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News Roundup: Autonomous Tricycle Testing Underway, Apple Reportedly Ditching Plans for Electric Self-Driving Car, and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

A roundup of some of the most interesting industry news headlines from around the world from the past few days:

University of Washington-Bothell making progress on autonomous tricycle

We’ve seen autonomous trucks, buses, shuttles, cars, and last week, a semi-autonomous motorcycle. Headlines this week are showing us an autonomous tricycle, under development by a team at the University of Washington in Bothell. Led by Tyler Folsom, the team says they are hoping to introduce a lighter, less expensive, more environmentally friendly autonomous vehicle for the future of transportation. A small test has already been successful-guided by a remote control, the test cycle managed to pedal itself in a small circle safely. The team reportedly received a $75,000 grant from Amazon Catalyst to develop their technology. Folsom said the team’s target is a price point of around $10,000, making an inexpensive price for college students or families looking to move about more easily, instead of owning a car or depending on public transport, plus the environmental footprint would be practically non-existent. Read more about the autonomous tricycle from New Atlas. Courtesy image by Mark Studer.

Reports: Apple drops plan to build its own autonomous car, instead focusing on platform

If you believe the many rumors news outlets are publishing this week, Apple has reportedly decided to forego manufacturing its own self-driving car, and instead is focusing on building just the autonomous car platform. The New York Times recently reported that Apple had laid off dozens of employees of Project Titan, which was working on developing an electric, autonomous car with a target release date of 2020. The company then reportedly turned around and hired dozens of new employees focusing on artificial intelligence, with a new focus of building its own self-driving platform. In the future, Apple may decide to partner with an established car manufacturer to release its own vehicle. Read more about Project Titan’s new focus on 9 to 5 Mac.

DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge aims to beef up security for IoT devices

According to research firm Gartner, the number of Internet-connected devices has risen nearly 70 percent to over 6.4 billion devices just in the past two years, making a lot of people’s lives more convenient with connected devices ranging from appliances to home thermostats to even clothing, bracelets, watches and more. Unfortunately, that also leaves 6.4 billion ways hackers can target us. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is aiming to combat that risk. In 2013, the agency launched the Cyber Grand Challenge, inviting scientists from all over the world to “create automated digital defense systems that could identify and fix software vulnerabilities on their own — essentially, smart software robots as sentinels for digital security.” The Cyber Grand Challenge was announced in 2013, and qualifying rounds began in 2014. At the outset, more than 100 teams were in the contest. Through a series of elimination rounds, the competitors were winnowed to seven teams that participated in the finals in August in Las Vegas. The three winning teams collected a total of $3.75 million in prize money. Read more about what the teams created and what it means for IoT security from the New York Times.

Autonomous Roadmap

Autonomous Roadmap - How We’re Going to Get There

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John Estrada

The implementation and use of driverless vehicles is moving very fast indeed. Just 15 years ago, the auto industry was taking a go-slow approach to the concept of autonomous transport. DARPA changed that in 2004 when its challenges sparked an interest in both academic and commercial sectors. Then, Google committed its resources to the technology, and the idea caught on with those eager to embrace a revolutionary solution to traffic safety and ever-worsening congestion. Now, the major auto OEMs have ratcheted up their work in the driverless space.

In 2015, we see not only the organizations listed above but university research centers humming with ideas, the U.S. government investing in numerous projects, and Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and other countries making plans to allow driverless vehicles on their roads.

Organizations like SAE and NHTSA have tried to define this progress and technology through a series of levels. NHTSA has defined five levels (0 - 4) where 0 is no automation and 4 is a fully- autonomous vehicle that does all the driving, while SAE added an additional level to further qualify fully autonomous vehicles.

While these definitions are valuable, they don’t adequately represent where the technology stands today, and how it is progressing in the marketplace. For instance, there are already Level 4 vehicles used in specific, limited operations, such as the public rail systems in Detroit and Las Vegas, and the giant mining vehicles in Australia and Canada. A set of levels depicting automation simply isn’t adequate to track how the industry is progressing.

