Last week I went to Crown Casino in Perth for lunch, not because I am a gambler, but because they have cheap lunch deals.
However we dipped out as that was only Monday to Thursday and we chose to go on Friday so I was right on form as usual, but that's another story.
While I was waiting for my colleagues to pay for lunch ( I had already paid for mine in case you were wondering) I just stood there and looked around at this huge gaming area with flashing lights, bells and music.
One thing struck me immediately, apart from the lack of smiles on peoples faces, and that was the lack of staff.
Not that I'm saying that there aren't enough staff, just that everything that can be, is automated.
All the pokies are computerised, the money is handled by the machine, or added to a card by a machine with no human intervention. Many of the people in front of the machines look like machines as well with blank stares and push the button, wait, stare, push the button. Repeat.
There is even an automated roulette type wheel and the players have linked screens where they place their bets. The machine voice says no more bets then the wheel begins to spin all on its own, stops and pays out to the screen of anyone lucky enough to win.
Driving back from there I notice a new fixed speed camera on the side of the road. No longer police standing there with a radar but fixed cameras at intersections at regular intervals. The first thing you know these days when you've done something wrong is when you get the bill in the mail.
I used to be a great supporter of speed camera, but now that there are so many of them it's far easy to be penalised when you do make a legitimate mistake. We are human and if you try really hard to do the right thing you still make the odd mistake, and if there is camera there when you do, it's another fine. I try not to make mistakes, but I am Human, no matter how much my wife begs to differ.
Roll on automated vehicles.
In the same vein this whole concept is to be extended, where the speed camera comes to you with an automated police motorcycle cruising the streets looking for offenders and issuing on the spot fines (literally) via apps or email.
At what point do we reach the limits of human concentration? We all know that there are very bad drivers out there that shouldn't be allowed on the road but at what point does an average person start to lose their license because they physically and mentally can't keep up the concentration 100% of the time. I know we should but I also know that we can't.
This could actually become a selling point when autonomous vehicles hit big time, and can also be used by government as a migration tool, but in the interim it is going to cause pain.
Add to that the new Crusin' parking inspectors that just drive by and the computer records the number plates of all vehicles it passes and ties it to a GPS system. This is recorded and on the next pass if the car is till there and has exceeded its limit an automated fine is produced.
So, whats the point of, well, pointing out all of the automation?
Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of it is great, but we do have the risk of people becoming more insular, with social interaction being reduced to the point that you can avoid human contact virtually altogether.
Virtual reality will make that even more of an issue.
On another note, Uber has started running autonomous cars in San Francisco.
Not everyone is happy.
Uber has not applied for a license and it looks like this may come to trading blows in court.
It's been a while since I made a blog entry, not because I didn't want to, but because there hasn't been a lot of news.
Most manufacturers have made their announcements, published their road maps and now have gone quiet while getting on with the job of making it work.
The major hurdle these days seems to be government dragging heir feet and not addressing the issues that will have a dramatic effect on society.
I wrote an open letter to that effect and have held off publishing it as I have sent requests to both state and Federal (Australian) governments requesting information of what they are intending to do.
After a month I have had no response.
However, as is the way of life when you take a stand, something comes long to make you look faintly ridiculous, or prophetic, depending on your outlook. I'll go with prophetic.
The (Australian) National Transport Commission has been in place since 2003 and has had a remit to look at transport across the country. But as time goes on, things change.
Recently their focus has been updated. and this is a quote from their website.
Automated vehicles offer the possibility of fundamentally changing transport and society by improving road safety, freight productivity and by reducing road congestion. However, current regulations do not adequately support automated road vehicles. In November 2016, Australian transports ministers agreed to a phased reform program so that conditionally automated vehicles can operate safely and legally on our roads before 2020, and highly and fully automated vehicles from 2020. To provide certainty on the use of existing technology, transport ministers reaffirmed the existing policy position that the human driver remains in full legal control of a vehicle that is partially or conditionally automated, unless or until a new position is developed and agreed. These recommendations and policy positions are set out in the NTC policy paper – Regulatory reforms for automated road vehicles.
The policy paper starts off with a realistic statement that gives me hope that this is a step in the right direction.
However, current regulations do not adequately support automated
road vehicles and there is uncertainty about how and when current polices and regulations
will be adapted. There is also a risk that, without a national and coordinated response to
automated vehicle reform, Australia’s complex regulatory framework will result in inconsistent
regulation of automated vehicles across states and territories.
In this policy paper, the National Transport Commission (NTC) recommends that the
Commonwealth and state and territory governments support on-road trials, remove
unnecessary legal barriers, and provide for the safe operation of automated vehicles.
So it seems, I am pleased to say, that I have been pre-empted in trying to get governments involved.
As this technology will be appearing on the road within the next few years it needs to be addressed urgently and this is a good start with a National focus.
Apple has finally announced their intention of development in the field of autonomous vehicles with a letter to the (US) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) .
Although apple does refer to the sharing of crash data between manufacturers, that does seem to be at odds with their usual closed eco-system. Hopefully they will help with standardisation not proprietary systems.
In the US it's anyones guess what will happen once Trump gets into the White House.
His opposition to automation stealing jobs doesn't bode well for automated vehicles as they will replace many driving jobs.
If that's the case then the US may well slip behind the rest of the world in leading edge technologies, ironically leaving China to grab the lead.
There has been a huge amount of capital spent in developing technology to replace people and I don't think that's going to change back anytime soon. Amazons automated warehouse being a case in point.
No matter what your told, it's not just the US. Watch this video about automation in China.
This has to be the ultimate bridge builder to date. Note how fast it happens (even though the video has been sped up) and how few people are involved.
The clock doesn't get turned back just because you want to...
The world of autonomous cars seems to be chugging along (pardon the pun) quite nicely with no great revelations or changes occurring, which makes the effort of writing a blog on the subject so much more difficult.
This would explain why there hasn't been many additions to mine lately.
So for something different I am going to look at the world of automation in a broader aspect.
Automated boats and ships are a coming thing for slightly different reasons than car automation.
Primarily its a cost thing.
To start with, have a look at this pioneer trying to do something that hasn't been done before, successfully sailing a totally autonomous boat from California to Hawaii.
A great pioneering event, not withstanding the fact that it's only a couple of feet long and weighs 60 pounds. (2 metres long and 27 kilos to all of us outside Trump world).
