2020-05-07
edition of the 8th year of SmartDrivingCars
While COVID-19 Batters The Airlines, Driverless Car Technology Marches On
S. Rice, May 4, “A while back, my colleague and I wrote an article about how driverless cars will disrupt the airline industry. We were not the first ones to say this, but we were the first to publish consumer opinion data to back up our claims. This is particularly true for short haul flights, as the majority of respondents said they preferred a driverless car for road trips up to eight hours over the hassles of flying commercial—even when the flight might take less time. Their reasons included wanting to avoid long security lines, delayed flights, lost baggage, small seats, and crowded airplanes.
Dr. Mattie Milner recently defended her dissertation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which focused on what type of person would prefer a driverless car over flying commercial. Her findings showed people prefer driverless cars over commercial flight for short and midrange drives. …“ Read more Hmmmm… Many/most prefer driving their own conventional cars rather than flying commercial on short haul routes (500 miles or less). This has been true for years. Driverless cars would simply offer the same opportunity for those that for whatever reason don’t have access to drive their own car. Airlines have struggled serving short-haul flights since 9-11 because of the time overhead introduced by the additional security. Physical distancing may well be the nail in the coffin for local airports and short-haul flights. Cargo flights could provide some respite. If Amtrak ever went “engineerless” (how trivial is that compared to driverless cars!?!) it could run frequent 1 (or 2) car “trains” between most cities. That would really be the nail in the short-haul airline coffin. Heavens… the freight railroads could run frequent inter-modal freight services. Whew!!! Alain
SmartDrivingCars Pod-Cast Episode 155 - Alex Roy2
###
F. Fishkin, April 29, “The continuing impact of Covid-19 on autonomous vehicle progress. But it may not be all bad news. Alex Roy…host of the No Parking Podcast and Director of Special Operations at Argo AI….joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus Tesla, Intel, Lyft, Uber and more. Listen and subscribe!” “Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!”. Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay … Alain
SmartDrivingCars Zoom-Cast Episode 155- Alex Roy2
###
Video version… Watch Zoom-Cast 155 - Alex Roy2 …. Alain
SmartDrivingCar Zoom-inar 001 The Driverless New Normal Debate
-
SmartDrivingCar PodCast (Audio Only) Smart Driving Cars: The Driverless New Normal Debate
-
Zoom Audience Questions (Only a few were addressed in Zoom-inar)
Note:…
SmartDrivingCar Zoom-inar 002 -
Transit in the New Normal...Will the
Bus be Thrown Under the Bus?...
Tentatively set for Monday, May 18,
2:00pm New York Time
The Relentless Startup Fast-Tracking Ford’s Self-Driving Cars
Alex Davis, May 5, “Meet Bryan Salesky and the team of resourceful engineers at Argo, the little company trying to crack a big problem: safe autonomous driving….
Given his early career trajectory, you might be surprised that Bryan Salesky now finds himself at the forefront of the race to deliver the self-driving car. Red-haired and blue-eyed, he was born in the Detroit suburb of Woodhaven, Michigan, where his father did factory work in a steel mill. As the steel industry cratered in the 1990s, his mother remarried and the family moved around, winding up in Pittsburgh.
Salesky earned a Bachelor of Science
in Engineering at the University of
Pittsburgh in 2002 and, uninterested
in continuing the kind of education
that meant writing papers for
professors, decided against grad
school. Instead, he took a job at
Union Switch & Signal, the company
George Westinghouse founded in 1881.
There, Salesky worked on software that
kept trains from colliding while
traversing "dark territory," the long
stretches of track ungoverned by
signal systems...
Salesky was slotted in as Urmson’s lieutenant. The man who had kept real trains on their tracks would now keep the metaphorical ones on schedule….” Read more Hmmmm… Alex, very nice article!! Both of you, keep up the good work. Alain
Do Autonomous Vehicles Need LiDAR??
S. Rangwalla, April 30, “… Typically, the argument for not needing LiDAR as an obstacle avoidance and safety sensor goes as follows – “humans do not have a LiDAR and they drive reasonably well, so why should a computer need LiDAR?” The answer seems pretty obvious - computers today do not replicate human intelligence – they do not think like humans, from a perception and decision-making perspective. And they need other crutches as stated eloquently by my fellow Forbes author, Brad Templeton. Additionally, LiDARs for AVs are also used to develop 3D maps and provide vehicle localization (which could be achieved through other means like cameras and GPS)….” Read more Hmmmm…. Very good presentation of the yeas and nays. Localization (SLAM) was the original motivator for LiDAR; however, I argue that 3D maps and precise localization are neither necessary nor justifiable. Maps (paper, digital or HD) have no information about objects moving near the car being controlled. Collision avoidance is all about locations and motions of nearby object relative to the car being controlled. That’s why I can drive pretty well, actually really well if I’m paying attention to driving the car, with only a vague notion of “where am I”. All I need to know is “just ahead turn right, left or keep going straight. By recognizing where I am relative to the lane markings and signs along the road, I end up usually making good decisions and, so far, not making any catastrophic decision. I don’t need LiDAR nor HD maps Alain
Volvo bucks the industry, will sell LIDAR-equipped self-driving cars to customers by 2022
A. Hawkins, May 6, “In 2018, Volvo made a “strategic investment” in a little-known Florida-based LIDAR company called Luminar to use the startup’s high-resolution long-range sensor to build self-driving cars. Today, Volvo is announcing that new LIDAR-equipped cars, which the Swedish automaker says will be able to drive themselves on highways with no human intervention, will start rolling off the production line in 2022.
It's an ambitious plan that carries
its own risks and sets Volvo apart
from its competitors, many of which
are planning to launch self-driving
technology as part of fleets of
robotaxis rather than production cars
for personal ownership. They argue
this will help amortize the costs of
not just the LIDAR, but also the
high-powered computing power needed to
enable self-driving cars. But Volvo
believes that by limiting the
operational domain — or conditions
under which the car can drive
autonomously — to just highways, it is
creating vehicle technology that is
not only safer, but less costly as
well.
"We are saying that for a particular
stretch of highway, we are aiming for
an unsupervised experience," Henrik
Green, Volvo's chief technology
officer, told The Verge. "Our view
is that by isolating the domain to
particular sets of highways, which
we can control and verify, we
believe that's the safe entry into
autonomous technology and autonomous
experience for users." ...". [Read more](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21248415/volvo-luminar-lidar-self-driving-highway-pilot-spa2) Hmmmm.... Big
step here. If this enables
Volvo's Emergency Braking System
to reliably determine if a
stationary object ahead can be
safely passed under and, thus,
not be assumed to be a "false
positive" then this is great
news. (One silver lining in our
Covid-19 new normal is that
"false positives" and "false
negatives" are concepts whose
implications are much better
appreciated.) See also Timothy
Lee's reporting... [Volvo plans cars with lidar and "eyes off" highway driving by 2022](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/05/volvo-cars-will-have-lidar-comparable-to-self-driving-cars-by-2022/). Alain
Tesla achieves record safety with Autopilot — more than 50% improvement
F. Lambert, May 2, "Tesla achieved a
record level of safety with Autopilot
with more than 50% improvement during
the last quarter, according to its
safety report.
Since 2018, Tesla has been trying to
create a benchmark for its improvement
in Autopilot safety by releasing a
quarterly report that compares the
number of miles per accident on
Autopilot versus off of Autopilot....
In October 2018, we reported on Tesla's
first safety report, which was for the
third quarter 2018. At the time, Tesla
said that it registered "one accident
per 3.34 million miles driven in which
drivers had Autopilot engaged."
For miles driven without Autopilot,
Tesla said that registered "one accident
or crash-like event for every 1.92
million miles driven."
Over 2019, Tesla's results were up and
down, but the new data for the first
quarter 2020 shows a significant
improvement:
In the first quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.68 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.99 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.42 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 479,000 miles.
That's a 50% improvement over the
previous quarter and the most
significant improvement yet.:... " [Read more](https://electrek.co/2020/05/02/tesla-record-safety-autopilot-improvement/) Hmmmm... There
are, of course caveats, some
reported by Fred. The fundamental
problem here is that there is no
"peer review" of these claims.
Once again, I offer to do the peer
review if Tesla releases the
underlying data. Until an
independent entity, such as
myself, has access to those data
and performs a similar analysis
these safety claims are going to
be heavily discounted by even the
most loyal to Tesla. Alain
Let’s Get Technical: Ford Offers Self-Driving Dataset to Spark Research and Development
T. Lockwood, May 5, "Every second a
self-driving vehicle is operating, it's
gathering information about the world
around it. Cameras and LiDAR help it
identify vehicles, pedestrians, signs
and anything else that might be out in
or near the streets. Radar helps the
vehicle keep track of how fast things
are moving around it.
Without all this data, self-driving cars
wouldn't even be able to leave a parking
lot. These vehicles need to process a
constant stream of information to safely
navigate their surroundings, but even
before they can do that, high-quality
data is needed to help engineers and
researchers create software that can
properly teach self-driving vehicles how
to analyze their environments.
