P. Brown,
June 17, "In
this isolated
agricultural
community of
7,000 in the
Central
Valley, one of
the state’s
poorest cities
and a place
where nearly a
quarter of
households
don’t have
cars, Mrs.
Lopez works as
a “raitera” —
driving people
to the
doctor’s
office, the
courthouse and
other places
found only in
Fresno, 52
miles away.
She ferries
asthmatic
children and
women who have
overdosed on
prescription
pills to the
hospital, and
students who
have missed
the bus to the
high school in
another town.
She once
delivered a
baby in her
car, which has
covered
194,000 miles
and
counting....More
broadly,
“people in
rural
communities
really get
social
capital,” said
Katherine
Freund,
founder of ITN
America,
a nonprofit
network of
more than 700
drivers across
the country,
most of them
volunteers,
who give rides
to seniors and
the visually
impaired..."
Read more
Hmmmm... Katherine, you've created a really
wonderful
entity that
should be
embraced in
every
community.
You form the
basis of
providing
mobility for
everyone once
Jeff and Eric
roll out their
driverless
cars and allow
you to
leverage and
scale your
volunteers.
Alain
F. Lambert, June 14, "Self-driving cars are now a software and big data problem. Most of Tesla’s competitors in the field are working on expanding their test fleets in order to gather more data. GM announced yesterday that it is adding 130 autonomous Chevy Bolt EV prototypes to its test fleet and Waymo recently deployed 500 self-driving Pacifica hybrid minivans in Phoenix. Tesla is going a completely different *route* by using its large fleet of vehicles already in the hands of customers to gather data, which is especially significant with its vehicles equipped with second generation hardware.
Today, we’ve learned that the automaker’s latest policy change has enabled gathering videos from those vehicles which is really opening the floodgates of Autopilot data gathering... "...We want to be super clear that these short video clips are not linked to your vehicle identification number. In order to protect your privacy, we have ensured that there is no way to search our system for clips that are associated with a specific car.” (When releasing an Autopilot 2.0 update last month, Tesla also asked owners for the authorization to collect videos from the Autopilot cameras.) .." Read more Hmmmm... Elon, congratulations on embracing, empowering and benefiting your customers by creating a process by which customers who wish to help improve this most valuable product and benefit directly from the offered help through the over-the-air update process, can . Even if only a few of your customers opt in, they and all other customers will benefit. Improving this technology requires a village. Thank you for creating that village. Hopefully what will be learned will be shared more broadly with others who adopt this approach. That way an even broader community will be able to benefit, faster. Since this is all about SAFETY, this is where the industry should be cooperating to maximize societal benefit and not use SAFETY as a competitive advantage. Effective competition can be found in other areas. Alain
J.
Kastrenakes,
June 12,
"Waymo is done
driving around
the cute,
steering-wheel-free
autonomous
cars that were
introduced by
Google back in
2014.
In a blog post
this
afternoon,
Waymo leaders
write that
time has come
to “retire our
fleet of
Fireflies” —
their name for
the tiny cars
— and focus
instead of
integrating
self-driving
technology
into other
vehicles, like
the Chrysler
Pacifica
minivans Waymo
put on the
road earlier
this year.
“By focusing
on
mass-produced
vehicles like
the Pacifica
minivan, we’ll
be able to
bring fully
self-driving
technology to
more people,
more quickly,”
the Waymo
leaders write.
They also say
that focusing
on
mass-produced
vehicles opens
up more
opportunities
for testing,
since the
Fireflies were
limited to a
top speed of
25 miles per
hour...." Read
more Hmmmm... I hope this isn't
a move away
from
Driverless and
reverting to
the
Self-driving
'Dark-side".
Fireflies were
driverless,
(although I'm
not sure that
Waymo ever
tested them in
mixed traffic
with no one in
them. Have
they reported
to the
California
Driverless
testing
regulations??)
Pacificas have
steering
wheels and
people able to
take over and
are thus the
Dark Side (aka
Self-driving).
Alain
Y. Ahn, June 12, "Back in 2013, our prototype vehicle was nothing more than post-it note origami. This miniature paper car was the product of countless hours dreaming up what a fully self-driving vehicle could look like. Should it be a space-age batmobile? A decked-out entertainment pod? Or perhaps a living room on wheels? In the end, we landed on the friendly two-seater vehicle, with no steering wheel or pedals, and a computer under the hood to handle every part of driving...." Read more Hmmmm... Nice! :-) Alain
K. Hart,
June 12,
"Nvidia has
been best
known for
building chips
powerful
enough for 3-D
graphics and
serious
gaming, which
still accounts
for about half
of the
company's
business. One
of the newest
(and fastest
growing) focus
areas for the
Silicon Valley
chipmaker is
powering the
artificial
intelligence
needed for
self-driving
cars. We
caught up with
Danny Shapiro,
senior
director of
Automotive at
Nvidia..." Read
more Hmmmm... Danny, nice
interview.
Alain
E Griffith,
June 5, "The
biggest
problem
preventing our
self-driving
future from
becoming a
self-driving
reality is,
naturally,
humans. We’re
unpredictable,
we jaywalk, we
ride our bikes
the wrong way
down a
one-way. We
don’t alert
mapping
companies when
we have
initiated a
construction
project that
blocks off
half the road,
or installed a
new curb. The
result is that
self-driving
cars are great
on the open
road. But
constantly
changing,
people-packed
dense, urban
areas? Not so
much.