The full story is here. The fact is that he built this with both consumer and professional parts when required and it actually worked.
On arrival in Hawaii, it was cleaned up, reprogrammed and is now on its way to New Zealand.
I for one will be very pleased if it makes it down to our part of the world and will be following its progress with great interest. If you are interested as well you can follow its progress here.
Amsterdam has launched a new project to develop "Roboats", fully autonomous boats that can be used for multiple purpose in a city with many canals.
In a project with a lot of hefty technology organisations behind it such as The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The Amsterdam Institute of for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), Delft University of Technology (TUD), and Wageningen University and Research (WUR), it has very good prospects.
The boats, or more accurately, barges, can be used for a myriad of purposes ranging from personal use for tours up to coupling them together as emergency bridges or temporary performance stages.
International shipping.
Due to its very nature and the development of containerisation the whole process really lends itself to automation. Containerisation has been automated for some time now and has very little physical human input.
the following video shows just how far automation has come with the masses of automated vehicles moving containers around without a person in sight.
Because this is a secure industrial site it isn't open to the public so it has developed at a huge rate with little public knowledge. The sophistication of these systems is absolutely staggering and the sort of thing you would expect in a science fiction movie.
The ships that carry the containers now also have a high level of automation to increase efficiency and reduce crew costs. Many of the crew they do have are no longer specialists but more all rounders as many of the technical functions are fully automated.
This reduction in crew cost can produce huge savings, therefore offsetting the automation cost in the first place and providing a return on the investment in a shorter time frame.
Fully automated ships are on the drawing board and about to start manufacture.
January 2017 sees the first build begin for a fully automated container ship.
Where does shipping go from here?
Roll Royce has a vision and I must admit, if you have looked at the automation that already exists and given the communications technology available now, this vision could be far closer than you think.
So, to summarise, the subject of automated vehicles has a far wider implication than just cars and trucks.
Shipping automation is so far advanced but most people aren't aware of the level of technology in use and the next few years will see even more dramatic change.
A short one this time due to the fact that there isn't a lot happening at the moment.
Actually, there is a lot happening but it's diverse. We are at a point where different companies are still investigating different things. When the rubber actually hits the road we will see an acceleration when companies see what others are doing, what is being accepted and then incorporate other peoples technologies into their own.
That's the point where standardisation occurs.
Once everyone's on the same page, economy of scale kicks in big time and uptake accelerates as costs drop. At least that's my theory...
Given the bad press Tesla has received with people using driver assist technology as fully autonomous, it was interesting to see Elon Musk announcing that all Teslas now being produced have fully autonomous hardware installed.
The exact quote
"We are excited to announce that, as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range. Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system. A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead."
This is obviously a great step forward and a recognition that you can't rely on a single technology but need overlapping sensors to cater for all contingencies.
This obviously adds to the cost but we are talking about lives here so price is (or should be) a secondary consideration.
On the other hand will this increase peoples expectations and rely on the tech even more before it's ready?
Time will tell.
Yesterday saw a truck in Colorado make a delivery of beer using an autonomous system.
Admittedly it was only on the highway stretches, not in urban traffic and had special permission to do so.
Having said that, one of my favourite expressions is that once the technology is out there and can be used, it will be.
You can't turn the clock back, no matter how much Islamic extremists or some current high profile politicians want to, once it's out there, it's out there so get used to it becoming more common.
On the same theme, McKinsey and company have released a report that suggests that a third of long haul trucks will be not have a need for a full time driver by 2025 due to the increased use of technology.
Autonomous personal aircraft are in the news again with the Airbus group developing a new single seat, battery powered 4 rotor personal aircraft about the size of a car. Air taxi anyone?
Of course Ehang industries has prototypes undergoing testing already but the more the merrier as any competition generates development and growth.
I have just been on a bit of a jaunt through Europe and with jet lag and all I am now back in the saddle.
Not a lot of Autonomous vehicle news emerging from my travels but I did notice a lot of electric car charging stations in Paris and they were well frequented.
One other thing I noticed as well is the number of for hire bicycle racks where you flash a card and take of on a bike and leave it at another bike site somewhere else.
Paris has extended both these concepts where you find and autoLib station, flash your card, disconnect the charging cable and drive away in an electric car!
If you live in a busy city with limited parking and narrow roads why would you want to own a car when you can hire one as easily as that.
That brings me to this weeks subject.... Where I see autonomous cars going in the future.
This whole concept is one I have thought about and not referencing any particular school of thought but looking at it from a purely logical perspective I will lay out where I think it should go. This may not be practical for reasons of cost, politics and human fear but should give you something to think about... Hopefully.
I did something similar to this when talking about where China could be heading but will try and lay it out in a more logical manner.
Here goes....
From an efficiency point of view, the concept of a car being entirely standalone in getting from A to B is possible but ignores a lot of real time conditions. For example, road works, emergency vehicles and heavy traffic in specific areas means that the route selected is not optimal.
I see the first and most efficient feature needed in autonomous vehicles is to have Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Infrastructure to Vehicle (Referred to V2I) communication and think this is required as a minimum.
Why you ask?.... A very good question.
You hop in your (or hired) autonomous vehicle (AV) and program in your destination to the built in GPS and away you go.
The vehicle will have GPS as this is a key to autonomous driving, otherwise you would have to guide the vehicle yourself which rather defeats the purpose, so that's a given.
Now if you have GPS it's a simple matter to have Main Roads (or whatever road maintenance organisation you have in your part of the world) to have a box associated with any road work activity that can update GPS systems with the details of what's happening in that location. Your AV can then determine if it needs to change course or continue. This can happen quickly in real time.
(Collectively V2V and V2I is referred to as V2X.)
Extend that to Police and other emergency vehicles, tow trucks, water pipe repair crews, power line maintenance with systems that can be quickly activated in the event of any activity that could have an effect on traffic and you immediately eliminate many traffic bottlenecks.
With V2V instant communications it simplifies things when your vehicle decides to brake hard because it has detected a child chasing a ball on to the road. You don't have to worry about being rear ended as the vehicle behind can always know what you are doing. It also won't be reading a text message from the wife and will be able to react instantly.
When a vehicle enters another road and wants to merge, V2V will alter the traffic flow to the optimal to allow seamless integration, without blasting horns and rude finger gestures as we have now.
Imagine a mechanical failure on a freeway where the AV still has velocity but has lost power, with V2V it can communicate with the other vehicles and cut across traffic safely, leaving the roadway clear for fast moving traffic.