To further spur innovation in this
exciting field, Ford is releasing a
comprehensive self-driving vehicle
dataset to the academic and research
community. There's no better way of
promoting research and development than
ensuring the academic community has the
data it needs to create effective
self-driving vehicle algorithms...." [Read more](https://medium.com/self-driven/lets-get-technical-ford-offers-self-driving-dataset-to-spark-research-and-development-81d0f035e3b0) Hmmmm.... Very
nice; however... 1. Personally, I
would prefer if Tesla released its
data, see above article... 2.
Others have released similar data
sets including those that are part
of the [Waymo Challenge](https://waymo.com/open/challenges)... and 3. What
bothers me most is that so much of
the data that is being
released/processed is useless.
LiDAR point clouds of the trees
and buildings outside the roadway
cross-section ... why aren't they
immediately discarded as
irrelevant???? One of the things
that our brain does really well,
mine especially, is to forget and
disregard irrelevant data. LiDAR
point clouds make for nice
pictures, but an extremely large
percentage of those data points
are totally irrelevant. I need to
be educated as to why they would
be included in the distribution of
any released data set except to
tune some algorithm to purge then
ASAP.
There is also a misleading comment about information sharing between neighboring vehicles. …” Most datasets only offer data from a single vehicle, but sensor information from two vehicles can help researchers explore entirely new scenarios, especially when the two encounter each other at different points along their respective routes….” Such information is at a completely higher level of abstraction than the sensor data that is being released. To me, even thinking about merging raw sensor data from two or more vehicles in real-time to perform scene cognition is a luxury not even Ford can justify. My daughter Michelle always reminds me that she only tries to get involved with things that are good idea! Are they trying to send everyone else down the wrong track with this suggestion??? Alain
Lyft lays off almost 1,000 staffers as Uber weighs big layoffs
T. Lee, April 29, “Lyft is laying of 982 people, the company said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. That represents 17 percent of the company’s official workforce (the company considers its thousands of drivers to be independent contractors).
An additional 288 employees will be
furloughed, Lyft said. Most of the
remaining salaried employees will take
10 percent pay cuts, while executives
will face pay cuts of 20 to 30
percent.
The cuts reflect the dire state of
Lyft's business during the coronavirus
lockdown. Demand for on-demand
passenger rides has plummeted. Lyft
didn't disclose booking figures in its
filing, but The Information's Amir
Efrati [reported last week](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/7120d9) that Uber's global
bookings for ride hailing were down 80
percent. Lyft has presumably suffered
similarly large losses...." [Read more](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/lyft-lays-off-almost-1000-staffers-as-uber-weighs-big-layoffs/) Hmmmm.... Not
a pretty sight. In a sense,
since it can't scale without
Driverless, it might as well
scale back the overhead that is
commensurate with a dollar
stock. Note... The market
absolutely disagrees with me!
If you lose less, price goes up,
irrespective of the probability
of achieving a price/earnings
ratio that might justify such a
price. [Lyft stock](https://www.google.com/search?q=lyft+stock+price), [Uber stock](https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+stock+price) prices. Alain
Lyft says its ride-hailing business is down 70 percent because of COVID-19
A. Hawkins, May 6, “Lyft’s ride-hailing business is down 70 percent, year over year, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s chief executives said in an earnings call with investors Wednesday. The company’s ride volume hit a bottom in the second week of April, plummeting 75 percent year-over-year, and has since gradually risen in the final weeks of the month. …
But Lyft’s earnings report for the first quarter of 2020 was slightly less grim than it’s ride-hailing business.”. Read more Hmmmm…. Is it really less grim… Way towards better earnings is serving many fewer customers. Isn’t that really bad for a business that promised big rewards for big scale? Alain
Uber lays off 14 percent of its workforce in COVID-19-related cost-cutting
A. Hawkins, May 6, “Uber will lay off 3,700 full-time employees, or around 14 percent of its global workforce, the company said in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forgo his salary for the rest of the year as the company continues to struggle in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Uber’s ride-hailing business has dried up as a result of widespread shutdown orders due to the pandemic. In a call with investors in March, Khosrowshahi said its gross bookings in most major cities were down by as much as 70 percent. The Information recently reported that the company’s overall business was down 80 percent year over year. Recent gains in its food delivery Uber Eats division have failed to make up for big losses in its core ride-hailing product. The company will report its first quarter earnings on Thursday.”. Read more Hmmmm…. Whew! Didn’t Uber claim not long ago, that Uber Eats was going to save it and isn’t it “the best of times” for food delivery??? Alain
Can a Pandemic Stop the Apocalypse?
R. Lanctot, April 2, “The negative impacts of the coronavirus, COVID-19, on the automotive industry continue to radiate out from the closure of factories and dealerships (for vehicle sales, while service operations continue) to employee furloughs and plunging stock prices. At the same time, the global pandemic has begun to undermine the investment rationale behind four core industry-wide initiatives collectively described as “CASE” or “ACES:” i.e. Connected, Autonomous, Shared, and Electrified driving. ..
The last horseman standing is connectivity. It may well be that connectivity is the sole surviving core automotive technology iniitiative that survives the COVID-19 scourge. The industry may abandon autonomous vehicles, shared vehicles, and electrification - but connectivity seems bound to endure….
Not even COVID-19 can stand in the way of the movement to connect cars. For the foreseeable future, the pandemic will continue to wreak havoc with autonomous, electrification, and sharing. Car connections will survive even this apocalypse.”. Read more Hmmmm…. Unfortunately, Connectivity died before Covid-19 simply because it needs to achieve significant market adoption before it can begin to deliver any meaningful value to anyone beyond those peddling gizmos. And even then it is a stretch. The only way Covid-19 brings back the C is if the central politburo needs it to control the masses. Alain
Elon Musk talks Tesla cars playing augmented reality games while driving
F. Lambert, May 4, "In a new Twitter
comment, Elon Musk talks about possibly
developing a game for Tesla cars using
augmented reality game while driving… or
Minecraft.
For the last two years, Tesla has been
devoting some resources to integrate
video games into its user experience. It
plans to do more of that in the future,
as Musk says that Tesla's goal is to
increase owners' happiness and make the
ownership experience more fun:... " [Read more](https://electrek.co/2020/05/04/elon-musk-tesla-minecraft-augmented-reality-video-games/) Hmmmm... This is so totally
irresponsible. Drivers should be
paying attention to driving and
not ever playing video games at
the same time. People will die!!
Alain
Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for $1B to boost its autonomous car division
I. Lunden, May 3, “Some big M&A is afoot in Israel in the world of smart transportation. According to multiple reports and sources that have contacted TechCrunch, chip giant Intel is in the final stages of a deal to acquire Moovit, a startup that applies AI and big data analytics to track traffic and provide transit recommendations to some 800 million people globally. The deal is expected to close in the coming days at a price believed to be in the region of $1 billion.
We have contacted Nir Erez, the
founder and CEO of Moovit, as well as
Intel spokespeople for a comment on
the reports and will update this story
as we learn more. For now, Moovit's
spokesperson has not denied the
reports and what we have been told
directly....." [Read more](https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/03/intel-to-buy-smart-urban-transit-startup-moovit-for-1b-to-boost-its-autonomous-car-division/) Hmmmm... Given
that Intel Capital is already a
strategic investor, they must
know what they are doing.
But... are there "800M people"
who even use transit around the
world, let alone ask Moovit for
recommendations???? Are the many
Intel stock holders providing a
nice payday for the few Intel
Capital insiders??? Alain
Tesla researchers publish work on hybrid battery enabling all-electric car range extender
F. Lambert, May 4, "Tesla, through its
research arm in Canada, has published
the results of research on Hybrid
Lithium-Ion/Lithium Metal Cells, which
can be used to create what can be best
described as all-electric cars with a
range extender.
Typically, when we talk about electric
vehicles with a range extender, we are
talking about a battery-powered electric
car with a small gasoline combustion
engine that acts as a generator to
recharge the battery when the user wants
to have more range.
The BMW i3 Rex is a good example. It was
equipped with a battery pack enabling
126 miles (203 km) of all-electric
range, which could be extended to 200
miles (320 km) with its combustion
engine.
Now in a new paper, Tesla's battery
research group comes up with a similar
concept – but it remains all-electric.
How?.:... " [Read more](https://electrek.co/2020/05/04/tesla-hybrid-battery-electric-car-range-extender/) Hmmmm... ???? Not
at all like the BMW i3 Rex or the
Chevy Volt or a modern railroad
locomotive. Each have ICE
charging "batteries" that power
electric traction motors. This is
just a "better" battery, maybe...
if by "better" we mean higher
power density. If better also
includes cost of materials,
external environmental cost and
geo=political costs, then ...????
Alain
Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
J. Markoff, Oct 9, 2010 (essentially 10 years ago…) “Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving.
The car is a project of Google,
which has been working in secret but
in plain view on vehicles that can
drive themselves, using
artificial-intelligence software
that can sense anything near the car
and mimic the decisions made by a
human driver.
With someone behind the wheel to
take control if something goes awry
and a technician in the passenger
seat to monitor the navigation
system, seven test cars have driven
1,000 miles without human
intervention and more than 140,000
miles with only occasional human
control. One even drove itself down
Lombard Street in San Francisco, one
of the steepest and curviest streets
in the nation. The only accident,
engineers said, was when one Google
car was rear-ended while stopped at
a traffic light.
