9.37-5th_Summit-092621

  Motional Invests in Las Vegas Operations with Expanded Testing, R&D Capabilities

Press release, Sep. 23, , “Las Vegas has played an important role in Motional’s growth as a global driverless technology leader. It’s home to our public robotaxi fleet, a service that has safely conducted over 100,000 public rides, and is also an important hub for our testing and research.

Motional is now significantly expanding our Las Vegas footprint as we continue to scale up ahead of our 2023 commercial robotaxi deployment. We are tripling the size of our Las Vegas closed-course testing facility, doubling our operations center, and growing our Las Vegas team by over 100 new employees. This represents Motional’s largest operations investment in the Las Vegas area to date…..” Read more Hmmmm…  Nice.  Hope they choose to participate in the 5th Summit and look to deploying in New Jersey.  See video.  Alain

  ‘Self-Driving’ Cars Begin to Emerge from a Cloud of Hype

S. Shladover, Sep. 25, “… With the benefit of hindsight, it has become obvious that the prevailing view during that period was false, with no more than a handful of advanced prototype vehicles having been driven on public roads by last year without the need for onboard safety drivers to intervene when the automation systems needed human help. The term “self-driving” has lost its original intended meaning because the driving assistance feature on the cars that have been labeled “full self-driving” cannot maneuver without constant human supervision, and “cars” are far less relevant for automation today than trucks, buses and shared-ride vans…

…The organizational learning curve and costs have been much longer and higher than expected. After investing at least a decade and billions of dollars in ADS development, the companies have learned that the technical requirements to support widespread use of the technology are far more complicated than they had originally envisioned. At the same time, companies such as Tesla and less mature start-ups that continue to plug faster and wider-scale deployments are those that are still working their way up a learning curve and have not yet realized how far they are from their goal…

… Automated urban and suburban ride-hailing services could become available on a limited basis as well, but the location-specific challenges to their deployment are sufficient that this is unlikely to reach a national scale soon. Read more Hmmmm…  Very nice and consistent with our SDC ZoomCast with Steve a couple of weeks ago.  Even Cell phones didn’t reach “national scale” in a short period of time.  That’s why SAE’s thoughts about “Level 5” are so absurd.  Henry Ford was an important step in the evolution of the Conventional car that still isn’t “Conventional everywhere, all weather, Level 5”.  Drivers couldn’t get to Princeton when Ida came through here.  In 1908, the Model T’s Operational Design Domain (ODD) was very limited indeed.  We need to start small where we’ll deliver the most value and the Technology will be most appreciated.  That’s the market that Henry went after.  That’s why Trenton is and ideal place to get started.  It has the need, is welcoming, small, yet big enough and relatively easy.  Alain

  FedEx, Aurora to launch autonomous-truck routes in Texas

S. Sumagaysay, Sep. 22, “FedEx Corp. and self-driving vehicle startup Aurora Innovation Inc. are launching a pilot program for autonomous-truck shipments between Dallas and Houston, with the companies announcing Wednesday what they called a first-of-its-kind partnership involving the two companies and a truck maker.

“This is an exciting, industry-first collaboration that will work toward enhancing the logistics industry through safer, more efficient transportation of goods,” said Rebecca Yeung, vice president of advanced technology and innovation at FedEx FDX, -1.00%, in a news release.

The initial fleet will involve a “modest” number of autonomous trucks and use backup drivers for safety at first, an Aurora spokeswoman said. The trucks will make the nearly 500-mile round-trip along the I-45 corridor multiple times a week, according to FedEx.

“At the end of 2023, we will launch our trucking business and haul loads autonomously between terminals without a safety driver,” Aurora said. The original-equipment manufacturing partner for this pilot is truck maker PACCAR Inc. ..”.  Read more Hmmmm… Realistic and responsible.  Aurora/Chris may well find that Aurora’s technology so enhances the driver’s quality-of-worklife and its associated return to FedEx that the RoI of the technology is very attractive to FedEx as a “drier assistance” technology without removal of the driver.  That would make Aurora’s technology viable today on interstate operations not just intra-red-states.   Alain

Elon Musk’s Push to Expand Tesla’s Driver Assistance to Cities Rankles a Top Safety Authority

R. Elliot, Sep.19, “… Jennifer Homendy, the new head of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Tesla shouldn’t roll out the city-driving tool before addressing what the agency views as safety deficiencies in the company’s technology. The NTSB, which investigates crashes and issues safety recommendations though it has no regulatory authority, has urged Tesla to clamp down on how drivers are able to use the company’s driver-assistance tools.