One of the problems recently highlighted in Pittsburgh is that a double parked vehicle or delivery vehicle can hold up an AV as it expects the vehicle to move and waits for it. With V2V the stationary vehicle it can tell any vehicle nearby that is going to remain stationary and to go around.
Emergency vehicle will be the big winners here as they can transmit that they are coming through and Moses would be envious of the parting of the waves of traffic as the vehicle approaches.
Random thought... once full automation is achieved in cities, lane makings and street direction become redundant and can be changed in real time as traffic conditions change, for example, a street can be one way for a while and reverse that if the traffic flow requires more access in the other direction and it can be done on the fly by changing specific lane directions and redirecting the AV's to other lanes seamlessly.
Any way I digress.
One of the other features I spoke of in the earlier blog regarding China is that there could be a centralised computer system that controls all traffic flow.
Now that I think about it, it's not really necessary in the West but could be done in more totalitarian countries as a monitoring system for regulation of road use as well as for traffic co-ordination.
The use of GPS systems and V2X give a much better flow to the traffic system as a whole and should eliminate many of the problems we have currently.
So, from that point how do I see it developing?
Another very good question that I'm glad you asked....
Currently we have a number of automated vehicles appearing on the road now.
Here in Perth The RAC with the State Government has started a limited bus test in South Perth.
The important aspect of that is that it is on a public road. It does have a standby operator in the event of issues which you would expect (and hope) to see on early testing.
Singapore has limited automated Taxis on the road in a business park, also with an operator as required and Pittsburgh has started an Uber service, again with an operator.
So, we have testing in real world conditions on the road now all over the world.
Many manufacturers are wanting their Fully AV's on the road by 2021 and California is allowing (approved) fully automated vehicles in limited locations without a driver in new legislation.
Now that these vehicles are on the road, the scope of this testing will increase dramatically. It won't be long before fully automated vehicles will be on sale or available as taxis for widespread use.
Once that happens the issues with integrating them into existing traffic flows will be the new problem.
How will that work?
One school of thought is that there should be warning signs on AV's to let people know that they may not react the way they would expect.
Personally I think that would be a bad move as it would make them targets and people would cut them off deliberately knowing they will brake and take avoiding action. This would be counter productive and could increase collisions.
As the numbers of AV's on the road increase the shift to fitting all vehicles with V2V and V2I technology will become desirable and could even be mandated for safety reasons.
Thought should be given to standardising these systems and implementing it in all new cars in the next couple of years to reduce this as an issue further down the track.
GPS systems will also need to be standardised so all of the competing networks have access to the public infrastructure data.
Once these automated vehicles start to appear on the mainstream roads, driver education becomes the key to knowing what these vehicles will do in a given situation. Given the level of sophistication of the technology now available and the rapid development of even more sophisticated software, the main issue will not be with the AV's but with the current vehicle drivers.
Many people won't like it and, as with any new tech, people resist change.
But there is one inescapable fact, the technology is here to stay.
As in the early days of automobiles there will be opposition and some legislation to stop it but it will fail.
When was the last time you saw someone walking in front of a car waving a red flag?
The time has come, the walrus said to speak of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.
But now the time has come for stars to shine, new days of wonder from afar,
Singapore has today, launched the first fully autonomous car.
A taxi, on the road, no driver, all alone, brave new world but a world of one,
The first of many, of things to come,
A start, a bright light, but at last......... the first one.
(Apologies to Lewis Carroll)
Time for celebration. I had no idea of what to put in a blog this week until I saw this article that Singapore is launching the first fully autonomous taxi service today.
It consist initially of six vehicles that can be called via a mobile phone app and is free service for selected users.
Admittedly it is only within a 2.5 square mile area within the One North business park but it is a start. They plan to have 12 on the road by the end of the year and is a result of Singapores' autonomous vehicle initiative.
Singapores' government has been wanting to reduce the number of vehicles for quite some time and sees this as the ideal way to do it.
They are hoping to reduce the number of vehicles on the road significantly, and where an entire country is smaller than many cities, it is a very desirable aim.
There will be an engineer sitting in the drivers seat for some time as this is a testing phase, not a final release version and you do need to keep safety in the forefront.
The first autonomous taxi on the road, the beginning of a whole new world...
Due to personal commitments I may not be able to write a new blog for 3-4 weeks unless I get really lucky, but given past experience that's unlikely.
The metaphorical wheel has turned full circle once again.
The road map for autonomous vehicles has long been seen as a progressive path with driver assist features improving the driving experience and making it easier for the driver. This automation takes away many of the decisions, smoothes out the ride makes it all just that much safer.
This of course is a huge improvement and does make driving easier and safer but unfortunately with people being what they are there are unintended consequences emerging.
Once the novelty of the tech wears off, human nature kicks in and the little voices in our head say .. if the car can do it, has done it for months, therefore I trust it to keep doing it.
This mindset has proved fatal in one instance with a Tesla and has had many others blaming the vehicles because they, as the driver, weren't paying attention.
To be fair, this is a pretty valid argument. If the manufacturer has a feature it should work consistently, shouldn't it?
This is the catch 22. It is beta software in the Tesla and it does work but you do need to keep an eye on it all the time, just in case.
However drivers don't pay attention all the time even when driving without any driver assist features as the road toll and panel beaters will tell you. So with very sophisticated driver assist features people become even more complacent.
This is the core problem that Google has been talking about for some time and they have the philosophy that an automated vehicle should be fully automated, no pedals, no steering wheel and no way of the driver taking control.
Other manufacturers are starting to think along the same lines with Ford announcing they will have a fully autonomous vehicle for mass transport use on the road by 2021 and are looking to implement it through ride sharing services. This is less than 5 years away.
This is a nice argument but does put a lot more pressure on the manufacturers because, once this is released there is no turning back and the technology has to be spot on right from the start.
Statistics will prove that the number of collisions, deaths and injuries will reduce significantly but even so, once someone dies in a fully autonomous vehicle all bets are off and the public trust will be severely eroded. At this point there will be a severe swing by the fringe to roll it back and there will be a lot of debate.
Many people are saying that this technology should be abandoned. (Sorry ignore the previous line, I've just been reading US political stories).
So this is the conundrum....
Do we continue with driver assist and its limitations or do we go the big bang theory and get rid of all controls?
