2017-03-21

March 21, 2017Newsletter archive →

7th

Deployment Summit; May 18, 19 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Save the Date: "Princeton University will be hosting on May 18 & 19 a two day conference bringing together the buyers, sellers and facilitators of SmartDrivingCars (& Trucks, & Buses) with the purpose of getting off the ground and accelerating the commercialization/deployment of this technology so that society can emerge from the hype and begin to capture the benefits of this emerging mobility revolution.

The focus ranges from:

near-term safety benefits of Safe-driving

Cars (How insurance and new car dealers can benefit by promoting the RoI advantages to fleets and mutually beneficial promotional discounts to consumers.), as well as an update as to the performance in automatically avoiding crashes of the technology options available in showrooms today .

near-term mobility and community service benefits of the array of emerging low-speed Driverless shuttles to all in gated communities and campuses, to the mobility disadvantaged in many/most suburban communities and to address first-mile, last-mile accessibility challenges in transit-oriented communities, and
near-term regulatory challenges that are needed to facilitate the shared use of our existing streets by low and normal speed Driverless vehicles, and
the current state-of-the-art in DeepDriving, to the long-term opportunities of using affordable Computer Vision and elegant Deep Learning training, testing and enhancing techniques in SmartDrivingCars, and more.

Details in the next issue of SmartDrivingCars. Alain Save the date

J. Bhuiyan, Mar 16, "Some of Uber's self-driving cars aren't driving as smoothly as the company hoped they would. Documents circulated throughout the company's self-driving group, which Recode obtained, gives us a first look at the progress of the ride-hail company's robot cars in Pennsylvania, Arizona and California.

The top line: Uber's robot cars are steadily increasing the number of miles driven autonomously. But the figures on rider experience — defined as a combination of how many times drivers have to take over and how smoothly the car drives — are still showing little progress....

For example: During the week ending March 8, the 43 active cars on the road only drove an average of close to 0.8 miles before the safety driver had to take over for one reason or another...

The good news is the number of miles between these "critical" interventions has recently improved. Last week, the company's cars drove an average of approximately 200 miles between those types of incidents that required a driver to take over..." Read more

M. Weinberger, Mar 18, "In the spring of 2016, Dr. Jianxiong Xiao — affectionately known among students and staff as "Professor X" — said goodbye to his plum professorship at Princeton and his post as the founding director of the school's Computer Vision and Robotics Labs.

By the fall of that same year, Xiao, known as something of a risk-taker, had moved himself and his family from New Jersey to Silicon Valley, and raised some modest seed funding for his new startup focused on self-driving cars.

His startup, dubbed AutoX, has

done its best to stay under the radar to date — apart from a filing with the California DMV to test self-driving vehicles. ...

Nowadays, Xiao says, AutoX is about 20 people strong, almost all engineers, with PhD-level computer vision talent that had previously worked at companies like Apple, Magic Leap, and Microsoft. And with all that brainpower on board, Xiao says that they were able to build their prototype from scratch in only six months, without using anyone's technology.

" Read more

D. Muoio, Mar 12, "...So why is it that tiny startups with little to no brand recognition are getting acquired for millions? AI specialists told Business Insider it has little to do with acquiring the startup's tech and everything to do with nabbing talent.

That's because there's a serious lack of experts in the field of deep learning, a branch of artificial intelligence where computers learn on their own. Deep learning is key to advancing self-driving tech as it allows cars to learn safe driving at a much faster rate than traditional programming.

"The growth of demand is much faster than the rate of which we can produce people with PhDs or even master's in this area," Yoshua Bengio, head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, told Business Insider. "There's just an explosion of interest from the industry... and it's like a fire growing on the prairie." ...

"The sad thing is most of these are just for recruiting," he said. "It's kind of a loss for the economy because most often the projects these small companies had don't continue once they've been integrated into the company…. It's kind of a waste of resources and investment in some sense." Read more

F. Lambert, Mar 18, "As Tesla is reportedly close to finishing its Autopilot 2.0 update that will remove the speed restrictions and bring the system to parity with the first generation, we get a good look at the latest version of Autopilot on the new hardware suite through a 30-minute drive by a Model S owner. Video..."