With this in mind, we are introducing the Driverless Transportation Autonomous Roadmap[1]. The basic concept is shown in the image below.

Autonomous Roadmap

 

Along the vertical axis, we have the four NHTSA Autonomous Driving levels. What we’ve added is the horizontal axis which indicates where the vehicles can operate. The roadway to the “Holy Grail” of a fully-autonomous car that can run on any road will follow the two paths as indicated by the arrows. It will move from bottom to top as indicated by the NHTSA levels but it will also move from left to right as these vehicles are used in the real world.

We’ve begun to track at a high level how the industry is doing on the Autonomous Roadmap shown here.

Autonomous Roadmap

Today, we’re seeing the starting points for both development lines. In production are vehicles that run autonomously on a limited group of roadways. These include the widely-used airport terminal trains along with the rail systems like those in Detroit and Las Vegas.

On the vertical axis, automobile manufacturers are introducing stand-alone autonomous features like adaptive cruise control and automated braking. In addition, some high end vehicles combine these features with lane tracking to give you a NHTSA Level 2 vehicle.

As we look to the later parts of 2015 and 2016, we see updates like those shown below with movement along both paths.

Autonomous Roadmap

 

So where will we be in 2017? When will there be an autonomous vehicle that runs on All Public Roadways?

We’d like to hear what you think of the Autonomous Roadmap. Please take a moment to comment.

 

[1] We’d like to recognize Matthieu Van Der Elst from Michelin who scratched out a drawing at the 2014 AV Symposium which is the inspiration for the Autonomous Roadmap.

Crystal Ball

Short Term Predictions

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Darcy Conlin

Driverless cars are sure to revolutionize society as we know it. We at DriverlessTransportation.com are excited about the changes that will come from this new technology, and we believe that nearly every single person’s life will be impacted by this technology.

It’s particularly interesting to actually envision a world without drivers. What will it look like? What will it sound like? How will my everyday routine change? In addition, it’s interesting to think about the trajectory of this industry as a whole, and what will happen with time. At the bottom half of this page you will find what we thought might happen a year ago and the actual results.

As far as where we stand today, we wanted to again make our own predictions about what we see happening in the next year (or so). These are listed below. We cast short-term predictions about the technology, the business, the societal impact, and the legal ramifications that come with the introduction of driverless transportation.

If you’re interested, leave a comment with your own predictions. We’ll look back around this time next year and evaluate the outcomes.

Rick:

  1. There will be a sanctioned race between driverless cars on a closed racetrack where the winning average speed will be greater than 100 mph.
  2. DSRC Radio vendors will offer complete chip sets at quantities or 1MM plus for less than $25/unit
  3. The number of “test” cars with DSCR Radios broadcasting Basic Safety Messages (BSMs) in the US will be greater than 25,000 by the end of 2015

John:

  1. There will be actual platooning done with commercial vehicles. This will be on actual roads and not just test cases.
  2. A commercial company will announce a pilot program to begin in 2016 using driverless cars with real customers on regular roads.
  3. Microsoft or Apple will announce a new program, in conjunction with an Automotive OEM, to begin building a driverless car.

Manuel:

  1. Driverless technology knock offs will come out of China.
  2. Government legislation will be passed to control testing of driverless technologies prior to roll out.
  3. Cyber vulnerabilities will be discovered in existing SCATA systems (charging stations, update platforms).

Burney:

  1. I will attend a major transportation show and report on the event for Driverless Transportation.
  2. Google will partner with an international auto manufacturer in 2015 to advance driverless technology.
  3. The D20 Stock Index will top 150 before the end of the second quarter of 2015.