Interestingly enough some companies appear to be going this route now but keeping it simple and using it in controlled environments.
Companies such as Navya, Easymile and Ford have autonomous buses for use in private environments usually business parks or universities where the environment is more sedate, low traffic densities and the speed of the vehicles can be restricted. This gives a real world but much safer testing environment. However when this extends to road conditions it faces the same challenges as other autonomous vehicles although speed limitations conceivably could stay lower than normal traffic rates.
Whichever way it goes with automation, there will be a considerable overall reduction in road carnage either way and we have to hope that the big picture takes precedence over the hysteria.
Singapore is a modern clean city state and I have been fortunate enough to visit there on several occasions over the years.
I first went there in 2002 and found it to be very quiet, sedate, very very clean, neat and very easy to get around with low traffic and a fast efficient MRT rail system.
On my last visit two years ago I found it to be far more vibrant and it has grown considerably since my last visit.
Given that it is a city state with limited land resources of 719 sq km (278 sq miles) and a population of more that five and a half million people it has its own set of unique problems .
Not the least of these is traffic.
Given that a basic Corolla on the road with all government fees and charges will cost over $US100,000 in the first year, it is staggering that the government has had to take steps to reduce the number of vehicles it will allow on the road for the next year because of traffic volume and the long transit times around this small country.
As I said I have been there a few times and have noticed how much longer it now takes to get somewhere by taxi compared to when I first visited.
Why you ask? Good thing you did really, so now I have a reason to continue.
Singapore is just off the equator so it doesn't get snow or ice. It has a good road infrastructure, relatively flat land and a government with good control and able to implement new policies when they need to.
To tackle the traffic problem the government has committed to have autonomous taxis on the road and has already started testing with Delhi automotive.
With taxi fares expected to drop by a third with the removal of the driver and dramatically increased traffic flow it seems an ideal solution for this small but progressive state.
Their ambitious time frame starts with testing this year (2016) and concluding in 2020 with a complete fleet of fully autonomous taxis on the road replacing the existing manual fleet.
Given the known phenomenon of taxis disappearing off the streets when it rains (everyday in Singapore) this should also help considerably in getting people moving.
Given that this is a very ambitious time frame, it remains to be seen if this happens as quickly as they hope but given the commitment and need, Singapore could well lead the world in implementing this technology.
On another related front, Singapore's SMRT Corporation is to provide automated transport pods for use in airports, campuses, resorts and industrial parks.These can carry up to 24 people at speeds up to 40 km per hour.
Many countries are talking a lot about autonomous vehicles,
Asian countries are doing a lot more than talking about it, possibly because of greater population pressures and growing economies creating a more urgent need.
The west has had private ownership of vehicles for a very long time but many Asian countries have only recently reached the level of wealth where individuals can afford to buy cars and they are doing so in ever increasing numbers.
This has created a boom which in turn has created huge congestion and pollution issues which puts enormous pressure on governments to keep this growth sustainable.
Automated vehicles may be the key to having efficient transport for all and to keep pollution down by reducing the number of vehicles on the road.
So what seems to be tight time frames to us in the west may actually be achievable in the east....
After all, they have a very big incentive to make it work.
It looks like we are finally getting there.
Parts of Australia are getting into the swing and realising that this is happening here as well.
Automated vehicles are coming down under.
The Australian Road Research Board Principal Behavioural Scientist Paul Roberts has stated that automotive technology is a lot more advanced than people realise and goes on to say that they will be here a lot more suddenly than people realise. The full story is here:
The Australian arm of Carnegie Mellon University in South Australia is planing to build a research centre in conjunction with General Motors Holden to make Australia an export hub for this technology so it's good news for all of us in the antipodes.
We might be a long way away from the rest of the world but we do have some very clever people, if you discount politicians.
I have been saying for some time that many people have under estimated the speed at which this will happen and when it does, it will appear to happen virtually overnight to those that aren't expecting it!
Coming back to a common theme of the past few weeks, we need to look a little deeper at the question of what makes a vehicle fully autonomous.
The normal answer to that is when you can hop in, tell it where to go and sit back and relax, read a book or watch a movie or even become involved in more intimate activities as some other pundits have suggested.
That is fully autonomous.
That then begs the next question. Is the tech behind it safe enough?
At this point there are no standards.
There are a number of ways of sensing what is around the vehicle, be it cameras, radar, lidar and cloud based GPS systems or a combination of all four.
Obviously the more systems you have the less chance of something being missed and when weather conditions are bad the use of all of these can make it as safe as houses to keep driving.
Therein lies the rub. If you base it on one system then you will never have more than driver assist, as somethings either won't be detected or can be incorrectly identified and human intervention is required to analyse the situation. If the driver isn't alert then the system fails and the "driver" pays the consequence.
This was seriously highlighted recently with the death of a Tesla driver, presumably letting the car take full control. With only cameras, the car didn't see a light coloured truck crossing in front of it against a bright sky.
To be clear, autopilot is a great driver assist feature but is a single technology enough when lives are at stake to allow this as the basis for a fully autonomous system?
To use a bad analogy, would you jump out of an aeroplane with only a single parachute with no backup emergency 'shute?
So we come back to the same question, who decides how many systems need to be used and how many of each?
Cost, obviously is a factor but if you buy in bulk then the cost comes down. Tesla model 3 so fr has advance orders in excess of 300,000, so if you have 2 lidars on each that's 600,000 units straight off the bat. Build in the cost for a full production run over the life of the vehicle model and we are talking millions of units.
Given that new products have to cover the development cost in the first few years then they are expensive. However once the development costs have been recovered the manufacturing cost is far lower and economy of scale kicks in and the wholesale price becomes much cheaper.
Why not then have systems in the vehicle from the start. It will add to the base price of the vehicle obviously but think about who will be the early adopters.
These will be the big fleet buyers for taxis services who are lining up to corner the market as soon as the tech is approved for use, and these players have very deep pockets and are prepared to pay a premium to have the safest systems on the road right from the beginning.
This covers the recovery costs and economy of scale starts to kick in from these clients and the rich private buyers and by the time it trickles down to the rest of us plebs, the costs will be far lower. That is if we even need to buy a car at that point but that's another discussion altogether.
Hopefully there will emerge an international body that sets industry standards and we can get the best possible results, we're talking of saving millions of lives a year after all and every single life counts, especially if it's my family.