That’s one
problem
Carmera, a New
York
City-based
startup that’s
been in
stealth mode
for the last
two years, has
set out to
tackle. The
company’s
founders
observed that
constantly
refreshed
mapping data
would be
crucial for
any company
working on
self-driving
technology,
and that the
available
options
weren’t ideal.
By CEO and
co-founder Ro
Gupta’s
measure, the
current market
for 3D mapping
data falls
into three
buckets:..." Read more Hmmmm... Ro, All the
best.. Also
see Fred
Fishkin
interview.
Alain
A. Davies,
June 214, "On
a clear, sunny
day at a
vineyard in
the northern
California
town of Ukiah,
a most unusual
train chugs
through a
field of
barely budding
syrah grapes.
Well, it
doesn't chug
so much as
whoosh because
this
train—actually,
a one-sixth
scale
train—doesn't
rely upon a
diesel engine
or electricity
to get around.
It uses vacuum
power and
heavy duty
magnets.
The
89-year-old
man who built
it believes it
could change
how the world
moves.... Read
more Hmmmm... And see video.
Maybe??? Not
as crazy as
some of the
other stuff.
Alain
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
Y. Tan, June 6, "China's latest mode of public transportation is a bus, tram and train rolled into one. Its maker, Chinese rail transit firm CRRC, is calling it a "smart bus," but it's a lot more than that. Like a train, it's modular and carriages can be added on; but like a bus, it runs on the road. Amazingly, the carriage will follow a preset path and won't need a driver — but it won't need tracks to be laid, either. The train is equipped with sensors that'll allow it to follow white-dotted lines on the road...." Read more Hmmmm... Don't believe the "...won't need a driver..." Whatever! Alain
Press
release, June
7, "Bosch and
the Dutch map
and traffic
information
provider
TomTom have
achieved a
breakthrough
in the
development of
high-resolution maps for automated driving..." Read
more Hmmmm...or maybe don't T
read more.
here is so
much hyperbole
here that
you'd think it
was written by
"The Donald"
himself.
Chance that
this will be
used for
localization
in anything
but very
special
circumstances
is "slim to
none". Alain
Press release, June 7, "Honda today announced that it is targeting the year 2025 for the introduction of vehicles with highly-automated driving capability in most driving situations (SAE Level 4... or unusual driving environments, where the driver would be required to resume control....) This new goal builds upon earlier-announced plans for Honda and Acura vehicles to have highly-automated freeway driving capability (SAE Level 3) by 2020. These are critical steps in Honda's commitment to contribute to a collision-free society....
...Honda is
rapidly
advancing its
deployment of
advanced
safety and
driver-assistive
technologies...Nearly
a
half-million
Honda and
Acura vehicles
on U.S. roads
today are
equipped with
these
technologies,
which include
autonomous
emergency
braking (AEB)
via the
Collision
Mitigation
Braking System
(CMBS™), Lane
Keeping Assist
(LKAS), Road
Departure
Mitigation
(RDM) and
Adaptive
Cruise Control
(ACC)...." Read
more Hmmmm...Nice, BUT... Notice
the caveat
"... most
driving .". Which means that this is just "Self-driving"
and NOT
"Driverless".
This is
nothing but...
same-old,
same-old, or
little better
than what
Tesla has on
the market
today. I do
give Honda
enormous
credit for
putting "...half-million..." Safe-driving cars on US roads today.
Hopefully
these "...advanced
safety and
driver-assistive
technologies..." that Honda has deployed really work. Assuming
they do, then
it will remain
to be seen if
the "2025
Level 4"
technologies
will
significantly
improve
safety. "...advanced
safety and
driver-assistive
technologies..." certainly
will need to
work (and much
more) and the
self-driving
may entice
customers to
buy, so Safety
is indeed
achieved
through the
'back door',
but the credit
should go to
the "...advanced
safety and
driver-assistive
technologies..." . Alain
D.
Etherington,
June 13, "The
National
Highway
Traffic Safety
Administration
has bestowed
its highest
ever SUV
safety rating
to Tesla’s
Model X. The
Model X earned
a 5-star
rating in
every category
and
sub-category
that NHTSA
tests, using
the government
body’s own
independent
testing
process. This
also puts the
Model X second
only to the
Model S in
terms of
overall injury
probability to
passengers per
NHTSA’s
ranking
system....NHTSA’s
rating system
predicts
around a 93
percent chance
of a passenger
in the Model X
walking away
from serious
crashes...Read
more Hmmmm...What about its
ability to
avoid crash.
Why doesn't
NHTSA include
that in its
safety rating
system. Make
it a `10-star'
rating
system. 5
stars for
crash
mitigation and
5 stars for
crash
avoidance. X
might get a
7.5. Most
other cars
wouldn't break
5.0. That
rating system
would cure the
current grade
inflation.
C'mon NHTSA,
up your game.
Alain
K. Mahney,
June 18, "..."
Do
NOT read.
Hmmmm...Newsweek, you have become totally
pathetic.So
bad. Worse
than a C'mon
Man! Alain
American
Institute of
Architects
1735 New York
Avenue
Northwest
Washington, DC
20006
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
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):