Autonomous cars are years from mass
production, but technologists who
have long dreamed of them believe
that they can transform society as
profoundly as the Internet has...."
[Read more](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?referringSource=articleShare) Hmmmm...We
knew the first 80% was going
to be easy. The next 19% are
really hard, the next 0.9% is
really really hard, .... But
I remain confident that we'll
soon become substantially
better than good enough.
Alain
New Roman""> [Draft](https://www.dropbox.com/s/p7t7fwkm1wu9n3g/ProgramDraft1_4thAnnualPrincetonSDC_Summit.pdf?dl=0)Princeton
SmartDrivingCar
Summit
Postponed until
Evening Oct. 20 through Oct. 22,
2020 A. Kornhauser, Feb 6,
"The focus of the Summit this year
will be moving beyond the AI and the
Sensors to addressing the challenges
of Commercialization and the delivery
of tangible value to communities.
We've made enormous progress with the
technology. We're doing the
investment; however, this investment
delivers value only if is
commercialized: made available and is
used by consumers in large numbers.
Demos and one-offs are "great", but to
deliver value that is anywhere near
commensurate with the magnitude of the
investment made to date, initial
deployments need to scale. We can't
just have "Morgantown PRT Systems"
whose initial deployment has been
nothing but enormously successful for
45 years (an essentially perfect
safety record, an excellent
availability record and customer
valued mobility). Unfortunately, the
system was never expanded or
duplicated anywhere. It didn't
scale. It is a one-off.
Tests, demos and one-offs are nice niche deployments; however, what one really needs are initial deployments that have the opportunity to grow, be replicated and scale. In 1888, Frank Sprague, successfully deployed a small electric street railway system in Richmond, Va. which became the reference for many other cites. “… By 1889 110 electric railways incorporating Sprague’s equipment had been begun or planned on several continents…” Substantial scaled societal benefits emerged virally from this technology. It was eventually supplanted by the conventional automobile but for more than 30 years it delivered substantial improvements to the quality-of-life for many.
In part, the 4th Summit will focus on
defining the "Richmond" of Affordable
Shared-ride On-demand
Mobility-as-a-Service. The initial
Operational Design Domain (ODD) that
safely accommodates Driverless Mobility
Machines that people actually choose to
use and becomes the envy of communities
Read more Hmmmm... [Draft Program](https://www.dropbox.com/s/p7t7fwkm1wu9n3g/ProgramDraft1_4thAnnualPrincetonSDC_Summit.pdf?dl=0) is in flux.
Consider all named individuals as
"Invited yet to be confirmed".
Alain
C’mon Man!(These folks didn’t
get/read the memo)
##
Sunday
Supplement
Will the pandemic map a new course for autonomous cars?
Fulton, May 4, “From where we sit, it looks much less like an economy that could benefit from autonomous, self-driving cars that wheel their snoozing occupants safely from place to place, than just three months ago. For that matter, we can probably scratch our heads now about whether that moon shot by 2024 is a great idea. Our priorities have been shifted for us….” Hmmmm…Mostly 1950s Sunday Supplement with a dash of current click-Bait. This vision died shortly after Daimler’s introduction of their F 015 Luxury in Motion at the CES in January 2015 (5 years ago!!). Way too difficult/expensive to bring to reality as just another toy for the super entitled, super rich. Much more attractive as mobility machines for the masses. A concept that has zero traction in Sunday Supplements. But that’s OK… that’s a real market that can also deliver substantial value to society. Alain
Half-Baked
Click-Bait
Calendar
of Upcoming Events:s
until Evening Oct. 20 -> Oct
22.
SmartDrivingCar Summit
Princeton University Princeton, NJ
On the More Technical Side
http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/
###
Recent Pod–Casts & Zoom-Casts
##
SmartDrivingCars Pod-Cast Episode 154 - Dan Sperling
###
F. Fishkin, April 29, “Can ride sharing rebound after the pandemic? Daniel Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus Tesla, Waymo, Ford and more.” “Alexa, play the Smart Driving Cars podcast!”. Ditto with Siri, and GooglePlay … Alain
SmartDrivingCars Zoom-Cast Episode 154- Dan Sperling
###
SmartDrivingCars Pod-Cast Episode 153 - Dick Mudge2
###
F. Fishkin, April 17, “The plummeting price of oil and what it may mean for mobility, ride sharing and the economy.. Dick Mudge, founder and president of Compass Transportation & Technology joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus GM, Uber and more on the Coronavirus impact.”
SmartDrivingCars Zoom-Cast Episode 153- Dick Mudge2
###
Smart Driving Cars Pod-Cast Episode 152 - Brad Templeton
###
F. Fishkin, April 17, “Can robotaxis survive a pandemic? Internet pioneer, self driving car consultant and author Brad Templeton joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin in a wide ranging chat on the impact today and the future. Plus…Uber, Zoox, Waymo, Tesla and more.” “
[Smart Driving Cars Zoom-Cast Episode 15](https://youtu.be/xuIbtSJjDck)[2 - Brad Templeton](https://youtu.be/xuIbtSJjDck)
###
Smart Driving Cars Pod-Cast Episode 151- Joe Moye
F. Fishkin, April 9, “In the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, fully autonomous, driverless vehicles are carrying medical supplies and Covid-19 tests to the Mayo Clinic in Florida. They’re provided by Beep and the CEO, Joe Moye, joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that, plus the latest from Nuro, Tesla and more.” … Alain
Smart Driving Cars Zoom-Cast Episode 151 - Joe Moye
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 150 - Andrei Greenawalt
###
F. Fishkin, April 3, “Coronavirus devastates transportation and mobility. How does it recover? Matthew Daus, former NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission chairman, joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that and much more. Watch, subscribe,
... Alain
Smart Driving Cars VideoCast Episode 150 - Andrei Greenawalt
Video version… Watch episode 150 with Andrei Greenawalt…. Alain
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 149 - Matt Daus
F. Fishkin, Mar. 26, “The Smart Driving Cars podcast with automated driving strategy consultant Richard Bishop joining Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Is automated trucking dead? Also…Covid-19 puts Waymo in park, the latest on Tesla and more. listen and subscribe!” … Alain
Smart Driving Cars Zoom-Cast Episode 149 - Matt Daus Video version… Watch episode 149 with Matt Daus…. Alain
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 148 - Richard Bishop
F. Fishkin, Mar. 26, “The Smart Driving Cars podcast with automated driving strategy consultant Richard Bishop joining Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Is automated trucking dead? Also…Covid-19 puts Waymo in park, the latest on Tesla and more. listen and subscribe!” … Alain
Smart Driving Cars Zoom-Cast Episode 148 - Richard Bishop Video version… Watch our first attempt…. Alain
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 147 - Michael Sena
F. Fishkin, Mar. 14, “From Sweden…The Dispatcher editor Michael Sena joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin as Covid-19 takes a toll on Waymo, Uber and more. Plus Saving the Car Industries in the U.S. and the EU… the latest from Future Networked Car 2020 in Geneva and more.” Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 145 - L. Walker
F. Fishkin, Mar. 5, “Tackling the issues of children in autonomous vehicles, Lorrie Walker of Safe Kids Worldwide joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus the latest from Waymo, Tesla, GM, Uber, Lyft and more.” … Alain Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 142 - J. Hughes
F. Fishkin, Feb 15, “What shifting populations mean for the future of mobility and transportation. Leading expert Jim Hughes of Rutgers University joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus the latest on Tesla, GM, Comma AI’s inexpensive autopilot, Aptiv, Lyft and more. Tune in and subscribe! “
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 141- A. Roy
F. Fishkin, Feb 7, “The latest glossary of BS in mobility, self driving and autonomy from author, podcaster and cannonball driver Alex Roy on Smart Driving Cars with Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus the news from Tesla, Nuro, Waymo, GM and more! “ Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 140 - C. Mericli
F. Fishkin, Jan 31, “How self driving tech can increase profits in the trucking industry. Locomation’s CEO joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus Waymo’s partnership with UPS, Tesla’s rocket ride, Hyundai’s Smart Park Super Bowl ad and more. “ Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 139- Randal O’Toole
F. Fishkin, Jan 25, “Adaptive cruise control and self driving tech may lead to more urban sprawl. But the Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole says maybe that isn’t a bad thing. He joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus Subaru’s tech, GM’s Cruise, Tesla and more on the Smart Driving Cars podcast. This edition is sponsored by the SmartETFs Smart Transportation and Technology ETF, symbol MOTO. For more information…head to www.motoetf.com “
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 138-Nick Zart
F. Fishkin, Jan 18, “The new mobility on the ground and in the air. Nicolas Zart joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co host Fred Fishkin for a discussion on Urban Air Mobility…plus..Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Mobileye, Waymo and more in this edition of the Smart Driving Cars podcast.” Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 136
F. Fishkin, Jan 6, “He’s back! Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser…still on the mend …but opinionated as ever…joins co-host Fred Fishkin for a look at the latest from Waymo, Tesla and more in Episode 136 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast. “ Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 135 - with Jim Atkinson
F. Fishkin, Dec 5, “In this special edition… the launch of a new exchange traded fund focused on smart transportation and technology. Guinness Atkinson Asset Management CEO Jim Atkinson joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that plus..a push by the Coalition for Future Mobility for action in Washington, AutoX wants driverless testing in California and Aptiv grows in Pittsburgh. “
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 130 with Dick Mudge & Michael Sena
F. Fishkin, Nov. 1, “An updated outlook for automated vehicles…Tesla, Waymo , Ford, VW and more. Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by guests Michael Sena and Dick Mudge in the latest edition of Smart Driving Cars!” Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 126 - Sturges & Caudill F. Fishkin, Sept 19 , “From the public library in Princeton, NJ… a special edition of the Smart Driving Cars podcast following a public forum conducted by Princeton Future on the potential for transit on demand for all. Join Princeton professor Alain Kornhauser, co-host Fred Fishkin and special guests for that…plus…the latest on Waymo, Tesla, Hyundai, Aptiv and more. “ Pictures from the Princeton Future Public Forum on Driverless Mobility for All.