I woke at my normal time and went through the normal cleansing ritual (the three SSS's) and turned on the news as I started breakfast.
Average sort of news day, war in the middle east, former superstar dies at 90, politician charged with corruption, nothing out of the ordinary except for the one story at the end that suprised me and I would think, many others.
In Sydney, there was a guy on his way to work and was involved in a collision when a tyre blew and his car swerved into another. Fortunately there were only minor injuries and the road was cleared by Sydney automated Crash Clear in a few minutes. Traffic control central issued an automated alert and all other vehicles changed lanes and continued with diversions to allow the emergency vehicles through in priority mode.
Most people were only delayed for a minute or two at most, but the unusual point was that this was the first collision that involved human injury in the entire city in over a month.
With the passing of the new autonomous vehicle law and its enforcement last year, it meant that manual driving within the metropolitan area was now illegal. Since then the collision rate, and particularly the death and injury rate had dropped to historic lows.
I finished eating and voice called Valet. "Leaving for work 5 minutes"
I cleaned up, picked up my gear and walked out the front as the car pulled in to my drive.
It changed to my favourite colour and spoke as the door opened. "Good morning George, heading for the office as usual"?
I grunted an affirmative and engaged the in car display to get an early start on the day.
Having achieved several emails, two video calls and a lot of reading I had clocked up 30 minutes from my work quota before I got there.
I left the car at the kerb as it reconfigured itself for the next user.
I crossed the nearly deserted road to get coffee.
The coffee shop was a retro kind of place with old posters, one of which was a street scene taken from across the road looking back at this store from about 50 years ago. The contrast was striking. There were masses of cars waiting at the long since removed traffic lights and people waiting for them to change so they could cross. To the side was the multi story car park which is now an open area with gardens and fountains where I quite often spend some time at lunch.
As I get my coffee I hear an ambulance approaching, siren blaring to warn the pedestrians, the light poles start to flash automatically in a pleasing calidescope of colour as they receive the alert to warn the deaf people, and the not so deaf immersed in their music. The vehicle passes swiftly, unimpeded and the sound fades into the distance.
I walk back to my office for the rest of the daily grind.
At 3pm I have Valet call a car to take me to home and I get another 30 minutes work done on the way.
I find a parcel waiting at the door that I ordered online this morning and the auto delivery got it here before I did, better than standing in a queue as I used to do.
Tonight I will have a car pick me up and several friends on the way and we can have a nice evening at a restaurant without having to worry about a "skipper" staying sober to drive home or worrying about finding parking in the city centre.
There was a brawl in the street tonight and the police were there within a minute. No traffic patrols, breathalisers and high speed pursuits for these boys in blue.
They now get to focus more on real policing and the response time shows, as it does for ambulances and emergency rooms with car crashes out of the scene.
We can all feel safer on the street now on multiple levels.
Valet gets me a car and I can catch a few minutes of my favourite streaming show on the way home after checking and responding to a few private emails.
I reflected as I drifted off that night about how much more time I have now, useful time that I can enjoy with far lower stress levels than I used to have driving or on public transport.
At last Technology has caught up with people and become transparent, where things like Valet have become pretty much a silent servant.
Now technology works for us, we don't have to work to make it work, and it works very, very well.
I know I spoke of this in the last blog but it is a significant event and needs to be looked at in more depth.
Last week the first person died in a vehicle that was driving itself.
Lets start by saying that any death for whatever reason is lamentable.
Suprisingly, the fact that a vehicle was being driven autonomously and caused a death has not started a backlash as the pundits had forecast.
Why is that?
The simple answer is that it wasn't an autonomous car in the first place. It was a great car with a lot of driver assist features that are available within the vehicle to be used in test mode with the drivers full attention, ready to take control.
The driver apparently was using it as an autonomous vehicle, having gained confidence in its features over a period of time - which may have generated a lethal overconfidence when a situation occurred that was outside its capabilities and the driver failed to notice.
The official enquiry will bring out the facts so any speculation at this point is really futile.
Many cars on the road currently have similar features with different systems and sensors all looking at the world differently.
One fact that is indisputable is that this technology is not ready to allow it to be used exclusively as an autonomous vehicle and Tesla is quick to point out that fact.
Unfortunately, if a progressive development model is rolled out over time with more and more driver assist features which still rely on the driver to be awake and aware then that creates a whole new problem.
Imagine you're driving on a long trip and the the road is long, straight and extremely boring, a common scenario in a place like Western Australia where I live, where it can be many hundred of miles - between trees, and even further between towns with the only thing to break the monotony is the odd kangaroo or emu.
But what if the kangaroo or emu decides it wants to occupy the same space on the road as you do at the same time? (not the brightest animals in the world, think "shiny thing, lets check it out").
The semi autonomous vehicle says Oh Oh, I don't know how to handle this and throws its virtual hands in the air and screams ITS YOURS!
What happens?
The driver could take a very long time, in high speed travel terms to go from semi comatose to alert, and by then it could be too late for the driver and most certainly for the emu.
So a case can be made for going directly to fully autonomous vehicles but that in itself creates a whole new set of problems.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that fully autonomous vehicles will be on sale and on the road in 2020 and many others will be offering level two or three vehicles which leads to the problem just mentioned.
That is less than 4 years from now and, as per a lot of countries, we are not ready!
So what does that mean for users?
A very good question as there are, as yet, no industry standards, no federal and very limited state regulation in Australia, and very little anywhere else.
So that means if standards are not set for the use of these features are they legal to use?
Within Australia a driver has to be in control at all times under current law, so what are the implications for using a vehicle in autonomous mode? Worse still what will be the consequences if a vehicle is sold as fully autonomous and someone is killed when the law has not been changed.
All of the above means that the vehicles on sale in many places will have to have controls built in to prevent the full use of autonomous features on the road and to put the onus back on to the driver until such times as the law changes, Mercedes are doing this now.
So that begs the question of what needs to be done to get ready for the future today?
First and foremost we need a legal definition of what defines an autonomous vehicle and that needs to be based on standards that can be measured and quantified such as:
Standards for the minimum number of sensors required and their location.
Standards for the types of sensors required.
Standards to define the minimum sensor range of the sensors fitted.
Testing scenarios via NATA and/or ANCAP to determine the efficiency and reliability of the systems.
Law changes to allow drivers to be hands off, with the above criteria met.
Insurance companies to allow claims against collision when in autonomous mode.
