Press release, May 11, "NVIDIA today announced that it is collaborating with Toyota to deliver artificial intelligence hardware and software technologies that will enhance the capabilities of autonomous driving systems planned for market introduction within the next few years. ..." Read more Hmmmm... Very interesting. Alain
May 2017, "...As
part of Eno’s
Digital Cities
program, Eno
crafted a
multifaceted set
of recommendations
that address the
most pressing
policy issues for
AVs. If applied
and executed
properly, these
recommendations
will help guide
this technology
towards safe,
efficient, and
sustainable
deployment.
AVs are upending
the traditional
definitions of
licensing,
liability, and
insurance for
automobiles. In a
future where
computers are
increasingly
responsible for
operating cars,
determining blame
in a car crash has
become less clear.
In response,
Congress should
pass legislation
allowing NHTSA to
create AV system
certifications and
should support the
harmonization of
state tort laws
that explicitly
align liability
with the
certifications and
roles of the
automated features
and the human
driver. For their
part, states
should create
stakeholder
working groups to
oversee the
development of
state and local
laws...." Read
More Hmmmm...A
broad report
that obviously
comes out of
Washington.
Words used are
'deployment'
as opposed to
market
adoption seem
to imply that
the public
sector will be
leading this
r/evolution.
Yes, some new
legislation
may be needed
because the
driver was
conveniently
placed as the
center of
responsibility
early on in
the evolution
of the
automobile.
It may just be
that the
designee of
the driver is
the
responsible
liability
entity as long
as that
responsibility
has been
exercised
without
product
malfunction.
We have long
legal
experience
with anti-lock
brakes and
electronic
stability
control. That
experience
needs to be
leveraged
here. The
report seems
to be overly
occupied with
cyber security
without a
substantive
basis. Yes,
it could be a
problem, but
no where near
the top of any
list. The
report shows
little
appreciation
of the
fundamental
difference
between
car-sharing
and
ride-sharing
(which it
doesn't even
mention). It
ascribes to
car-sharing
benefits that
can only be
captured by
ride-sharing
and it doesn't
seem to
understand the
vast
differences
between
self-driving
&
driverless.
It also
continues to
suggest that
there are
near-term
benefits
associated
with promoting
connected
cars. It is
worth a
critical
read. Alain
D. Baker, May 2,
"...Proterra, the
Burlingame
electric bus
company, has
partnered with the
University of
Nevada, Reno to
develop and test
autonomous buses
in the heart of
Reno’s downtown.
Step one involves
outfitting a
Proterra
battery-powered
bus with the
sensors needed to
scan the street.
That work is
already under way
at a facility near
the city’s
airport. Then the
bus, driven by a
human, will spend
day after day
plying a route
along Reno’s
Virginia Street,
picking up
passengers and
gathering data on
the pedestrians,
traffic and
streetscape."..."
Read
More Hmmmm...
Why not.
Alain
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
Artur
Filipowicz'17,
Virtual
Environments
as Driving
Schools for
Deep Learning
Vision-Based
Sensors in
Self-Driving
Cars,
April 2017
Nayan Bhat'17, DeepFollowing: Vision-Based Distance Estimation on Synthetically-Generated Driving Video using 3D Convolution, April 2017
Antigone Hope Valen'17, The ATaxi Revolution: Autonomous Vehicle Implementation and Ride-Sharing Optimization in the United States and China, April 2017
Keith Gladstone'17, The Search for the Sustainable Fleet: Driverless Taxi System Simulations , April 2017
Rebeca De La Espriella'17, Developing the Regulatory Environment for Autonomous Vehicles: Historical Lessons for the Socio-technical Transition, April 2017
Thomas P. Byrne '17, Commercial Auto Insurance Risk Management Strategies, April 2017
[log in to unmask]"
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height="29"
width="28">
Kara Kockelman,Appendices, Ensuring the Benefits of a Connected and Auto , April2017
T. Ghose, May
14, "Instead of
being stuck in
traffic for hours
on the I-5 in Los
Angeles, inventor
and billionaire
entrepreneur Elon
Musk wants
everyone to hop in
their car and then
zoom on a sled at
heart-pounding
speed to their
destination. Musk
posted a demo
of one of these
car-carrying
electric
sleds..." See
video Hmmmm...This
isn't funny,
nor SNL. It
is just: C'mon
Man! Who
pays for the
tunnel??