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 121 - Ken Pyle F. Fishkin, Aug 22 , “Daimler and Bosch hold a community meeting in San Jose as they ready plans for autonomous vehicle testing. Community board member Ken Pyle joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. Plus…Waymo, Tesla and more.”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 116 - Jerome Lutin F. Fishkin, July 20, “Can technology dramatically improve the safety of bus transportation for pedestrians, riders and drivers? The lead investigator in a national study, Jerry Lutin, joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin on episode 116 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. Plus…Tesla’s new safety report, the latest from Lyft, Aptiv and a NY Times report on why driverless cars are taking longer than expected. Tune in and subscribe!.”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 112 - J. Hardiman NJM F. Fishkin, June 9, “Should the insurance industry be pushing more safety and autonomous tech in cars? It’s a win, win says Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser. Joining him in the discussion along with co-host Fred Fishkin is NJM’s John Hardiman, a board member of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Also…Fiat Chrysler, Ford and more.”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 110 - Lance Elliot F. Fishkin, May 25, “ The untold secrets of driverless car videos. Dr. Lance Eliot joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a liveley discussion. Plus…Waymo brings back self driving trucks, so will Daimler and is the future driverless for Uber and Lyft. Tune in and subscribe!” Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 108 3rd Summit Wrapup
###
F. Fishkin, May 18, “Wrapping up the 3rd annual Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit, Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin zero in on mobility for all and more. It’s just getting started. Plus the headlines from Nissan, Tesla, Uber and Lyft. Tune in and subscribe!”
F. Fishkin, May 18, “In this special edition from the 3rd Annual Princeton Smart Driving Cars Summit, Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by RoboSense VP Leilei Shinohara on the LiDAR’s benefits. And view of autonomous technology from law enforcement with New York State Police
Staff Sergeant Terence McDonnell." [Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 106 3rd Summit David Kidd & Cecillia Feeley](https://soundcloud.com/smartdrivingcar/smart-driving-cars-episode-106)
F. Fishkin, May 18, “From the 3rd Annual Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit, David Kidd from the Highway Loss Data Institute joins Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin and then on site preliminary research results on mobility for all with Cecilia Feeley and Andrea Lubin from Rutgers.”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 104 3rd Summit Anil Lewis & Katherine Freund
F. Fishkin, May 18,, “From the 3rd Annual Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit, join Professor Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin. In this special edition, the summit’s focus on mobility for all with guests Anil Lewis, Executive Director of Blindness Initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind and ITN America Founder Katherine Freund.”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 100 - Andrei Greenawalt’99/Via
April 5, F. Fishkin, “The success of on demand transit company Via is proving that ride sharing systems can work. Public Policy head Andrei Greenawalt joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for a wide ranging discussion. Also: Uber, Tesla, Audi, Apple and Nuro are making headlines”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 97 - Michael Sena’69
March 28, F. Fishkin, “The Future Networked Car? From Sweden, The Dispatcher publisher, Michael Sena, joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for the latest edition of Smart Driving Cars. Plus …the Boeing story has much to do with autonomous vehicles and more. Tune in and subscribe.”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 81 -nVIDIA, Shapiro & Local Motors / Olli, Hodge
F. Fishkin, Jan. 9, “How NVIDIA is paving the way for self driving cars and a new OLLI automated transport from Local Motors. NVIDIA’s Senior Director for Automotive, Danny Shapiro and Kurtis Hodge of Local Motors join co-hosts Alain Kornhauser of Princeton University and Fred Fishkin for another edition of Smart Driving Cars from CES 2019..”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 71-Nader’55 F. Fishkin, Dec. 13, “When it comes to self driving cars, Ralph Nader says “Not so fast.” The renowned political activist and author takes the government and the industry to task in a super sized Episode 71 of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast. Join Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for that and more!” Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 69 - Chunka Mui F. Fishkin, Nov 29, “What will it take for driverless vehicles to become a leading form of transportation? Futurist and author Chunka Mui joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for Episode 69 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast. Plus…Waymo, GM, Amazon and more. Tune in and subscribe! “
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 68 - Dick Mudge F. Fishkin, Nov 22, “The insurance industry hears about the outlook for automated vehicles. Co-author Dick Mudge joins Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin for Episode 68 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast. Plus…Uber, GM Cruise, Waymo, VW and more. Tune in and subscribe!” Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 65 - Bernard Soriano, CA DMV F. Fishkin, Nov 1, “California gives Waymo the green light for fully driverless vehicle testing on public roads and the state’s deputy director of the Department of Motor Vehicles, Bernard Soriano, joins the Smart Driving Cars podcast with the no nonsense details. Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin explore that and more. Tune in and subscribe!”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 58-Keith Code,Motorcycles
F. Fishkin, Sept 22 “In this edition of the Smart Driving Cars Podcast, Alain Kornhauser of Princeton University and co-host Fred Fishkin are joined by the founder of the Superbike School, Keith Code. Keith is an instructor, coach, author and researcher into motorcycle safety…and a champion racer. Beyond that….he’s an old high school friend of Alain’s! And there’s more on BMW, Apple, VW and more! . Tune in and subscribe!”
Smart Driving Cars Podcast Episode 55-Larry Burns, Autonomy
F. Fishkin, Sept 6, “The coming new world of driverless cars! In Episode 55 of the Smart Driving Cars podcast former GM VP and adviser to Waymo Larry Burns chats with Princeton’s Alain Kornhauser and Fred Fishkin about his new book “Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car and How it Will Reshape Our World”
Recent Highlights of:
[Luminaries Battle In Lincoln-Douglas Style Debate About The Future Of Self-Driving Cars](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2020/04/28/luminaries-battle-in-lincoln-douglas-style-debate-about-the-future-of-self-driving-cars/#35c0455028b6) Lance
Eliot, April
28, "Several
self-driving
car luminaries
assembled
online via a
Zoom-casted
battleground
this week to
undertake a
Lincoln-Douglas
style debate
about the
future of the
Autonomous
Vehicle (AV)
self-driving
car industry
and the advent
of AI-driven
mobility.
Originally
scheduled for
one hour, the
dialogue and
fielding of
audience
questions
prompted the
superstars to
keep going,
tackling many
of the most
vexing and
unsolved
matters that
underlie the
potential
success of
self-driving
vehicles,
encompassing
both
autonomous
cars and
autonomous
trucks.
The lively
discussion was
civil and
polite,
fortunately so
in these times
of seemingly
stark
polarization
and guttural
attacks during
our
contemporary
public
discourse.
Yet, even in
the realm of
eloquent
argumentation,
at times the
gloves came
off and there
were some
fierce zingers
and moments of
rather
piercing
cut-the-air-with-a-knife
verbal
sparring..."
[Read more](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2020/04/28/luminaries-battle-in-lincoln-douglas-style-debate-about-the-future-of-self-driving-cars/#35c0455028b6) Hmmmm... Lance, Thank you for
the kind and
thorough
synopsis of
our 1st
Zoom-inar. We
were all
pleased by the
turnout,
interaction
and substance.
Alain
[What Negative Oil Prices Mean and How the Impact Could Last](https://www.nytimes.com/article/negative-oil-prices-facts-history.html) V.
Bajaj, April
22,"A main
benchmark for
the price of
oil fell
negative for
the first time
ever this
week. The
decline —
more than 300
percent in
daily trading
— raised fresh
questions
about the
damage the
coronavirus is
having on the
global
economy.
What does it
mean for oil
prices to be
negative?
A benchmark
price for a
barrel of oil
to be
delivered next
month fell to
-$37.63 on
Monday, which
means that
sellers would
have to pay
someone that
much to take
it off their
hands.
But that
historic
plunge was
exacerbated by
a quirk in how
the oil
markets work.
The negative
price
concerned only
contracts for
delivery of
barrels in May
that are
traded on
so-called
futures
markets. At
the same time
trading
happens for
May
deliveries,
people trade
on contracts
ending in
June, in July
and so on." [Read more](https://www.nytimes.com/article/negative-oil-prices-facts-history.html) Hmmmm... What??? I realize that
I'm often "out
of it",
but... In all
my life I have
NEVER...
thought of,
let alone
mentioned, nor
have heard
anyone else
mention the
concept of negative
oil!
Often, talked
about $150/B
oil, $250/B,
S20/B even
$7/B oil.
NEVER $0/B
oil,
negative
Oil...