There are undoubtedly many more but these are the first that spring to mind.
And remember, we have less that 4 years to do it all before the tech hits and starts being used seriously.
This will remove the onus from the driver and put it on Volvo provided the vehicle is used in accordance with the manufacturer and the currents law.
Now that's a level of confidence that you really want to see when you're sitting in a ton and a half of metal hurtling down the road with a computer in control and it also gives the emus a fighting chance.
BMW has also set 2021 as the launch date for their fully autonomous vehicle as well with a new partnership with chip maker Intel to supply the processing power and Mobileye technology for the software.
Another highlight this week in the world of automated vehicles is, yet again, the question of ethics.
Computers don't know what an ethic is, and even if they did it would still be irrelevant.
Think tanks love to get involved in moral dilemmas. What if? .. it doesn't matter what, can a computer handle it in a way acceptable to people?
Really, it is irrelevant for the simple fact that people react differently to computers and much, much slower.
If you are presented with a moral dilemma when driving, the human will usually hit the brakes as an instinctive reaction and go into brain freeze as they try to sort out what's happening and by the time they formulate a reaction, it's all over one way or another.
A computer will see the danger long before a human would, start to brake, tell other vehicles about the problem and then react to the circumstance. Ethics don't come into it at all.
The outcome, regardless of the action taken will in the vast majority of situations, always be far better from an autonomous vehicle than by a human as the detection and response time is far faster. So yes, automated vehicles in extreme circumstances may still result in death or injury , but the estimated 90% reduction in traffic incidents far outweighs any moral dilemma.
Ethics, nice to talk about but totally irrelevant to the new world of automated vehicles.
Having said that, we come back to the real world and new dilemma that we will face increasingly as time goes on.
Was this an autonomous vehicle, no. It is a Tesla which has beta software running on driver assist technology. Unfortunately it appears that people are relying more and more on it as fully autonomous system which it isn't. In this situation all the facts are not yet available as a full enquiry will be conducted to establish what really happened. Was the driver attentive and ready to take back control? What sensors were in use in that particular vehicle and what were the exact circumstances of the collision?
All of this will be discussed ad nausium in days to come but it does highlight a whole raft of issues to be sorted before fully automated vehicles hit the road.
For instance Volvo wants to have fully autonomous vehicles on the road in New South Wales by 2021. (NSW is the most densely populated state in Australia with Sydney as the capital).
Most, if not all states in Australia have a rule that states a licensed driver must be in control of a vehicle with a least one hand on the steering wheel at all times.
Until that law is changed a car can't drive itself without a "human" driver in control.
Change to this law is essential but it's really only the tip of the iceberg.
Firstly what defines an autonomous vehicle?
What sensors does it need to be considered safe? Does it have radar and Lidar in addition to a camera?
What is the range of the sensors?
What tests have they been put through to satisfy the authorities enough to allow them on the road?
These are a few of the simpler questions that need to be answered before laws can be changed to permit these vehicle on the road in fully autonomous mode.
Australia has some of the toughest vehicle standards in the world and this is rigorously enforced and if vehicles don't comply they are not permitted on the road in Australia.
As I have said in earlier blogs, the governments need to start addressing these issues now before the technology use becomes more widespread in defiance of the laws.
If standards are not applied then this unfortunate death may be the first of many resulting from the use of technology not really designed for the way it's being used and a lot of the work done in improving road safety standards will be bypassed for the sake of expediency.
If that happens there may be many more deaths even with the technology as the technology is just what it says on the label, driver assist.
Interesting concept in the brave new world of electric vehicles.
Imagine a world with all of theses batteries on wheels running around. What if you can share the power? Charge during the day with cheap power and sell it back to the grid at night?
An interesting article here that postulates that you could substantially offset a large part of the car cost using this method.
Link this with the concept of power sharing on the road between vehicles and the whole concept changes.
OK, since I started looking at this it has become a fascinating insight into the possible future.
Electric cars can easily become a power source in their own right. Power charging could come from the road itself, from parking bays or stand alone charging systems that a car can park at, then move from autonomously when charged.
There are limitless possibilities but using it as a storage bank has definite appeal.
Tesla could incorporate their cars into the "Tesla Power Wall".
A bit of light reading has prompted me to think of the possible "big picture" scenario in the evolution of autonomous vehicles.
It strikes me that there are really a couple of basic ways of doing this.
I hadn't even really considered this until today but reading between the lines there appears to be a fundamental difference in the way that China and the west are approaching things.
The common school of thought is that the manufacturers build cars that basically do all the things drivers do, (hopefully not the bad things that tend to kill people) and will effectively be a plug in replacement for the driver. Add to that some communications where cars can talk to each other to know about traffic density, road works and other impediments and the car decides which way to go.
The vehicle programs the route and away it goes.
For the sake of argument and my less than perfect interpretation of how I think China could be heading, lets turn that on its head....
China is already installing devices in manually driven vehicles to allow them to communicate between themselves and infrastructure as a pilot program and to spread across all of China.
Once that's in place, imagine a possible scenario where a state sanctioned vehicle is built. The state has implemented an integrated, centralised transport infrastructure system including a control centre.
The drivers gets into the car and punches in the destination. The car connects to the centralised control centre that knows the position of every vehicle on the road, the location of every road work, every emergency vehicle and its destination and traffic densities at every intersection.
Based on this information it can calculate the optimal route and send it back to the vehicle which then takes off in autonomous mode. Any changes to traffic conditions can generate a new route, long before the vehicle reaches a congestion point.
Now for the good and the bad.
The good.
With this in place before the vehicles actually hit the road means that the real life integration of manually driven vehicles and autonomous vehicles can be made much simpler. Think adaptive traffic lights from a centralised system to even out traffic flow, diversion from collision scenes, optimisation of routes for emergency vehicles including advance avoidance by the autonomous vehicles and possible in car warning to manual cars as part of the infrastructure build. By optimising the entire system as an entity, rather than individual units, the system can be coordinated as a whole making it extremely efficient.
Now for the downside.
Big brother knows exactly where you are, always. It can also hijack you if it wants to. If you wanted to be really paranoid and go the full conspiracy route, it could also direct you to a drive off a cliff and no one would be any the wiser. Unfortunately history has proven that governments are capable of these kind of acts in both the East and the West.
