mile'/'last-mile' mobility needs. Read more

2017

Public Announcement, Jan 22: "Pierce Transit will receive $1,664,894 to deploy buses equipped with collision avoidance warning systems or automatic braking features. The objective of this project is to deploy and demonstrate collision avoidance technology in partnership with the Washington State Transit Insurance Pool (WSTIP), a collaborative organization of 25 Washington public transit agencies that combine their resources to provide and purchase insurance coverage, manage claims and litigation, and receive risk management and training. Pierce Transit will work with WSTIP to accurately determine the business case for investing in these technologies." Read more

(Above link should work) Jan 19, "... Summary: ... NHTSA's examination did not identify any defects in the design or performance of the AEB or Autopilot systems of the subject vehicles nor any incidents in which the systems did not perform as designed. AEB systems used in the automotive industry through MY 2016 are rear-end collision avoidance technologies that are not designed to reliably perform in all crash modes, including crossing path collisions. The Autopilot system is an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) that requires the continual and full attention of the driver to monitor the traffic environment and be prepared to take action to avoid crashes. Tesla's design included a hands-on the steering wheel system for monitoring driver engagement...

... ODI analyzed data from crashes of Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles involving airbag deployments that occurred while operating in, or within 15 seconds of transitioning from, Autopilot mode. Some crashes involved impacts from other vehicles striking the Tesla from various directions with little to no warning to the Tesla driver. Other crashes involved scenarios known to be outside of the state-of-technology for current-generation Level 1 or 2 systems, such as cut-ins, cut-outs and crossing path collisions....

...The Florida fatal crash appears to have involved a period of extended distraction (at least 7 seconds)..." .

...A safety-related defect trend has not been identified at this time and further examination of this issue does not appear to be warranted. Accordingly, this investigation is closed. " Read more

News, Jan 10, "...U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. "I'm proud to announce this new automation committee, and look forward to seeing its members advance life-saving innovations while boosting our economy and making our transportation network more fair, reliable, and efficient."... Read more

2017

M. Sena, Jan. 5, "In This Issue:

Report from Dispatch Central 1 "...While the 12 million people in the EU who earn their livings directly from the automotive industry are delighted by the news that car sales figures for Novem-ber were up significantly, and it looks like 2016 will be another banner year, there are people in governments doing everything in their power to make both building and owning motorized vehicles economically unviable..." Read more

Autonomous Driving News Apple's Letter to NHTSA 1 "...The Vehicle Safety Act requires companies to certify vehicles to the FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) before first sale. But this law applies to new motor vehicles intended for sale to the public, and by implication, by companies that make and sell cars, not companies like Apple that may or may not intend to sell cars. Further, FAST Act2 specifically allows car makers, but not non-car makers, to test on public roads without requiring ex-emptions from FMVSS...Read more "

What Car Companies Are Doing 2 "...So Uber must have made Volvo a pretty sweet offer when it gets rid of all the drivers with their own cars and has its own fleet of driverless cars...Read more"

Reurbanization or Spreading the Sprawl 3 "...Where do you want to go? My chart below has two opposing scenarios. In the top scenario, we keep doing what we have been doing. In the bottom sce-nario, we try to match policies with desired results. You choose...Read more"

traffic information is useless..Read more"

Musings of a Dispatcher – Civilis cogitationes 6 "...I did not see a lot of people cycling to their jobs when I was in Västerås in the early autumn of this year. Like most places in Europe

and the U.S., when cars became affordable for people with even modest incomes—starting in the 50s in the U.S. and in the 60s in Europe—it was a delight for workers to get out of the rain and snow and into their own car. It's the same today in emerging markets, especially China,.." Read more

24, 2016

J. Golson, Dec 19, "Chrysler has completed the 100 autonomous Pacifica minivans that will join the Waymo (née Google) fleet in early 2017. The vans, which are plug-in hybrid variants with Waymo's self-driving hardware and software built in, are part of a partnership between Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and Waymo that was announced earlier this year.

Waymo CEO John Krafcik said last week that his company is not interested in "making better cars." Instead, it wants to make "better drivers."..."

2016

A. Hawkins, Dec 13, "Today, Google announced that it would be spinning off its six-year-old self-driving project into a standalone business called Waymo, which stands for "a new way forward in mobility," according to John Krafcik, the CEO of the new company.

It was previously reported that Google would be dropping its plan to build its own vehicle without steering wheels and pedals, instead focusing on creating the self-driving technology that can be installed in third-party vehicles. Krafcik didn't provide much clarity there, but did state definitively that the new company was still fully committed to fully autonomous vehicle technology.

"We are all in, 100 percent, on Level Four and Level Five fully driverless solutions," he said.

Krafcik didn't comment on a report in Bloomberg that Google would be starting its own ride-sharing service in partnership with Fiat Chrysler using the Italian car maker's Pacifica minivans as its fleet of self-driving taxis. Google and FCA announced their collaboration earlier this year. Krafcik did confirm that the self-driving Pacificas were still in the build phase, but would hopefully be on the road for testing very soon.

It may be too soon to say that Google is abandoning its plans to build it's own fleet of driverless cars, without steering wheels and pedals. That said, Krafcik made it clear that Waymo "is not a car company, there's been some confusion on that point. We're not in business of making better cars, we're in the business of making better drivers."...Read more

R. Mitchell, Dec 6, "Silicon Valley voted heavily for Hillary Clinton, but companies working on driverless cars seem overjoyed with President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Transportation secretary, Elaine Chao. Chao will wield great power over how driverless cars and other automated vehicles will be regulated — or not....Industry insiders say they don't want Chao to ignore driverless car policy....