Collin:

  1. The 2015 Detroit Auto show will be looked back on as a pivotal moment for the development and acceptance of driverless cars/transport
  2. An “A-list” celebrity will publicly endorse driverless transportation on twitter or other social media causing a spike in interest
  3. This year’s superbowl will feature driverless transportation of some sort on the field during warm-ups/pre-game

Stephen:

  1. A major planned development including all driverless vehicles will be announced — but not in the United States. (My money is on UAE, but don’t count out Qatar, Kuwait, South Korea, or China.) Google will not be the technology partner.
  2. Driverless cars will push further into mainstream consciousness with an appearance on The Simpsons or Family Guy.
  3. Carnegie Mellon’s CHIMP team will win the DARPA Robotics Challenge in Pomona, CA this June. In the course of victory, CHIMP will become the first robot to drive a vehicle.

Giselle:

  1. Toyota will change it’s mind and will start developing autonomous vehicles
  2. Mercedes’ driverless cars will be more popular than Google’s because they will still be made with a steering wheel and pedals
  3. “Robo-ethics” will slow the progress of driverless transportation. For example, when faced with a dangerous collision, should the autonomous car be programmed to act in a way that will save it’s passenger(s) or to save as many lives as possible even if this means killing it’s own passenger(s)?

Amy:

  1. At least 4 other states will allow driverless cars on their roads.
  2. BMW takes their parking assist technology to the next level with a fully self-driving vehicle in the U.S.
  3. Google designs a more practical, advanced driverless prototype.

Darcy:

  1. Iowa along with one additional state will pass a bill allowing driverless vehicles on roads.
  2. USDOT will standardize the screen size display of communication platforms within AVs.
  3. Obama and First Lady Michelle will drive in an autonomous vehicle.

looking-back

 

 

 

At the end of 2013, each member of the team listed a set of predictions for the coming year. Here they are again and an analysis of how we did.

Rick: Total score: 0.5.

  1. Google hits a Million Miles on its driverless fleet. - Probably close but not quite.

In April Google announced 700,000 miles on its cars. August, 2012 announced 300,000. Which means they were on a 20k per month pace. Probably have more vehicles but have been concentrating more on in-town driving (which means less miles). Have to say no to this one.

  1. Tesla announces a schedule for driverless vehicle before 2018. -

Depends on how tightly we define this.   Give 1/2.

  1. One of the major Automakers (other than Toyota) announces a significant Partnership with Google.

Not for driverless. No points

John: Total Points: 1.5

  1. A driverless car will have an accident.

Based upon this article, John tried to argue Yes but we’re not going to give him the points - Zero points.

  1. A bill to allow driverless cars will be initiated in Virginia (and 3 other states).

He shouldn’t have said Virginia. But a number of other states such as Maryland, New Jersey and Louisiana have initiated bills. 1/2 point.

  1. Tesla and Google will announce that they are working together.

Didn’t happen - No Points.

  1. I will ride in a driverless car.John Estrada in Driverless Vehicle

Did happen. We even have a picture.

 

Manuel: Total score: 1.5 points.

  1. Major players in driverless technologies will turn to military contractors to harden and protect their systems from cyber attacks.

The industry didn’t move far enough for this. Zero points.

  1. Government legislation will step in again and fund the automotive industry supporting driverless transportation citing employment (job development) as its primary goal.

Haven’t see the job development but there is major funding. 1/2 point.

  1. One of the major computing hardware companies will develop a new system of systems backplane allowing the automotive industry to standardize how driverless technologies will be implemented.

We are seeing this the basics of this from both NVIDIA and Harbrick. 1 point.

  1. Legislation will be passed that endorses and legalizes only one of the driverless technologies.

This didn’t happen - 0.

Shawn: Total score: 1 point.

  1. Two driverless cars will crash and the occupants will want to sue. This will spark a public legal issue of who is liable when no one is driving. - Was a bit premature for this.
  2. An article on Driverless Transportation will make the front page of the Washington Post and/or a segment on 60 Minutes. Did happen.
  3. I will see someone riding in a driverless car at Stanford.

Didn’t happen. Perhaps Shawn should have gotten off campus more.

Guess it paid to give 4 predictions!   This year we limited it to 3 per person.

 

 

Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering Marks the 30th Birthday of Self-Driving Car Technology

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CNBC