We just came across a talk by Chris Gerdes at the recent TEDxStanford conference. He is busy developing autonomous race cars. Driving these cars autonomously at their limit at high speed, difficult tracks and on slippery surfaces greatly helps improve the algorithms and could also be important to increase acceptance of this technology.
The team has is also carefully analyzing the behavior of professional race drivers to learn about optimal car handling in critical situations. They have gone so far as to equip race drivers with sensors to continuously measure their cognitive load while on the race track. Gerdes hopes to replicate some of the maneuvers that race drivers handle almost instinctively and with very little cognitive load.
Driverless technology may kill the auto insurance industry
A recent report by strategy consulting firm Celent (Boston) looks at the impact of advanced technology on the auto insurance industry. Based on a review of available and emerging safety technology – including collision avoidance, automated traffic law enforcement, telematics and robot cars – it provides estimates for the reduction of accidents. One of its scenarios predicts total auto industry premium to drop from 25 percent of total insurance industry premiums to only 13 percent by 2022. Most of these reductions will be due to available safety technology; fully autonomous cars will make their impact felt in the decade thereafter.
The report entitled ‘A scenario: The death of auto insurance‘ analyzes the adoption of advanced car technologies. It sees the first robot cars becoming available for private use in the time frame between 2018 and 2022. Between 2023 and 2027 the author expects driverless technology to become a preferred feature of high-end cars. Its adoption may be subsidized through tax incentives. The timeline ends in 2027; the report does not give an estimate for when driverless technology will be required in new cars.
The report asks the auto industry to actively prepare for this scenario. It recommends to
- expect the largest impact in activity and budget levels for sales service and claims
- begin monitoring the evolution of technology-induced changes in insurance losses
- draft a strategy for addressing the impacts (expand non-auto business, grow through mergers and acquisitions, accept shrinking revenues)
The report should also be a wake-up call to other industries which will be affected by driverless technologies. While some industries are at risk (including car dealerships, repair shops and auto manufacturers), it presents great opportunities to many others – which will be able to introduce completely new services and business models.
Japanese government aims to implement driverless technlogy
Realizing that traditional approaches for Intelligent Transport Systems may be outdated, the Japanese transport ministry has announced an initiative for an ‘autopilot’ driverless system which will be operated on highways. A first demonstration is planned for 2013; the whole system should be operational by 2020.The initiative will start with an expert forum on June 27 consisting of researchers and industry representatives (including Toyota, Honda, Nissan).
The autopilot system will operate within private cars. These cars will be driven manually on standard roads. Once the car reaches the highway, the autopilot can be activated. This will reduce accidents on the highway and reduce traffic jams. Still in the tradition of ITS, the ministry envisions that highways will need to be equipped with technology supporting the autopilot mode. This may include systems for controlling the traffic flow at on-ramps and in traffic jams.
Accelerating the pace of development for driverless technology is an excellent fit for the Japanese industry which already is a world leader in robotics technology.
Source: Daily Yomiuri, Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism
Google trademarks logo for a car-sharing service
Google is moving ahead with its efforts to introduce driverless cars. On June 13 it submitted a smiling car icon for trademark protection at the US Patent and Trademark Office (application 85650611). The application does not provide explicit information about the intended use beyond a reference to autonomous driving, but it is obvious that the icon was primarily designed to show available cars in an online map. We have tried to anticipate what this could look like (see graphic below). Whereas Google’s car sharing service will be a natural fit with Google maps, we had to use OpenStreetMap for the graphic because of copyright issues.
The graphic shows Google cars available in Las Vegas; we don’t know yet where Google might ultimately launch a car-sharing service but Nevada has become the first state where key legal hurdles for the operation of autonomous cars have been removed.
Why is Google protecting the logo now? Unless Google has made much greater advances with its technology than is currently known, it is unlikely that an autonomous car sharing service operated by Google could be introduced before 2015. But Google could either be working on developing the software infrastructure for their future mobility services which would quickly lead to icon and logo issues. Or they could be contemplating starting (or buying) a conventional car-sharing service first. They would get first-hand experience and could gradually expand it into a driverless mobility service.
The logo is clear evidence that Google considers car-sharing as the primary business model for its driverless technology. It will not compete with established car makers heads on; instead it will change the fundamentals of personal mobility. Greatly reduced costs through car-sharing and increased flexibility will drive millions of customers away from private car ownership and into the service offerings of Google. Car-makers beware!
Intelligent vehicle symposium showcases advances in driverless technology
Driverless technology researchers gathered at the beginning of June for the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium. With almost 200 presentations from more than 600 authors probably no aspect of this technology was left untouched.
This was not just an academic get-together: many of the papers involved major car makers (BMW, Toyota, Daimler, Renault, Volvo, Opel, Volkswagen, General Motors, Hyundai) or automotive suppliers (Delphi, Bosch).
The conference started with a reportedly captivating keynote presentation by Google’s Chris Urmson. Unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain more detailed information about its content. Please contact me if you were there!! Robert Bertini (Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab) gave another keynote on the environmental issues related to intelligent transportation which took the perspective beyond technical issues towards societal and environmental impacts.
It is hard to pick out the most interesting papers. But Daimler presented a new approach for improving stereo vision using a ‘Stixel’-based approach for object recognition. They claim that they are able to reduce false positives by a factor of 8 over the state of the art while reducing the computational costs by a factor of 10.
China also seems to be moving ahead with driverless technology. Two papers (1, 2) were presented from participants of the annual Chinese driverless vehicle competition (‘ Future Challenge of Intelligent Vehicles’) funded by their National Nature Science Foundation.