NEVER,NEVER,
NEVER!!!! and
look where we
are. UNBELIEVABLE!!!
Implications:...
no one's
models
extrapolate to
that regime.
(it requires
extrapolation
because no
data exists in
this
unimaginable
region.
Listen to [Pod-Cast](https://soundcloud.com/smartdrivingcar/smart-driving-cars-episode-153);
Watch [Zoom-Cast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nW3AcoFeA8&feature=youtu.be)
Alain
[Can Robotaxis Survive A Pandemic?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/04/13/can-robotaxis-survive-a-pandemic/#247ed3bd2ca6)
B. Templeton,
April, 13,
"Almost all
the
self-driving
car fleets are
out of
operation
right now. The
primary reason
is that
testing these
cars is not an
"essential
service" and
so the safety
drivers who
supervise them
are not
allowed to
come to work.
Most companies
use a team of
two people in
each car,
which would
create a
disease risk,
and to top it
off, the roads
are empty and
this
unnaturally
easy, making
testing less
valuable.
Questions
arise about
what happens
in the robocar
world if we
need to suffer
another
pandemic in
the future.
The Covid-19
crisis took
place before
the commercial
deployment of
robocars, but
that won't be
true later. I
covered some
issues in my
article on
delivery
robots, but
let's consider
what we've
learned this
year: Uber/Lyft
LYFT and Taxi
rides are way,
way down, and
not just
because all
travel is way
down
-
Transit ridership has cratered, and service has been cut
-
Delivery demand has vastly increased
-
People worry if drivers might be infectious
-
People don’t want to touch things, from seats to scooter handlebars, that others are touching
All travel is way down, but people are particularly suspicious of travel with other people, be it transit, or riding with a driver. They are also concerned about sitting down in a vehicle where somebody else just sat. With parking plentiful, there are incentives to go back to using your own car even if you previously used something else. Scooter services like Lime and Bird have also suffered major declines. As noted in the delivery article, while delivery robots are always good in a time when there is a massive surge in demand for delivery, it's pretty easy for a driver in a van with an automatic door to never have to touch the packages, just like a delivery robot. With massive unemployment, human driven vans are probably the best answer to the delivery demand surge...." [Read more](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/04/13/can-robotaxis-survive-a-pandemic/#247ed3bd2ca6) Hmmmm... Not a pretty picture, but with every challenge, comes opportunities... Listen watch more on [Pod-Cast_152](https://soundcloud.com/smartdrivingcar/smart-driving-cars-episode-152)/[Zoom-Cast_152](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuIbtSJjDck&feature=youtu.be). Alain
Autonomous shuttles help transport COVID-19 tests at Mayo Clinic in Florida
Press
release,
April, 2, "For
the first time
in the U.S.,
autonomous
vehicles are
being used to
transport
medical
supplies and
COVID-19 tests
at Mayo Clinic
in Florida.
At a time when
health care
resources and
staff are
stretched
thin, the
Jacksonville
Transportation
Authority
(JTA) has
partnered with
Beep and NAVYA
to use
autonomous
vehicles to
safely
transport
COVID-19 tests
collected at a
drive-thru
testing
location at
Mayo Clinic in
Florida.
"This
development is
a historic
moment for the
Jacksonville
Transportation
Authority,"
says Nathaniel
P. Ford, Sr.,
CEO of
Jacksonville
Transportation
Authority.
"Along with
our partners,
Beep, NAVYA
and Mayo
Clinic, we are
leveraging our
learnings from
three years of
testing
autonomous
vehicles
through our
Ultimate Urban
Circulator
program. Our
innovative
team saw this
as an
opportunity to
use technology
to respond to
this crisis in
Northeast
Florida and
increase the
safety of
COVID-19
testing."..."
[Read more](https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/autonomous-shuttles-help-transport-covid-19-tests-at-mayo-clinic-in-jacksonville/) Hmmmm... While not mentioned in
the article,
they
are operating Driverlessly... without attendant or safety driver. Yea!!! (People
aren't being
moved, just
goods and the
Operational
Design Domain
is
constrained,
but it it is
driverless
none the
less!) Listen
watch more on
[Pod-Cast_151](https://soundcloud.com/smartdrivingcar/smart-driving-cars-episode-151)/[Zoom-Cast_151](https://youtu.be/YAuqHS5W53c). Alain
[Via raises Series E financing to expand access to efficient, sustainable, and equitable public mobility across the globe](https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxrlix5drog5pq6/ViaPressReleaseSeriesE_Financing..pdf?dl=0) Press
release, Mar.
30, "Via, the
company that
provides
digital
infrastructure
to power
public
mobility in
cities around
the world,
announces
today that it
has raised a
Series E
financing led
by EXOR. The
financing
values the
company at
$2.25B and
will enable
Via to advance
its vision of
efficient,
accessible,
and equitable
public
mobility.
Via’s technology powers the next generation of public transportation, helping cities move beyond a system of rigid routes and schedules to a fully dynamic network. Via’s algorithm efficiently combines, in real time, multiple passengers or packages headed in the same direction, significantly reducing urban congestion and emissions while providing a high quality and lower cost mobility service. Available in more than 70 cities in 20 countries, and growing rapidly…“ Read more Hmmmm… Ride-sharing may not be dead. Listen to PodCast 150, watch VideoCast 150 Alain
Society of Actuaries Research Brief Impact of COVID-19
D. Hall, Mar 25, “… The result in late March 2020 has been one where a confluence of risks has come together. Additional operational and financial risks may emerge as additional events compound on the current situation. Actuaries will be watching for any additional risk events that layer on to the current environment, especially ones that may cause additional property, mortality and health risks such as catastrophic weather events. Morbidity, mortality, asset/liability management and operational risks are all a part of the initial and evolving story. This update to the Society of Actuaries Research Brief has been constructed to highlight some of the key continuing and new features of the pandemic all around the world and contemplate the risks for the actuarial profession to consider in their work…” Read more Hmmmm… This is one of the best reports that I have seen and will be updated every 10 days or so. A good summary of the materials, podcasts and other good sources are here:
https://www.soa.org/resources/newsroom/covid-19-updates/#research
https://www.soa.org/resources/research-reports/2020/impact-coronavirus/
ECDPC Daily data GitHub Covid19 data
Alain
###
###
###
###
Starsky Robotics Failed. Does That Mean Automated Trucking Is Dead?
R. Bishop, Mar 24, “I met Stefan Seltz-Axmacher for the first time in November 2015 at the Florida Automated Vehicles Summit. Not long after, we met at the Blue Danube coffee shop in Alameda, CA so he could tell me about his vision for Starsky Robotics. When he energetically described his remote-driving-for-trucks approach, I was skeptical. “Remote driving is hard,” I said. “The military has struggled with this for years. Its harder than it looks.” On the technical side, latency for secure communications is challenging. On the operational side, re-creating enough on-road reality (situational awareness) for a remote driver is difficult when going for the high levels of safety needed. Seltz-Axmacher remained bullish on the approach and at that time went on to found Starsky Robotics as one of the earliest truck AV startups, later closing a $16.5M Series A funding round in March 2018, and then hauling freight while developing both remote and automated driving ability. Initially, Starsky’s concept was all about remote driving for first/last mile. They later expanded their offering to include fully automated highway driving on limited freight corridors.
Now, Starsky
has become the
first casualty
within a
crowded truck
automation
space, and
Seltz-Axmacher
has provided
us with an
intriguing
post-mortem in
a recent
Medium post.
Most of the
media coverage
I've seen has
acted as echo
chambers for
Seltz-Axmacher's
perspective.
Here I offer a
counterpoint
based on my
longtime
involvement in
truck
automation
plus
discussions
with many
others in the
truck
Automated
Driving
Systems (ADS)
startup space,
many of them
irate at what
they see as
unfounded
assertions
made in the
original post.
My sources
tell me that
because
Seltz-Axmacher
hasn't
experienced
their
technology nor
been briefed
on their
technical/safety
approach, he
has no basis
to make
sweeping
claims about
the entire
industry...."
[Read more](https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbishop1/2020/03/24/starsky-robotics-failed-does-that-mean-automated-trucking-is-dead/#51d50d840c84) Hmmmm... [Listen to PodCast 148](https://soundcloud.com/smartdrivingcar/smart-driving-cars-episode-148).
or/and [Watch us on YouTube](https://youtu.be/VkzPm5GwEz4).
Alain
Waymo suspends robotaxi service except for its truly driverless vehicles K. Korosec, Mar. 17, “Waymo said Tuesday it is pausing operations of Waymo One, a service in the Phoenix area that allows the public to hail rides in self-driving vehicles with trained human safety operators behind the wheel, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Waymo is also halting testing on public roads in California.
However, Waymo
will keep some
operations up
and running,
notably its
truly
driverless
vehicles,
which don't
require a
human safety
driver,
according to
an
announcement
on its website
Tuesday. These
driverless
vehicles are
used in the
Phoenix area
as part of
Waymo's early
rider program
that lets
vetted members
of the public
hail a
ride..." [Read more](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/waymo-suspends-robotaxi-service-except-for-its-truly-driverless-vehicles/) Yippie!!! Unfortunately, the
latest is not
so good... [Waymo has suspended all services, including the driverless.](https://waymo.com/coronavirus)
Poopie!!!