“Basic safety issues have to be addressed before they’re then expanding it to other city streets and other areas,” she said in an interview. Ms. Homendy also expressed concern about how Tesla software is tested on public roadways….” Read more  Hmmmm… With over-the-air updating Tesla can readily monitor the Use of FSD and can readily disable FSD on any Tesla used by any driver that mis-behaves using FSD.  I can’t understand why Elon just doesn’t do it.  I guess all of the free press he gets is more valuable than the liabilities associated with FSD’s mis-use.  Not a good tug-of-war.  Alain

  Florida Tesla crash which killed two will be investigated by federal board

E. Helmore, Sep. 18,” … .Tesla’s chief executive, the billionaire Elon Musk, tweeted: “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled and this car did not purchase [Full Self-Driving]. Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have.”…”  Read more Hmmmm… Case closed. Since Tesla collects sufficient data it knows when it is liable and when it isn’t. If it doesn’t fit (system is off), you must acquit.   Alain

  Startup’s Autonomy Workaround: ‘Teledrivers’ to Operate Cars from Remote Location

S. Blanko, Sep. 19, “… Vay, which is based in Germany, has been testing a slightly different technology on the streets of Berlin that relies on teledrivers doing most of the work, operating the cars from computer stations that have a basic driver’s-seat setup—including a steering wheel, pedals, and several monitors to see what’s around the car—alongside a network that, vitally, doesn’t suffer from too much latency… Read more Hmmmm…If latency was the major challenge, then life would be easy.  Alain

  What Is Automatic Emergency Braking?

“Automatic emergency braking systems are designed to first warn you of an impending frontal collision, then automatically apply the brakes if you don’t — or if you don’t apply them hard enough. While this may not happen in time to completely avoid an accident, particularly on slippery roads, any reduction in speed will reduce the force of impact…  ”  Read more Hmmmm…  If NHTSA is going to go after Elon for using terminology that inflates the expectation of what a system can actually do, then they should go after SAE wrt AEB.  And, why the caveats about wet roads (cameras can readily see if the road is wet, or the windshield wipers are on.  Tires can actually can measure their coefficient of friction.).  And why don’t brakes trigger early enough to stop.  And why is AEB turned-off at high speeds…  Folks who live in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones.  Alain

  Securing Pittsburgh’s Break-out Position in Autonomous Mobile Systems.

S. Tripp, Sep 2021, “… To bring autonomous mobile systems solutions to market, it is not sufficient to build capacity in any one component of the technology stack. Rather, the goal of full deployment of autonomous end market solutions requires capabilities (or the ability to reliably source those capabilities) across the entire technology stack, as well as the means of linking the capabilities in each layer of the stack so that a system can perform as a fully integrated platform rather than a partial solution that requires further commercialization by others. Regions who are able to build out their technology ecosystems to support this type of integration will be poised to realize major economic growth. Triangulating results from multiple recent market research reports places the terrestrial autonomous mobile systems market alone at an estimated $802 billion global market by
2025-26. When adding aerial, marine, and defense autonomous systems to capture the broader autonomous mobile systems market space context, the total likely climbs above $1 trillion in total market size during the mid- to late-periodof the present decade. If a region with a robust and well-supported technology ecosystem were to capture even 1% of the $1 trillion global autonomous mobile systems market, it would equate to a $10 billion growth opportunity developing within the next decade….”  Read more Hmmmm…  Worth paying attention to.  Alain

  Tesla Shanghai to make 300,000 cars Jan-Sept despite chip shortage -sources

Staff, Sep 26, “hanghai factory is expected to produce 300,000 cars in the first nine months of the year, capped by a delivery rush in the end of the July-September quarter, despite a global semiconductor shortage, two sources said….” Read more Hmmmm… That’s greater than 30k per month. 1k per day.  1 per working minute.  That’s pretty impressive for a largely serial production process.  They’re “Just Doing It”! Alain

