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.