Instead, they hope to avoid a patchwork of differing and conflicting rules across the 50 states. "This should be centralized," said Alain L. Kornhauser, director of the transportation program at Princeton University and an autonomous vehicle expert, "but that doesn't mean the states don't play a part. It would be better if we had a common understanding...." Read more

J, Yoshida, Nov 15, "...Qualcomm's pending takeover of NXP Semiconductors isn't making the path to V2X any clearer.

NXP remains a staunch advocate for DSRC-based V2X (as demonstrated via truck platooning on Munich roads last week during Electronica). Qualcomm, a leading voice and force behind the progress of the cellular standards, is sticking to its cellular radio technology-based V2X evolution...We see this as a continued cellular revolution with new elements coming in... " Read more

27, 2016

B. Grush, Oct. 2016, "Two contradictory stories about our transportation infrastructure are currently in circulation. One is that Ontario's aging, inadequate and congested infrastructure is perennially unable to catch up with a growing and sprawling GTHA. The other is that vehicle automation will soon dramatically multiply current road capacity by enabling narrower lanes, shorter headways and coordinated streams of connected vehicles to pass through intersections without traffic signals to impede flow.

Since the premature forecast of peak car in 2008 and now the hype surrounding the automated vehicle, we are often told that we have enough road capacity; that shared robotic taxis will optimize our trips, reduce congestion, and largely eliminate the need for parking. This advice implies we need wait only a few short years to experience relief from our current infrastructure problems given by decades of under-investment in transportation infrastructure.

This is wishful thinking. Vehicle automation will give rise to two different emerging markets: semi-automated vehicles for household consumption and fully automated vehicles for public service such as robo-taxi and robo-transit. These two vehicle types will develop in parallel to serve different social markets. They will compete for both riders and infrastructure. The purpose of this report is to look at why and how government agencies and public interest groups can and should influence the preferred types and deployment of automated vehicles and the implication of related factors for planning..." Read more

D. Victor, Oct. 5, "Traffic deaths in the United States rose 10.4 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2015, maintaining a steady climb....

The numbers were released on Wednesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which noted that Americans drove about 50.5 billion more miles in the first six months of 2016 than in the first half of 2015, an increase of 3.3 percent....Officials have not identified a specific cause for the most recent increase... " Read more

September 2016, "Executive Summary...For DOT, the excitement around highly automated vehicles (HAVs) starts with safety. (p5)

...The development of advanced automated vehicle safety technologies, including fully self-driving cars, may prove to be the greatest personal transportation revolution since the popularization of the personal automobile nearly a century ago. (p5)

...The benefits don't stop with safety. Innovations have the potential to transform personal mobility and open doors to people and communities. (p5)

...The remarkable speed with which increasingly complex HAVs are evolving challenges DOT to take new approaches that ensure these technologies are safely introduced (i.e., do not introduce significant new safety risks), provide safety benefits today, and achieve their full safety potential in the future. (p6)

"...we divide the task of facilitating the safe introduction and deployment (...defines "deployment" as the operation of an HAV by members of the public who are not the employees or agents of the designer, developer, or manufacturer of that HAV.) of HAVs into four sections:(p6)

"...1. Vehicle Performance Guidance for Automated Vehicles (p6)..."

"...2. Model State Policy (p7) The Model State Policy confirms that States retain their traditional responsibilities...but... The shared objective is to ensure the establishment of a consistent national framework rather than a patchwork of incompatible laws..."

"...3. NHTSA Current Regulatory Tools (p7) ... This document provides instructions, practical guidance, and assistance to entities seeking to employ those tools. Furthermore, NHTSA has streamlined its review process and is committing to..."

"...4. New Tools and Authorities (p7)...The speed with which HAVs are advancing, combined with the complexity and novelty of these innovations, threatens to outpace the Agency's conventional regulatory processes and capabilities. This challenge requires DOT to examine whether the way DOT has addressed safety for the last 50 years should be expanded to realize the safety potential of automated vehicles over the next 50 years. Therefore, this section identifies potential new tools, authorities and regulatory structures that could aid the safe and appropriately expeditious deployment of new technologies by enabling the Agency to be more nimble and flexible (p8)..."

"...Note on "Levels of Automation" There are multiple definitions for various levels of automation and for some time there has been need for standardization to aid clarity and consistency. Therefore, this Policy adopts the SAE International (SAE) definitions for levels of automation. )

August 19, 2016

N. Boudette, Aug 16, "In the race to develop driverless cars, several automakers and technology companies are already testing vehicles that pilot themselves on public roads. And others have outlined plans to expand their development fleets over the next few years. At a news conference on Tuesday at the company's research center in Palo Alto, Calif., Mark Fields, Ford's chief executive, said the company planned to mass produce driverless cars and have them in commercial operation in a ride-hailing service by 2021....

"That means there's going to be no steering wheel. There's going to be no gas pedal. There's going to be no brake pedal,'' he said. ...." Read more

July 11, 2016

July 5, 2016

Chenyi Chen PhD Dissertation , "...the key part of the thesis, a direct perception approach is proposed to drive a car in a highway environment. In this approach, an input image is mapped to a small number of key perception indicators that directly relate to the affordance of a road/traffic state for driving....." Read more

March 25, 2016

March 23

March 17, 2016

February 18, 2016

December 19, 2015

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2017-02-10

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