Aren't you
invested in
enough
negative cash
flow ideas?
Alain
R. Hagemann, May
1, "...Now,
there’s little
doubt that
autonomous
vehicles are the
next frontier of
transportation.
...however, there
are a number of
roadblocks to
surmount:
infrastructure
issues,
restrictive state
licensing
policies, driver
education,
cybersecurity and
privacy
vulnerabilities,
and more. For
innovators,
regulators, and
policymakers,
solving these
problems will
involve a long
to-do list, but a
pointless
regulatory
scuffle over
technology
standards should
not be on it.
So why is the
federal agency
responsible for
our road safety
looking to
introduce a
totally avoidable
roadblock to
automotive
innovation by
mandating a
severely flawed
technological
standard for
vehicle
communications?...".
Read
More Hmmmm...
I love
it..." a pointless regulatory scuffle" and "a severely flawed technological standard".
Only DSRC. could
engender such
criticism....
"...Imagine
if the government
had demanded that
Henry Ford equip
every one of his
Model Ts with
telegraph machines
that could only
communicate with
other Model Ts. A
19th century
communications
technology
mandated for use
in a 20th century
innovation would
have been a
crushing blow to
innovation and
competition in the
emerging
automobile
industry. That’s
precisely what is
happening with the
DSRC mandate, and
the same potential
for future
innovation is at
risk with its
implementation...".
Alain
D. Hall, Apr 17,
"In the race to
the autonomous
revolution,
developers have
realized there
aren’t enough
hours in a day to
clock the
real-world miles
needed to teach
cars how to drive
themselves. Which
is why Grand Theft
Auto V is in the
mix.
The blockbuster
video game is one
of the simulation
platforms
researchers and
engineers
increasingly rely
on to test and
train the machines
being primed to
take control of
the family sedan.
Companies from
Ford Motor Co. to
Alphabet Inc.’s
Waymo may boast
about putting
no-hands models on
the market in
three years, but
there’s a lot
still to learn
about drilling
algorithms in how
to respond when,
say, a mattress
falls off a truck
on the
freeway....The
idea isn’t that
the highways and
byways of the
fictional city of
Los Santos would
ever be a
substitute for
bona fide asphalt.
But the game “is
the richest
virtual
environment that
we could extract
data from,”
said Alain
Kornhauser..." Read
More Hmmmm...
Well...we
have a
slightly
different view
of history wrt
to GTA5. The
'Alain view'
is that Chenyi
Chen*16
independently
started
investigating
the use of
virtual
environments
as a source of
Image -
Affordances
data sets to
use as the
training sets
in a 'Direct
Perception'
approach to
creating a
self-driving
algorithm.
Images of the
road ahead are
converted into
the
instantaneous
geometry that
is implied by
those image.
An optimal
controller
then
determines the
the steering,
brake and
throttle
values to best
drive the
car. The
critical
element in
that process
are the Image - Affordances data sets which need to be
pristine.
Chenyi
demonstrated
in his PhD
dissertation
, summarized
in the ICCV2015
paper,
that by using
the pristine
Image -
Affordances
data sets from
an open-source
game TORCS
one could have
a virtual car
drive a
virtual race
course without
crashing.
More
importantly,
when tested on
images from
real driving
situations,
the computed
affordances
were close to
correct.
This encouraged us to look for more appropriate
virtual
environments.