Alain
A. Hawkins,
Mar. 13,
"Waymo,Waymo,
the
self-driving
unit of
Alphabet, says
it will keep
operating its
fleet of
roughly 600
self-driving
taxis in
Arizona during
the novel
coronavirus
outbreak. But
the safety
drivers who
monitor the
autonomous
taxis are
concerned that
they are being
put in harm's
way.
Waymo is
"strongly
encouraging"
its full-time
employees
without
"business
critical"
tasks to work
from home. Its
safety
drivers, who
are employed
by a French
transit
company called
Transdev North
America that
has a
multiyear
contract with
Waymo, are
still mostly
required to
come into
work, The
Verge has
learned.
Transdev
appears to be
following
guidelines set
by the Centers
for Disease
Control and
Prevention
(CDC) by
stepping up
the frequency
of its
cleanings and
disinfections.
But drivers
tell The Verge
that the Waymo
vendor is
ignoring
recommendations
about social
distancing.
"It feels like
the drivers
are treated
like second
class
citizens,
having to
report to work
and serve
'hails' while
the full-time
employees are
required to
work from home
to stay safe,"
said a Waymo
driver who
requested
anonymity in
order to speak
freely.
"Safety for
some."..." [Read more](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21178375/waymo-self-driving-car-coronavirus-covid19-intel-arizona) Hmmmm... I thought that Waymo had
started
offering rides
without safety
drivers in
Chandler????
I guess, they
do it in a
"smaller"
Operational
Design Domain
(ODD) and they
are trying to
expand that
ODD by
operating with
safety drivers
for trip
originating
and or
terminating
outside that
original
"smaller"
ODD.
Anyway… I often use the elevator to try to understand autonomousTaxis… driverless mobility machines. Will we look back to this complaint by attendants as the turning point which hasten Waymo’s operation of its vehicles without attendants on-board much as the elevator operator’s strike in NYC in September 1945 hasten the deployment of automated elevators (see Pushing the right Buttons)? As I’ve been writing, the biggest challenge of Uber/Lyft is management of its drivers. It looks like Waymo is experiencing the same challenges with its attendants. Moreover, a NECESSARY condition on economic viability is safely operating without a driver/attendant. We may look back and credit COVID-19 as hastening Waymo’s deployment of driverless mobility for all. This may be COVID-19’s only positive contribution to society. Alain
[Call to Action on Children in Autonomous Vehicles](https://www.safekids.org/kids-autonomous-vehicles/blue-ribbon-panel/call-to-action) Feb.
2020, "The
Blue Ribbon
Panel on
Children in
Autonomous
Vehicles is
calling on
developers of
autonomous
vehicles (AVs)
to ensure that
AVs are
engineered,
deployed and
marketed to
protect the
unique needs
of child
passengers.
Developers are
broadly
defined to
include
original
equipment
manufacturers,
non-original
equipment
manufacturers,
as well as
designers of
component
systems such
as LIDAR, chip
or satellite
manufacturers,
and others
building key
components of
AVs.
AVs must be
developed,
regulations
upgraded and
laws passed to
ensure
children will
be properly
restrained,
have the
highest level
of protection
in a crash,
and can be
appropriately
supervised
during a trip.
This panel
believes it is
imperative
that minor
children never
be transported
without
appropriate
supervision by
a parent,
guardian or
caregiver
until best
practices are
adopted.
We're asking
developers to
commit to the
following
actions: ...
" [Read more](https://www.safekids.org/kids-autonomous-vehicles/blue-ribbon-panel/call-to-action) Hmmmm... Given that one of the
largest
mobility
marginalized
groups are
individuals
that are too
young to
drive,
including the
very young
that require
supervision as
well as those
that are old
enough to ride
alone, this
focus group is
very important
and very
pertinent.
Alain
[NTSB slams Tesla, Apple and regulators over a fatal Autopilot crash](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-25/tesla-autopilot-crash-hearing)
R. Mitchell, Feb. 25, “The nation’s top safety investigator slammed Tesla on Tuesday for failing to take adequate measures to prevent “foreseeable abuse” of its Autopilot driver-assistance technology, in a hearing into the fatal 2018 crash of a Tesla Model X SUV in Mountain View, Calif.
The National
Transportation
Safety Board
said
38-year-old
Walter Huang,
an Apple
software
engineer, had
Autopilot
engaged in his
2018 Tesla
Model X and
was playing a
video game on
his iPhone
when the car
crashed into a
defective
safety barrier
on U.S.
Highway
101.The board
also blamed
the highway
safety arm of
the U.S.
Department of
Transportation
for failing to
properly
regulate
rapidly
evolving
robot-car
technology....
The board
adopted[a long list of measures](https://t.co/mEFsCDf1dB)
meant to
reduce such
accidents as
"partially
automated
driving"
technologies
become more
popular in new
vehicles.... Sumwalt
made clear the
Mountain View
crash was not
an isolated
incident, but
illustrative
of the safety
issues
involved as
humans and
robot systems
increasingly
share the
driving, not
just in Teslas
but in
vehicles from
all
manufacturers.
"It's time to
stop enabling
drivers in any
partially
automated
vehicle to
pretend that
they have
driverless
cars," he
said.
……. the Model X drove straight down the middle of a “gore lane,” a white-striped zone where cars aren’t supposed to go,” … It is clear from the images that the gore area was NOT white-striped as is supposed to be and the lane markings are badly worn. Why didn’t NTSB fault the CA DoT for its poor maintenance and marking practices. CA DoT needs to be severely reprimanded. “ … a Toyota Prius crashed into it 11 days earlier…” to what extent did NTSB investigate the Prius crash. It didn’t have autoPilot, so that’s not the common factor. I suspect that the confusing lane markings and the lack of striping is the root cause… “ … The car’s collision avoidance system did not detect the crash barrier.” … I suspect that this is NOT true. The system detected the stationary object, but the coded logic disregards stationary objects (classifies them as false alarms) because false positives are too likely. NTSB made a similar error in the Joshua Brown crash where the system didn’t mis-identify the stationary trailer ahead as being background sky, but instead classified the stationary object in the lane ahead as a false positive . NTSB investigators have failed to ask the right questions in these investigations…
" ....The
car's forward
collision
warning system
did not
provide an
alert, and the
automatic
braking system
did not
activate."... Again, the system
classified
stationary
objects in the
lane ahead as
phantom
objects and
disregards
them. Once
disregarded,
there is no
reason to
initiate a
warning or
apply
Emergency
Brakes.
Yipes!
[Read more](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-25/tesla-autopilot-crash-hearing) Hmmmm... Hopefully this will
curtail the
misbehavior in
the use of
these
systems. The
Self-driving
systems
require
constant
adult
supervision. I
suspect that
NHTSA will
place
extraordinarily
onerous
regulations on
personally
owned
self-driving
cars that will
effectively
ban the
ability to
sleep, play
video games,
text or
otherwise be
non-vigilant
in all
non-driverless
vehicles.
Driverless
vehicles will
be required to
be operated
and maintained
by a
responsible
fleet manager
and not have
any straight
forward way
for a human to
drive them.
Certainly no
steering wheel
or pedals. I
expect that
they'll also
ban the use of Stupid-Summon-like systems outside of one's own personal property. They
should.
Alain
“Urbs,” “Burbs,” and the Immigration Locomotive
J. Hughes, Feb 2020, “Even more so than the nation, the broad fourstate, 35-county metropolitan region centered on New York City (figure 1) is becoming afflicted by a condition of demographic stagnation. While the United States has been experiencing the lowest population growth rates since the Great Depression, the region has only recently (2016–2018) slipped into absolute population decline, spawned by domestic outmigration. The major counterforce forestalling a demographic catastrophe has been positive international migration. Immigration has become the primary source of population growth—the demographic locomotive. Without it, the region would have to bear fully the economic consequences of what has become a virtual domestic population hemorrhage—a vast exodus of regional residents moving to the rest of the country. This is just one dimension of endemic demographic change that has swept the post–Great Recession world….