B. Anderson, Mar 17, An Ohio-based company called Root Insurance has announced that Tesla owners can get a discount on their premium if they use the Autosteer feature of Autopilot, a system that automatically keeps the vehicle in its lane without driving input. In the announcement, Root Insurance cites a report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that concluded crash rates of Tesla models have fallen by almost 40 per cent following the introduction of Autopilot..." Read more

R. Lanclot, Mar 14, "...How does the Tesla® Autopilot discount work?

During the test drive, Root's app measures Autosteer-eligible highway miles.

We apply a tiered discount—above and beyond any good driver discount you've already earned! The higher the percent of highway miles driven, the higher the discount.

Good drivers of Tesla cars save a lot of $$$ with Root!

More details: https://blog.joinroot.com/tesladiscount/...Read more

K. Pyle, Mar 10, "...He alludes to the idea of taking a holistic view of how automation interacts with the built-environment. A self-driving approach that favors single passenger vehicles will be associated with longer commutes, more sprawl and more vehicle miles traveled. Driverless would be more like the elevator scenario, where people summon a shared vehicle, reducing congestion, energy use and vehicle miles traveled..." Read more

S. Young, March, 2017, "..This paper examines such a concept to displace privately owned automobiles within a region containing dense activity generators (jobs, retail, entertainment, etc.), referred to as an automated mobility district (AMDs). The paper reviews several such districts including airport, college campuses, business parks, downtown urban cores, and military bases, with examples of previous attempts to meet the mobility needs apart from private automobiles, some with automated technology and others with more traditional transit based solutions. The issues and benefits of AMDs are framed within the perspective of intra-district, inter-district, and border issues, and the requirements for a modeling framework are identified to adequately reflect the breadth of mobility, energy, and emissions impact anticipated with AMDs...". Read more

F. Tepper, Mar 12,"Since Uber and Lyft left last May, a bevy of alternatives have sprung up — like Ride Austin, Fasten and Fare. These

apps all essentially provide the same experience as Uber and Lyft — drop a pin and a car shows up. All of them comply with Austin's background-check law, and some of them even charge drivers and riders less than Uber and Lyft did.

I had even begun to wonder if maybe Uber and Lyft made a mistake by stubbornly refusing to comply with Austin's fingerprint-based background-check requirement, because it showed that a major U.S. city could actually survive without them.

Until they couldn't.

Last night, arguably the biggest night of SXSW, it rained — and everyone wanted a ride. And on cue, the apps failed. Overloaded with demand, Ride Austin and Fasten were essentially "bricked" — you either got stuck at a loading screen or the apps said there were no cars available — when there clearly were.

Riders were stuck, and drivers were circling the city with no way to get matched up with riders....". Read more

P. McCauley, Mar 6, "...During a demonstration March 6, representatives from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA), EasyMile and the Bishop Ranch business park gathered in San Ramon, Calif., to announce the launch of a pilot project utilizing two shuttles as a first mile/last mile (FM/LM) mobility solution. The two shuttles, costing $250,000 each, will begin testing in an empty lot at the business park and will eventually move to an adjacent occupied lot. To abide by current state law, the pilot will transport people across the business park without crossing public streets..." Read more

S. Hanley, Mar 17, "NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced to attendees at the Bosch Connected World conference in Berlin this week that they have partnered with Bosch to producing an artificial intelligence supercomputer aimed at the self-driving car industry.

"I'm so proud to announce that the world's leading tier-one automotive supplier — the only tier one that supports every car maker in the world — is building an AI car computer for the mass market," said Huang. "We've really supercharged our roadmap to autonomous vehicles. We've dedicated ourselves to build an end-to-end deep learning solution. Nearly everyone using deep learning is using our platform."..." Read more

M. Leder, Mar 10, "...In 2016, Footnoted counted 128 filings that made some kind of reference to "autonomous vehicles." That was up from just 37 in 2015, and 23 in 2014. Between 2000 and 2013, there were a total of 75 references to autonomous vehicles in filings. That number looks to take another giant leap this year. Already through March 7, there were 54 filings with autonomous vehicle disclosures...." Read more

March 2017, "..."Shared-use vehicles will be a highly effective deployment of autonomous vehicles, where shorter, intra-city trips can maximize occupancy and efficiency, which means safer, faster and more convenient travel for users," said Avery Ash, autonomous vehicle market strategist at INRIX..." Read more

Staff, Mar 13, "Volvo Trucks and Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH) at the University of California, Berkeley recently completed a successful demonstration of partially automated truck platooning, made possible by Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control, or CACC, technology.