For many
reasons,
including:
"wouldn't it
be amazing if
'Grand Theft
Auto 5'
actually
generated some
positive
'redeeming
social value'
by
contributing
to the
development of
algorithms
that actually
made cars
safer; saving
grief,
injuries and
lives".
Consequently,
in the Fall of
2015, Artur
Filipowicz'17
began to
investigate
using GTA5 to
train
Convolutional
Neural
Networks to
perform some
of the Direct
Perception
aspects of
automated
driving. With
Jeremiah Liu,
he continued
his efforts in
this direction
last summer
which were presented
at TRB in
January.
Yesterday, he
and Nyan
Bhat'17
turned in
their Senior
Theses focused
on this topic.
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 Hmmm... Now linked are 1st Drafts of the chapters and the powerPoint summaries of these elements. Final Report should be available by early February. The major finding is, nationwide there exists sufficient casual ridesharing potential that a well--managed Nationwide Fleet of about 30M aTaxis (in conjunction with the existing air, Amtrak and Urban fixed-rail systems) could serve the vehicular mobility needs of the whole nation with VMT 40% less than today's automobiles while providing a Level-of-Service (LoS) largely equivalent and in many ways superior than is delivered by the personal automobile today. Also interesting are the findings as to the substantial increased patronage opportunities available to Amtrak and each of the fixed rail transit systems around the country because the aTaxis solve the '1st and last mile' problem. While all of this is extremely good news, the challenging news is that since all of these fixed rail systems currently lose money on each passenger served, the additional patronage would likely mean that they'll lose even more money in the future. :-( Alain
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 Hmmm...Bravo! The Key Findings & Recommendations are excellent. This is an excellent report (but it largely misses goods movement.) Especially 5.1 (read 'semi-autonomous' as 'Self-driving' and 'full-automation' as 'Driverless'. My view: Driverless may well be at the heals of Self-driving because it is a business play rather than a consumer play. Driverless will be ordered by the hundreds or thousands rather than individually.) and, of course Ch 10: Ownership (the business model) is more important than technology. Alain
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) Hmmm...Fantastic statements and I appreciate that the fundamental basis and motivator is SAFETY. We all have recognized safety as a necessary condition that must be satisfied if this technology is to be successful. (unfortunately it is not a sufficient condition, (in a pure math context)). This policy statement appropriately reaffirms this necessary condition. Alain
"...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) Hmmm...Perfect!
Alain
"...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..." Hmmm...
Well done.
Alain
"...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..." Hmmm... Excellent. Alain
"...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)..." Hmmm... Yes. Alain
"...I.
Vehicle
Performance
Guidance for
Automated
Vehicles
(p11) A. Guidance:
if a vehicle is
compliant within
the existing FMVSS
regulatory
framework and
maintains a
conventional
vehicle design,
there is currently
no specific
federal legal
barrier to an HAV
being offered for
sale.(footnote 7)
However,
manufacturers and
other entities
designing new
automated vehicle
systems
are subject to
NHTSA’s defects,
recall and
enforcement
authority.
(footnote 8) .
and the "15
Cross-cutting
Areas of
Guidance"
p17)
In
sum this is a
very good
document and
displays just
how far DoT
policy has
come from
promoting v2v,
DSRC and
centralized
control,
"connected",
focus to
creating an
environment
focused on
individual
vehicles that
responsibly
take care of
themselves.
Kudos to
Secretary Foxx
for this 180
degree policy
turn focused
on safety.
Once done
correctly, the
HAV will yield
the early
safety
benefits that
will stimulate
continued
improvements
that, in turn,
will yield the
great
mobility,
environmental
and
quality-of-life
benefits
afforded by
driverless
mobility.
What are not addressed are commercial trucking and buses/mass transit. NHTSA is auto focused, so maybe FMCSA is preparing similar guidelines. FTA (Federal Transit Administration) seems nowhere in sight. Alain
Hmmm...What we know now (and don't know):