The second new reset is a turnaround of the pattern evidenced in the 2010–2016 period, when population growth in the “urbs” surpassed that of the “burbs.” After dominating growth early in the decade (2010–2016), the core—the urban heart of the metropolitan region encompassing New York City and three adjacent counties in New Jersey—suddenly slipped into decline post-2016, causing the region as a whole to lose population. This is the latest transformation in what has become a transmillennial demographic roller coaster ride… “ Read more Hmmmm… Most interesting Demographic Dynamic. A must read. Alain
[NHTSA Grants Nuro Exemption Petition for Testing Low-Speed Driverless Vehicle](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nuro-exemption-low-speed-driverless-vehicle)
2020 Hyundai Sonata stars in Super Bowl ad all about ‘Smaht Pahk’ S. Szymkowski, Jan 27, “Hyundai is going all in on Boston accents and the 2020 Sonata for its Super Bowl advertisement. As is often the trend these days, the ad made its debut on Monday less than a week before the big game, but it’s quite a clever spot….” Read more Hmmmm… This is as irresponsible of Hyundai as StupidSummon is for Tesla. It may even be more irresponsible because Hyundai hasn’t included the over-the-air-information system that allows them to monitor its use. Having the car do stuff without an alert and attentive driver in the driver’s seat implies liability on them (their system) if something bad happens. Plus, squeezing a car into a parking place when the people can’t get into the adjacent cars is not the smartest move unless you’ve also made the Hyundai key proof. There will be retaliation. Alain
The Disengagement Myth Kyle Vogt, Jan 17, “In a few weeks the California DMV will release disengagements data from Cruise and other companies who test AVs on public roads. This data is really great for giving the public a sense of what’s happening on the roads. Unfortunately, it has also been used by the media and others to compare technology from different AV companies or as a proxy for commercial readiness. Since it’s the only publicly available metric, I don’t really blame them for using it. But it’s woefully inadequate for most uses beyond those of the DMV. The idea that disengagements give a meaningful signal about whether an AV is ready for commercial deployment is a myth. …“ Read more Hmmmm… Amen! This is a MUST read. As with everything, details matter. It is true that figures don’t lie, but but it is easy to game systems such that figures, without the underlying details, do lie. As Kyle points out, there are important details associated with disengagements. These need to be well understood for disengagements to be a proxy for safety and market readiness. The when, where and associated details of each disengagement is critically important if the objective is safety and market readiness.
What is also most important here is the underlying objective of the companies doing the tests and reporting the data. As has happened in our secondary education where students are taught what is in and how to take the SATs rather than just learn. The objective is not learning , but getting 800s on the SATs so that they can get into ‘Princeton’. This is perpetuated by the ‘Princetons’ of this world that don’t look into the details of the student’s academic qualities and capabilities. In the academic world, we know these students as ‘box checkers’, gamers of the college admission process. The gaming is continued by the ‘banks and med schools’ that use simplistic GPA (Grade Point Average, aka ‘disengagements’) cutoffs. The ‘box checkers’ then take ‘underwater basket weaving’ courses and become grade grubbers. It is lazy and irresponsible to use simplistic measures as proxies to very complex concepts such as intelligence, creativity, compatibility, and all the other details that make a good student, a good employee, a good citizen, a good mobility system.
In our case, testing is assumed to be about safety and market readiness; however, for some, it may be about trying to “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” or “putting lipstick on the pig”. It is easy to game the metric ‘Disengagements’ by simply testing in easy places, under easy conditions, instead of really trying to find the corner/edge cases that you don’t know in places and conditions of the Operational Design Domain that you are actually going to serve and make a business out of all of this technology; rather than just trying to get good press, or flipping it to someone else or putting it on an academic self. The details would readily divulge the real objective of the company doing the testing.
I hope that Kyle, in his next post, will divulge what he, GM’s lawyers and GM’s board are requiring of his system for each of them to sign off and begin to operate an economically viable mobility service to the general public in some ODD. Each will demand that it be safe. The board will also demand that it be profitable. What details are they requesting that will make each comfortable signing on the bottom line? Alain
###
Hmmmm…
Reflections
A. Kornhauser, Jan 12, Hmmmm… Self-driving cars are hot and the OEMs are responding. I’m about to buy a new Subaru Outback and EyeSightis standard. It is no longer just AutoPilot or expensive options that car salesmen don’t sell. Car companies, as reflected in what is in showrooms and what was promoted at CES, have realized the comfort and convenience of Self-driving technology (cars that have a lot of the Safe-driving car features but also enable you to take your feet off the pedals and hands off the wheel at least for short periods of time. These technologies are really becoming the ‘chrome and fins’ that sell cars to individuals in the 2020s. The momentum is all behind that happening and there is little Washington or Trenton or Princeton Council can do about it. Hopefully part of that momentum will be to make these systems actually work well, especially the Automated Emergency Braking Systems (MUST quit assuming that all stationary objects in the lane ahead can be passed under and consequently each is disregarded. As Tesla is finding out, sometimes those objects are parked firetrucks.) and begin to put hard limits on over-speeding, tailgating and use while driver is impaired. Self-driving cars are unfortunately going to lead to substantial urban sprawl, increased VMT, increased congestion and do nothing to help the energy and pollution challenges of our addiction to the personal automobile. Only ‘Waymo-style Driverless’ (autonomousTaxis, (aTaxis)) tuned to entice ride-sharing can potentially stem the tide of ever more personal car ownership and ever expanding urban sprawl. Alain
January 6, 2020
Back
A. Kornhauser, Jan. 6, Hmmmm… I’m in rehab and hope to go home on Wednesday morning. Thank you to so many of you for all the good wishes and prayers. They each helped. I’m looking to making a full recovery. Remember, if you don’t feel well, get evaluated by a doctor. I was totally clueless about what hit me from out of nowhere. Alain
November 30, 2019 [Chandler unveils drop-off, pick-up zone for self-driving cars](https://ktar.com/story/2852028/chandler-unveils-drop-off-pick-up-zone-for-self-driving-cars/) G. Zetino,
Nov. 25, ""It's about to get
easier for self-driving cars
to drop off and pick up
passengers in Chandler. The
city of Chandler, in
partnership with Waymo, on
Friday unveiled the nation's
first drop-off and pick-up
zone for autonomous
ride-hailing cars.
Read more Hmmmm… The iconic image:
autonomousTaxi (aTaxi) stop facilitating true ride-sharing to any destination within the autonomous transit system’s Operational Design Domain. The first of what may well become a half million or so others. Each strategically located to be less that a 5 minute walk from essentially any of the billion or so person trip ends that are made on any typical day in the USA (outside of Manhattan (whose subway stations provide the comparable accessibility). Twenty million or so aTaxi vehicles could readily provide on-demand, share-ride mobility from these ~0.5M aTaxi stops. Provided would be essentially the same 24/7 on-demand level-of-service as we do for ourselves with our own conventional automobiles; however, this mobility would be affordably achieved using half the energy, creating half the pollution, eliminating essentially all the congestion, doubling conventional transit ridership and making such improved mobility available to those who today can’t or wish not to drive a conventional automobile. This is a MAJOR 1st. Alain
November 23, 2019 [Self-driving car capital? One senator thinks it can be Florida](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article237625484.html) R. Wile, Nov 22,
"Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-St.
Petersburg) had just finished
serving in the Army, and was
looking to make a name for
himself in Tallahassee as a
junior representative. He came
across a talk given by the
founder of Google's driverless
car project.
He quickly realized the
potential of self-driving cars
to transform many aspects of
daily life. Ever since, he has
made it his mission to turn
Florida into what he calls "an
angel investor" in automation
policy. "We want to have
policies in place for this
technology to flourish,"
Brandes said in an interview
at the 7th Annual Florida
Automated Vehicles conference
in Miami, which concluded
Friday.
Brandes has drawn headlines in the tech community for filing legislation allowing virtually any automated vehicle on Florida’s roads; this summer, he helped make Florida one of the first states to make AVs without a human back-up safety driver street legal.
Among the state's advantages
Brandes points to that he
believes makes it ideal for AV
companies: no snow, which
makes lane markings more
visible. That also means less
road construction in
general...." [Read more](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article237625484.html) Hmmmm...
Congratulations Jeff!!!
It was a great AV Summit
and congratulations on
creating such a
Welcoming environment
and intelligently
shaping the birth of
this technology. What
you've done is enable
Florida to begin to
enhance mobility and the
quality of life for all
in Florida and
especially those who can
most benefit from these
mobility machines. It
was most impressive to
witness the enthusiasm
for nurturing the many
aspects of this
technology from
Florida's Governor,
Miami's Mayor, Fl DoT's
Commissioner, the heads
of the toll road
authorities, planning
agencies and educational
institutions. Most
impressive was Ford's
comment that their
autonomousTaxi efforts
are focused on
developing driverless
technology and
intend to operate it to
deliver
Mobility-as-a-Service in
Florida, rather than
sell the technology to
individual consumers. I
applaud that approach
and hope that Ford will
look to also bringing
some of those vehicles
to New Jersey so that we
can begin to reap the
benefits of this
technology. What you've
accomplished in Florida
is THE "best practice"
for us to emulate in New
Jersey.
Congratulations. Alain
November 16, 2019
November 1, 2019
An Update on the Outlook for Automated Vehicle Systems
October 18, 2019
[Waymo to customers: "Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way"](https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/09/waymo-to-customers-completely-driverless-waymo-cars-are-on-the-way/)
Your Tesla Can Now Pick You Up R. Mitchell, Oct. 4, “ Smart Summon is for parking lot use. But drivers have other ideas.
Tesla unleashed the latest twist in driverless car technology last week, raising more questions about whether autonomous vehicles are outracing public officials and safety regulators.
…Using a smartphone, a person can now command a Tesla to turn itself on, back out of a parking space and drive to the smartphone holder’s location - say at a curb in front of a Costco store..” Read more Hmmmm…. Russ, great article. A must read!
Elon, please stop. StupidSummon was a bad Valley-entitled idea before you released it. Now that it is out there it will ruin all that is good about Tesla, AutoPilot and Driverless cars. The shorters are going to have a field day.
While you are at it also remove all of the DistractTainment add ons or limit their use when AutoPilot is NOT on and drivers are engaged in driving. Just go back to V09! Along the way also get the Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) system to work properly (See NTSBbelow). To do that, maybe you should take a serious look at Velodyne’s new Tesla LiDAR. It may be able to tell you if the stationary object in the lane ahead is high enough above the road surface before your AEB system decides to disregard it. Then Tesla’s may stop decapitating drivers.