Three Volvo VNL 670 model tractors hauled cargo containers at California's Los Angeles Port complex and along Interstate 110, highlighting for public officials and other stakeholders the technology's potential for improving highway safety, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing the capacity of transportation systems...." Read more

F. Lambert, Mar 10 "Electric and autonomous vehicle startup NIO unveiled a new concept today to set the tone for its upcoming mass market car. That's after first showcasing its tech in a $1 million supercar last year.

In Austin for SXSW today, NIO laid out its "vision" for the future of autonomous cars and the"NIO EVE" concept is the first embodiment of that vision..." Read more

other thoughts that deserve your attention

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

stuff that probably doesn't deserve your time

folks didn't get/read the memo)

A. Marshall, Mar 16, "Excellent news for the gas-sipping, headlight-blinking, gossipy autos among us. Cadillac's flagship 2017 CTS sedan will talk to other cars. Well, other 2017 Cadillac CTS sedans, but it's a start. If the government gets its way, all cars will talk to each other one day soon.

Engineers call the technology vehicle to vehicle communication. General Motors and Uncle Sam call it the future of automotive safety in a country where more than 32,000 people died in collisions last year. Today, V2V might let one Cadillac warn another to a predicament..."

of Upcoming Events:

Commercialization

Summit

May 17 & 18, 2017

Princeton

University

Princeton, NJ

Save the Date

Highlights of:

March 10, 2017

M. Scott, Mar 13, "Intel agreed on Monday to buy Mobileye, an Israeli technology company that specializes in making sensors and cameras for autonomous cars, for $15.3 billion, as the global microchip giant tries to expand its reach in the fast-growing sector....As part of the deal, Intel said it would buy Mobileye's outstanding shares at $63.54 a share, a 34 percent premium to Mobileye's closing price on Friday....

Intel's deal for Mobileye seems to be a recognition that chip-making rivals like Nvidia and Qualcomm have moved slightly ahead in the race to provide the computing power needed for autonomous cars... Intel said it would continue investing in the autonomous-driving industry, a sector that it said would be worth about $70 billion by 2030..." Read more

R. Mitchell, Mar 10, "California is back on the map as a state that's serious about welcoming driverless cars.Truly driverless cars — vehicles with no human behind the wheel, and perhaps no steering wheel at all — are headed toward California streets and highways starting in 2018...

The regulations lay out "a clear path for future deployment of autonomous vehicles" in California, said Bernard Soriano, deputy director at the Department of Motor Vehicles...." Read more

March 3, 2017

E. Gurdus, Feb 27, "The self-driving car business could become a major threat to insurance companies when the technology hits the market, billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday.

If autonomous vehicles prove to be safer than regular cars, insurance costs will plummet, and by the time roads are filled with self-driving cars insurers like Geico will have taken a serious hit, Buffett said...

"If I had to take the over and under [bet] ten years from now on whether 10 percent of the cars on the road would be self-driving, I would take the under, but I could very easily be wrong," he said...." Read more

February 24, 2017

M. Bergen, Feb 23, "It took Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo seven years to design and build a laser-scanning system to guide its self-driving cars. Uber Technologies Inc. allegedly did it in nine months.

Waymo claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that was possible because a former employee stole the designs and technology and started a new company....Anthony Levandowski, a former manager at Waymo, in December 2015 downloaded more than 14,000 proprietary and confidential files, including the lidar circuit board designs, according to the complaint. He also allegedly created a domain name for his new company and confided in some of his Waymo colleagues of plans to "replicate" its technology for a competitor...." Read more

February 17, 2017

Press release, Feb. 15, "NSC offers insight into what drivers are doing and calls for immediate implementation of proven, life-saving measures...

With the upward trend showing no sign of subsiding, NSC is calling for immediate implementation of life-saving measures that would set the nation on a road to zero deaths:..." Read more

February 10, 2017

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,..."

January 27, 2017

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

January 20, 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)..." .

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

December 14, 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

December 7, 2016

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

October 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

September 23, 2016

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 1, 2016

July 11, 2016

July 5, 2016

7 Crash

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

The testimony is Excellent and very compelling! Also see Self-Driving Minnesota Alain

March 17, 2016

December 19, 2015

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2017-03-21

Announcing: SmartDrivingCars

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