Anyone who is driving manually won't be able to get away with anything. Run a red light, you're done, because the system knows where your car is and what the light status is. This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how far they enforce the rules. It could also supply a lever as automation becomes more common to shift drivers away from manual control.
The middle ground.
If a system like this was to be contemplated, at least in the west, it would have to be heavily wrapped in safeguards to make it work without being exploited, hacked or otherwise turned into a weapon of mass destruction.
I can't really see the west evolving anytime soon to a system like this, but in China, given the social and political structure, anything is possible.
New news
At opposite ends of the spectrum both Mini and Rolls Royce are both preparing for the future with not only autonomous but electric cars.
Rolls Royce has built what I think is the best concept car ever, surpassing even the Australian FJ holden concept.
This has to be the best looking car ever, kind of like Art Deco mating with Futurama.
It will probably never see the light of day as a production vehicle but does show the way the thinking is going - and I really really like it...
Mini, on the other hand is looking at merging two worlds.
Where Rolls Royce is, and always will be, looking at private ownership. Mini, on the other hand, is looking at an alternate world where private ownership is optional.
But customising a shared vehicle to reflect the current drivers personality is a really radical and quite inovative concept. the car colour can be changed by the driver.
Who knows, you may even be able to have an account and the car reconfigures itself on the way to you and you see it as "your car" when it arrives.
In the past for long periods of time life was fairly simple, you were born, lived in a local community, did the same thing most of your life, had a family and died, generally quite young.
Technology came along and changed all that. Today most people, at least in cities, live a much longer life and adapt with constant change to their work and private life as technological change accelerates .
This blog is an example of that. Twenty years ago who had heard of a blog? most people hadn't even heard of the Internet and streaming services were a pipe dream.
This blog is about autonomous vehicles and so far I have covered most of the basics about the subject so it becomes more difficult to write a decent length piece on a particular subject that can hold peoples interest.
I am now going to change the format of this blog so it will become more of a news update with the odd longer piece when I find something of interest that I consider worth expanding on.
So lets kick it off... Driverless cars are not the full story of automated vehicles.
In one of my first blogs I had a story about the EHANG 184 personal single seat autonomous quad copter.
At the time this was seen as a concept design that probably wouldn't go anywhere, but as I said earlier things today change quickly.
May 26th 2016 saw the signing of an historic agreement between the state of Nevada and the Chinese EHANG corporation. This agreement will provide the foundation for collaboration between the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS) and EHANG Inc in the areas of flight testing, training and development of autonomous aerial devices at Nevadas FAA test site.
The full story is here.
The blade runner future of flying cars may be replace by electric quad copters but the video below is eerily reminiscent of coming into Bangcock by bus with the huge electronic billboards on many of the buildings. I can just visualise it from a quad copter.
On a similar note, autonomous trucks are becoming more and more in the news recently with automated road trains being tested in real world conditions.
In April 6 conveys of trucks from different European countries converged at Rotterdam in Holland after driving in "platooning"mode from as far as Sweden and Southern Germany.
The Platooning method means that the lead truck, with a driver controls all the following trucks. this gives a consistent highway speed and better fuel utilisation. In this test all the trucks were semi autonomous and had drivers on board, but this gives a pretty good idea of what's to come.
Analysts are now saying that 21 Million self driving cars will be on the road by 2035. Many thousands will be on the road in the US by 2020 and that US will lead in this market.
These numbers have been upgraded seriously from the last report as the whole autonomous vehicle scenario is accelerating. As I said in a previous blog, the new space race is well and truly on and I don't think the news for the US in this is as rosy as the article indicates.
I think these estimates are still extremely conservative as China is pushing hard to get the lead in this market. Singapore is wanting thousands of automated taxis on the road in the next few years....
I personally don't think the US has a chance of beating Asia in a race like this, given their legal system and their peoples inert resistance and fear of anything promoted by the government.
If China wants to do it sooner, they will because they can, the US will have to convince their people to try it, the Chinese can just say you will do it.... end of story
In concluding for today I just want to put it out there that robots should look obviously like robots. It creeps me out when they look like people, have a look at these as an example and see if you agree with me.
Something a little different this time, mainly because the thought occurred to me that autonomous vehicles are just part of a whole raft of technology that is affecting the way we live.
So then I started to think about the long term affects that technological change will have on society.
I am no psychiatrist, sociologist or anyone else remotely qualified to comment on the actual effects but I over the years I have observed a trend.
People appear to becoming more socially isolated as technology gains ground in our everyday life.
Back in my younger days when dinosaurs ruled the earth the family would sit around the radio, and later the TV and watch or listen as a family.
For a real treat, occasionally you got to go to the movies and sit with a crowd to watch it together.
With the advent of affordable home computing, every kid has a mission control in their bedroom with a computer, tablet, mobile phone all working together over the internet.
Instead of sitting as a family, each member watches what they want on TV or streaming services or play games online, or frequently, both at the same time.
Even in the early days of computer games, my kids used to have LAN sessions where all their mates would come around, set up a local network and hook all their machines together, order pizza and away they go. Today it's all in the cloud so there is no direct personal interaction.
Many people go to work on public transport. With autonomous vehicles happening, the advent of a vehicle as a service is being mooted and may even become the new public transport of the future with trains and buses becoming obsolete. There you have people sitting, working or playing within the vehicle with no direct personal interaction. Is personal isolation the way of the future and social interaction done through virtual reality?
Another observation. You used to sit at your office desk and talk about things. Now it's all email or chat software. You can work all day and say nothing aloud to another person but have many virtual conversations.
Ok, so what has technology ever done for me?
Today its everywhere. Tonight I watched Britain's got talent the day after it's shown in the UK. One of the acts used computers to drive drones as part of the act and I watched it on the other side of the world several hours after it aired live.
People are printing prosthetic limbs on home computers for a fraction of the cost of commercial units.
One of my colleagues told me in the stairwell as I was leaving work today about a 3d printed electric bike. called light rider. Apologies to KIT (Knight Rider for those of you too young to know) for the pun. Even though it looks like something out of farscape, it is impressive as possibly the worlds first 3D printed motor cycle.
Computer controlled routers abound, I have one in my shed complete with computer keyboard, mouse and LCD screen and CAD CAM software.
What home doesn't have an LCD screen with a set top box and streaming services?
Foxconn, which is a major supplier of devices for Apple and other major suppliers has replaced 60,000 jobs with robots. A good choice for a manufacturer to reduce costs and increase productivity, but what is the long term cost to society?
