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.
Sweden will have 100 members of the public using AV's in Gothenberg next year (2017).
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?
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