If you don’t remove StupidSummon then at least be sure to limit its use to the Tesla owner’s own private property by responsible users. (You know the GPS coordinates of where each owner lives, so you can geofence it. You also know each irresponsible use (You get the videos). Irresponsible use (use in the violation of the conditions spelled out in the user’s manual) should void its future availability in that car unless proper amend are made. If not, then insurance companies should clearly state that insuring the use of this feature requires a substantial additional premium; else, you’re not covered. Courts should view that use of this feature implies premeditated harm and demonstrates an extreme indifference to human life. Parking Lot owners should install signs forbidding the use of this feature on their property to protect themselves from being dragged into the claims process.
What is most disturbing about this feature is that its only value is to enhance the self-perceived manhood of Entitled Silicon Valley XXs and may well cause the public sector to over react and ruin to opportunity of responsible driverless mobility to substantially enhance the quality-of-life of those who can’t or choose not to drive a car, enhance the environment, subdue our energy use and reduce congestion. Elon, shame on you September 28, 2019 Public forum will explore possibility of transit on demand in Princeton K. Knapp, Sept 22, “What would it take to make Princeton an accessible community for all, even those who cannot or choose not to own or drive a car? Princeton Future will explore the question at a public forum from 9 a.m. to noon on Sept. 28 in the community room at the Princeton Public Library.
Princeton Future is a non-profit
community group that studies issues
related to planning, development, and
affordability. Speakers will discuss the
capabilities of a transit-on-demand
system where small, driverless shuttles
could be summoned by a smart phone app
to a location within walking distance of
a resident's home...." [Read more](https://planetprinceton.com/2019/09/22/public-forum-will-explore-possibility-of-transit-on-demand-in-princeton/) Hmmmm.... Listen
to a summary of the event in [Episode 126 of the SmartDrivingCars PodCasts](https://soundcloud.com/smartdrivingcar/smart-driving-cars-episode-126). See below for
other info. Alain
September 20, 2019 [Waymo's robotaxi pilot surpassed 6,200 riders in its first month in California](https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/waymos-robotaxi-pilot-surpassed-6200-riders-in-its-first-month-in-california/)
August 17, 2019
Autonomous Vehicles: A View from Seniors
March 29, 2019
Automated vehicles could provide mobility to the ‘mobility disadvantaged’ March 1, 2019
FORM S-1 REGISTRATION STATEMENT Lyft, Inc. Autonomous Vehicles Feb 25, “ This workshop brought together experts in cyber-physical systems, machine learning, transportation engineering, and applied mathematics, both from academia and from industry, to help bridge the technical gaps and to facilitate exchange and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries…“ Read more Hmmmm…. Slides and videos of the presentations are available here. In particular, see..:
-
Andrea Censi: “Liability, Ethics, and Culture-Aware Behavior Specification using Rulebooks” Abstract, Slides, video (via click on Schedule 11:30 Monday;
-
Adam Oberman:”Generalization and adversarial robustness of Regularized Deep Neural Networks “ Abstract, Slides, video (via click on Schedule 11:30 Tuesday);
-
Alain Kornhauser: “Market Forces and Market Potential for SmartDrivingCars (aka Autonomous Vehicles) “ Slides,video, (via click on Schedule 11:15 Tuesday);
-
Hani Mahmassani: “Shared Autonomous Fleet Services and Multimodal Urban Mobility: Optimization, Prediction and Dynamic Network Modeling “ Abstract, video, (via click on Schedule 4:00 Thursday);
Market Framework and Outlook for Automated Vehicle Systems
New Jersey Pending Legislation re: Autonomous Vehicles
Oct 16, Establishes fully autonomous vehicle pilot program A4573 Sponsors: Zwicker (D16); Benson (D14)
Oct 16, EstablishesNew Jersey Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Task Force AJR164 Sponsors: Benson (D14); Zwicker (D16); Lampitt (D6)
Oct 16, [Directs MVC to establish driver's license endorsement for autonomous vehicles A4541](https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2018/Bills/A5000/4541_I1.PDF)
Sponsors: Zwicker (D16); Benson (D14);
Lampitt (D6)..." [Read more](https://orfe.princeton.edu/%7Ealaink/SmartDrivingCars/PDFs/NVIDIA-Self-Driving-Safety-Report-2018.pdf) Hmmmm....
Things are beginning to
move in New Jersey.
Alain
Audio Recording of Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology - Monday, October 22, 2018 - 10:00:00 AM
June 12, 2018 [CPUC AUTHORIZES PASSENGER CARRIERS TO PROVIDE FREE TEST RIDES IN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES WITH VALID CPUC AND DMV PERMITS](http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M215/K467/215467801.PDF)
3, 2018
Waymo’s fleet of self-driving minivans is about to get 100 times bigger
May 25, 2018 [PRELIMINARY REPORT: HIGHWAY: HWY18MH010 (Uber/Herzberg Crash)](http://orfe.princeton.edu/%7Ealaink/SmartDrivingCars/PDFs/NTSBuberPreliminaryMay2018.pdf)
May 24, “About 9:58 p.m., on Sunday, March 18, 2018, an Uber Technologies, Inc. test vehicle, based on a modified 2017 Volvo XC90 and operating with a self-driving system in computer control mode, struck a pedestrian on northbound Mill Avenue, in Tempe, Maricopa County, Arizona.
…The vehicle was factory equipped with several advanced driver assistance functions by Volvo Cars, the original manufacturer. The systems included a collision avoidance function with automatic emergency
braking, known as City Safety, as well
as functions for detecting driver
alertness and road sign information. All
these Volvo functions are disabled when
the test vehicle is operated in computer
control..."[Read more](http://orfe.princeton.edu/%7Ealaink/SmartDrivingCars/PDFs/NTSBuberPreliminaryMay2018.pdf) Hmmmm....
Uber must believe that its
systems are better at avoiding
Collisions and Automated
Emergency Braking than Volvo's.
At least this gets Volvo "off
the hook".
“…According to data obtained from the self-driving system, the system first registered radar and LIDAR observations of the pedestrian about 6 seconds before impact, when the vehicle was traveling at 43 mph…” (= 63 feet/second) So the system started “seeing an obstacle when it was 63 x 6 = 378 feet away… more than a football field, including end zones!
“…As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path…” (NTSB: Please tell us precisely when it classified this “object’ as a vehicle and be explicit about the expected “future travel paths.” Forget the path, please just tell us the precise velocity vector that Uber’s system attached to the “object”, then the “vehicle”. Why didn’t the the Uber system instruct the Volvo to begin to slow down (or speed up) to avoid a collision? If these paths (or velocity vectors) were not accurate, then why weren’t they accurate? Why was the object classified as a “Vehicle” ?? When did it finally classify the object as a “bicycle”? Why did it change classifications? How often was the classification of this object done. Please divulge the time and the outcome of each classification of this object. In the tests that Uber has done, how often has the system mis-classified an object as a “pedestrian”when the object was actually an overpass, or an overhead sign or overhead branches/leaves that the car could safely pass under, or was nothing at all?? (Basically, what are the false alarm characteristics of Uber’s Self-driving sensor/software system as a function of vehicle speed and time-of-day?)
“…At 1.3 seconds before impact, (impact speed was 39mph = 57.2 ft/sec) the self-driving system determined that an emergency braking maneuver was needed to mitigate a collision” (1.3 x 57.2 = 74.4 ft. which is about equal to the braking distance. So it still could have stopped short.
“…According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control, to reduce (eradicate??) the potential for erratic vehicle behavior. …” NTSB: Please describe/define potential and erratic vehicle behavior Also please uncover and divulge the design & decision process that Uber went through to decide that this risk (disabling the AEB) was worth the reward of eradicating “ “erratic vehicle behavior”. This is fundamentally BAD design. If the Uber system’s false alarm rate is so large that the best way to deal with false alarms is to turn off the AEB, then the system should never have been permitted on public roadways.
“…The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. “ Wow! If Uber’s system fundamentally relies on a human to intervene, then Uber is nowhere near creating a Driverless vehicle. Without its own Driverless vehicle Uber is past “Peak valuation”.
“…The system is not designed to alert the operator. “ That may be the only good part of Uber’s design. In a Driverless vehicle, there is no one to warn, so don’t waste your time. If it is important enough to warn, then it is important enough for the automated system to start initiating things to do something about it. Plus, the Driver may not know what to do anyway. This is pretty much as I stated in PodCast 30 and the 24 edition of SmartDrivingCar, See below. Experts say video of Uber’s self-driving car killing a pedestrian suggests its technology may have fail
Don’t Worry, Driverless Cars Are Learning From Grand Theft Auto
Extracting Cognition out of Images for the Purpose of Autonomous Driving
Adam Jonas’ View on Autonomous Cars Video similar to part of Adam’s Luncheon talk @ 2015 Florida Automated Vehicle Symposium on Dec 1. Hmmm … Watch Video especially at the 13:12 mark. Compelling; especially after the 60 Minutes segment above! Also see his TipRanks. Alain