Workers are also consumers. If workers are replaced by machines on a large scale then who is left to buy the products produced?
Some argue that they don't lose their jobs but just increase productivity, the world economic forum has an interesting paper here on the possible effects of automation
So when you are sitting in your autonomous car what will you be doing?
Going too or from work could be used to catch up on work, reading, studying etc but on weekends it could be another story.
With cars currently being only semi-autonomous, engaging in sex in a moving car brings more than the normal amount of risk to the act.
Latest news on the autonomous front: insurance companies are predicting a drop in the cost of insurance once this tech hits the road in serious numbers, with Bloomberg predicting insurance costs could drop 60% in 15 years, giving fears to the survival of the industry.
To compound their woes, vehicle manufacturers, confident in their products ability to avoid collision may choose to wear their own insurance costs, putting yet more pressure on the insurance industry.
Add to that the probability of less cars on the road due to a car as a service scenario and things start to look very bleak.
On that note, a new start up called Zoot, out of Silicon Valley, is attempting to raise $US252 Million to start an autonomous Uber type service. It also has a license to operate autonomous vehicles on the road in California. Uber, Lyft and others are heading down the same path and have inked deals with major vehicle manufacturers to provide these services.
Tesla, a name fast becoming synonymous with driver less technology, may be far closer to a fully automated vehicle than many people think, possibly next year if this article from MIT Technology Review has the facts right.
Tesla is fast becoming a leader as it is logging truly massive amounts of data as all their vehicles constantly send data back to Tesla. What that means in the real world, is that Tesla is getting the real world data equivalent of Googles total testing data, and this is hard to believe, every 10 hours.....
They have a massive, world wide test bed, on the road everyday,sending reams of data back to improve their systems based on real world data.
So the question is can we become socially isolated when we are connected like never before?
The new space race has begun, or more accurately the race to be the lead in driverless cars has begun.
The US and Russia began the space race when the US realised that Russia was so far ahead it would take a decade or more to catch up. In 1962 President Kennedy pushed through a program to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
By 1969 that goal was achieved
Today we have a new space race.
Countries all around the world are waking up to the fact that autonomous vehicles are no longer in the realms of science fiction but are a reality and ready to move out into the real world now.
Even the queen is talking about it
As a consequence many countries and manufacturers are waking up to the fact that they could be left behind and are suddenly making decisions about where they want to be in this emerging race.
As I have mentioned before, China is actively setting up vehicle to vehicle communication systems in existing vehicles to talk to autonomous cars. Baidu, Google of the orient, is heavily involved in this race as well and has signed an agreement with the City of Wuhu to build a dedicated zone for autonomous vehicles, the first in China.
Baidu is also partnering with BMW to build an autonomous car for the hugely lucrative Chinese market and is spending serious coin to get ahead of the game. As can be seen from the video below they are focusing on the technology and not worrying about the aesthetics yet but that will change...
Meanwhile, in Europe, VW Group’s head of digitisation Johann Jungwirth is talking up driverless cars happening quicker than most people believe “In a few years we’ll see vehicles without a steering wheel or pedals. This is not 2030. I’m talking about five years from now.
By 2025 it will be commonplace.” He then went on to say "We will be making a massive effort to promote piloted driving. We will be investing with the aim of bringing these technologies to market faster than the competition"
So yet another joins the race.
Several German auto makers held their shareholder meetings recently and all are discussing Teslas' lead in both electric and autonomous technology and their reaction to it.
BMW announced " In 2018, we will lunch a BMW i8 Roadster. This will be followed in 2021 by the BMW i Next, our new innovation driver, with autonomous driving, digital connectivity, intelligent lightweight design, a totally new interior and ultimately bringing the next generation of electro-mobility to the road."
Challenge accepted, race on.
Raj Nair, Ford Motor Co's head of design,engineering, research and product development believes that "it is credible that and autonomous vehicle at SA Level 4 [one step below full automation] will hit the market by 2020".
Toyota announced its financial results this month an also signaled a paradigm shift in thinking. After a mostly lukewarm approach to autonomous vehicles in the past it has now well and truly joined the race by announcing the Toyota research lab and that "Automated driving and robotics are challenges that affect us closely" Toyota last year put up a billion $US to expand its research into autonomous driving and has announced a collaboration with the University of Michigan, the third alliance with universities in the US to advance its autonomous driving efforts.
On your marks.
Volvo is to run self driving versions of family 4x4s on London roads next year as the motor industry trial of autonomous vehicles accelerates.
Volvos test is called Drive Me London and will see families driving autonomous vehicle on public roads as they have been doing in Gothenberg since 2014.
Get set.
Automated vehicles is not just about cars. Look how many trucks are on the road at any time around the world delivering everything we use on a daily basis from basic food to building materials and everything in between.
A new US startup called Otto Trucks is converting, for around $30K, any standard truck built since 2013 into an automated workhorse.These are now on the road in limited testing in states that allow it and will be a growth industry once trucking companies start to look at the costs involved with manually driven trucks involved in collisions through damage, loss of earnings and legal ability.
However, given unionisation and US laws this may well be something that develops faster in Asia due to social differences.
GO......
The development and implementation of this technology is most definitely accelerating, pardon the pun.
A lot of it is due to visibility.
Let me expand on that.
Remember when you wanted to buy a car? If you aren't fixated on a particular brand then you do research and eventually come up with a make and model that you are interested in.You start looking at them, test drive and so on.
At this point something strange happens, because everywhere you look now you see that model on the road, they are prolific and seem to be breeding at an exponential rate. You never realised how many there are out there.
What has happened here is focus.
You have become aware.
The same thing applies to autonomous vehicles.
I have been in a new job now for just over six months at the time of writing, and as you would expect,I am fairly passionate on the subject of autonomous vehicles and can't resist the impulse to start discussions on it at work......frequently.
The same situation has happened with my colleagues, everywhere they look now they see news on autonomous vehicles. They hate me for it but hey, it happens.
So as more and more governments and companies become aware they start to think about the dollars and social benefits and talk about it and more news stories appear. The more the people see the more they think about it and the more focused they become.
The manufacturers and governments see the progress of other manufacturers and governments and want a piece of the action but to do that they need to get there first so they need more partnerships and alliances which generate more news stories and more awareness.
Rinse repeat.
So yes, the new space race is most definitely on - but this time it's not about outer space, its about evolution.