  GM invests in Oculii, radar software maker for self-driving cars

Staff, Sep. 14, “General Motors Co’s (GM.N) venture capital arm has invested millions of dollars in Oculii, a U.S. startup maker of software for radar sensors used in self-driving cars, Oculii co-founder Steven Hong said…”   Read more Hmmmm… Nice; however, the image shows an Audi.  Whoops. (unfortunately, I’ve been there.) Alain

  Watch dashcam footage of a Tesla reportedly on Autopilot almost hitting a state trooper and slamming into two cars

G. Kay, Sep. 24, “The Florida Highway Patrol released a dashcam video of a Tesla that was reportedly on Autopilot nearly hitting a state trooper…. ” Read more Hmmmm… Watch the video.  Given the lane change that the Tesla seems to be making at the time of the crash, it is more likely that the driver was steering the Tesla and not AutoPilot in the seconds before the crash.  Alain

  China’s Geely to set up 5,000 battery swapping stations by 2025

Staff, Sep.26, “China’s Geely (GEELY.UL) aims to set up 5,000 battery swapping stations for electric vehicles (EV) globally by 2025, as sales grow in the world’s biggest vehicle market, the automaker said in a statement on Sunday….”  Read more Hmmmm… Seems like the non-parsimonious way to do things.  Should we do a tire rotation/exchange at the same time??? Alain

  A model for naturalistic glance behavior around Tesla Autopilot disengagements

A. Morando, Sep. 2021, “We present a model for visual behavior that can simulate the glance pattern observed around driver-initiated, non-critical disengagements of Tesla’s Autopilot (AP) in naturalistic highway driving.

Drivers may become inattentive when using partially-automated driving systems. The safety effects associated with inattention are unknown until we have a quantitative reference on how visual behavior changes with automation….” Read more Hmmmm…Very nice should-read paper.  The input is the system’s use and the output is glance behavior, but as is expressed upfront, implications on Safety are as yet unknown. What is now needed is the relationship between glance behavior and safety,  which may not be a simple task.

From a simplistic perspective, Safety is largely about driver misbehavior.  If the system is tuned to mitigating driver misbehavior, then it has a chance of overriding/compensating for additional driver misbehavior that it induces.  Over-hyping these systems capabilities can’t be good and neither can over-stressing about them.  Good common sense should prevail.  Alain

Tesla says Autopilot can now detect and slow down for emergency vehicles’ lights at night

F. Lambert, Sep 17, “… “If Model3/ModelY detects lights from an emergency vehicle when using Autosteer at night on a high speed road, the driving speed is automatically reduced and the touchscreen displays a message informing you of the slowdown. You will also hear a chime and see a reminder to keep your hands on the steering wheel. When the light detections pass by or cease to appear, Autopilot resumes your cruising speed. Alternatively, you may tap the accelerator to resume your cruising speed.”

Interestingly, Tesla specifies that this new capacity works specifically “at night.”  The automaker also adds this important warning:

“Never depend on Autopilot features to determine the presence of emergency vehicles. Model3/ModelY may not detect lights from emergency vehicles in all situations. Keep your eyes on your driving path and always be prepared to take immediate action.”…. ”  Read more   Definitely a step forward.  Teslas should also slow down if a stationary object is in the lane ahead that the Tesla can’t pass under.  Alain

  The Maps That Steer Us Wrong

G. Bensinger, Sep. 26, ”  Too many of our digital maps are sellouts.

Just like the projection maps we’re all familiar with that inaccurately depict Greenland dwarfing South America, the digital maps that orient our lives on smartphones and laptops are the result of a series of compromises or half-truths and don’t always accurately represent the world as it is….” Read more Hmmmm…  Wow, maps aren’t perfect.  I’m sure Greg Bensinger is perfect.  “half-truths”…  That’s not an accurate depiction, now is it Greg.  Don’t bother reading this.  Not worth your time.  Bad enough it was a waste of mine. Alain