Several papers focused on pedestrian modeling and recognition. Volkswagen described their approach to systematically drive an autonomous car at the vehicle’s handling limits. DLR presented an approach to apply autonomous vehicles localization technology to trains.
The symposium was located in Alcala de Henares, Spain. It also included demonstrations of autonomous vehicle systems.
Stanford course on the Future of the Automobile
Intelligent vehicles were the main topic of a 1-unit Stanford course from April to June. The course included guest lectures from Volkswagen Research (pdf), Hyundai (pdf), Volvo (pdf) and Bosch (pdf) and addressed technical, legal and some societal aspects of autonomous vehicle technology.
The course was offered by Sven Beiker and Chris Gerdes, both from Stanford’s Center for Automotive Research (CARS). Some of the key insights provided in the class:
- Carsharing would benefit a lot – autonomous vehicles could be used by carsharing service providers as soon as 2018
- Completely autonomous vehicles might be available by 2030 (this somewhat contradicts expected use in carsharing by 2018)
- Over your lifetime you will spend about 1000 days in a car!
- Autonomous cars and inter-car communication systems should evolve together; however it is difficult to impose new standards
- The technology is advancing quickly
It is interesting, however, that the economic and business impacts of driverless technology seem to have been mostly absent from the course presentations (with the exception of a few bullet points in the final session). Issues such as how driverless technology might impact the cost of mobility, what impacts driverless cars would have on the structure of the car industry, and on new business models and services were not addressed.
Nevertheless this has been an excellent course. I highly recommend taking a look at the syllabus and the many excellent course presentations in PDF format.
Traffic accidents are among top leading causes of death
A recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows how dangerous motorized traffic is: Traffic accidents continue to be the leading cause of death for the age groups from 8 to 24 years! If the number of years lost are considered, then traffic deaths are at positions four in the year 2008 and five in 2009 among the leading causes of death for all age groups. Many accidents involve alcohol or human error. Many such accidents would not occur if the development and introduction of autonomous vehicle technology would be accelerated.
We should stop thinking about incremental measures to reduce traffic deaths by a few percent. Instead, we should aim to reduce it by at least a factor of three. Autonomous vehicle technology clearly has this potential!
Click the graphic to enlarge the image. Source: NHTSA
Automakers trying to slow down Google
Does Google’s driverless car technology threaten established car manufacturers? They clearly seem to think so: Lobbyists of the Alliance of Automobile Manufactures have succeeded in throwing a wrench into the process of legalising autonomous cars in California. Because of their concerns about liability issues, the Senate Transportation Committee decided to route the bill to the Rules Committee where it will possibly be assigned to another panel for further review on liability. This could mean a significant delay for California’s bill and puts into question whether California could become a key state in driverless car introduction. It looks like Nevada will keep this crown for some time.
Google has repeatedly lamented that car manufacturers show little interest in driverless car technology. This is not surprising because driverless cars will greatly reduce the total number of cars needed. Given that private vehicles currently sit idle more than 95 percent of the time, the total number of cars needed could conceivably shrink by a factor of 10!
This action by the Alliance of Automobile Manufactures is only a harbinger of things to come. As driverless technology matures, the fight will get nastier. But the public can only benefit from driverless cars: Countless lives saved, lower total transportation costs and greater mobility for the elderly and young. Automakers need to prepare for this future now. Closing the eyes and trying to prevent the inevitable is the wrong strategy.
Blind driver: Self-driving cars give me the indepence to go where I want to go
Steve Mahan, a blind person, makes a strong appeal for driverless cars in a video released by Google. The video shows Mr Mahan in the driver’s seat of their autonomous Prius completing what for others may look like everyday chores but what for some groups of our society is extremely hard: Pickung up laundry from the cleaners, fetching something to eat at an arbitrary fast-food restaurant.
The freedom to move is a great accomplishment of modern society. Young people anxiously look forward to the time when they can drive around on their own, going wherever they want. But we forget that large groups are excluded from this freedom: Those with disabilities, the elderly (who may find it hard to continue living in their own home when they can no longer drive a car), the young (whose parents often find themselves in the role of personal chauffeur) and the poor who can not afford their own car.
Source: ABC News
Google’s low-cost PR video clearly outlines a major benefit of self-driving vehicles and is an attempt at shaping the public debate. This is crucial for any company before bringing a new technology into the market. While the Google car may still be a few years away, this video shows that the strategists at Google are carefully laying the groundwork for that occasion.
Continental tests its autonomous vehicle technology in Nevada
Driverless cars are heading to Nevada: Continental Automotive Group, a subsidiary of the German automotive technology supplier, revealed last week that it has started test driving a modified Volkswagen Passat on Nevada’s streets (both city roads and highways). The Passat has been equipped with Continental’s technology for highly automated driving. It has driven more than 6000 miles on city streets and highways, 90% in autonomous mode. Once it passes the state-required 10 000 mile minimum test-drive limit, the car could become one of the first to receive an autonomous car license in the Silver State.
(Image source: Continental)
In contrast to the Google car, the Passat is not intended for autonomous operation at all times. It is a test bed for for Continental’s automated highway and traffic jam technology which can alleviate the human driver from boring driving situations. The close-to-production technology is also much cheaper than Google’s driverless car technology because it does not involve a costly LIDAR sensor.
With Continental another major player has publicly entered the race for driverless car technology. Whereas car makers are still dragging their feet on the technology because of doubts about cannibalizing their product lines, the business case is much more favorable for automotive technology suppliers. Delphi, Valeo and the likes will not be far behind…