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News Roundup: Waymo Gets Patent For Exterior Airbags On Self-Driving Cars, Ford to Test ‘Cellular-V2X’ Tech in San Diego and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

 

Waymo granted patent for exterior airbags

Google’s self-driving car spinoff company, Waymo, has been granted a patent for an airbag system that would be located on the outside of a car. Since self-driving cars are outfitted with sensors, cameras, radar and lidar on the outside of the car, Waymo engineers argue that the car itself can predict an accident even sooner than a human driver can (or can’t, if he or she is distracted). The concept of exterior airbags could protect passengers in the vehicle from an impact, as well as “reduce the likelihood of severe injuries or damage to objects such as pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, other vehicles, or simply inanimate objects.” Read more from Silicon Beat.

 

Mcity autonomous vehicle testing ground gets big investment from automakers, corporations

Mcity, the University of Michigan’s testing ground for autonomous vehicles, has received a total of $11 million in funding from 11 different companies, both corporations and automakers. Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Honda all contributed about $1 million each, and other corporations like State Farm Insurance, Verizon, LG and others. Mcity is a 32-acre man-made “city” where companies can conduct research and test autonomous vehicles. The hub offers a number of varied conditions for vehicles to test in, such as different road conditions, four-lane highways, high-pedestrian streets featuring fake, mechanical pedestrians, and much more. Read more from HybridCars.com.

 

Ford partnering with AT&T, Qualcomm and Nokia to test ‘cellular-V2X’ technology

Ford Motor Co. announced this week that it has formed a partnership with Qualcomm, AT&T and Nokia to test cellular modems that can connect vehicles to each other and to roadside infrastructure to help better navigate in bad weather or construction zones. “Cellular-V2X” technology, as it is called, aims to connect vehicles with traffic lights, roadside beacons and other vehicles on the road to share real-time information about driving conditions. It’s meant to improve safety, as well as help speed up the deployment of self-driving vehicles. Testing is scheduled to take place in San Diego, California before the end of the year. For testing, Ford vehicles will be outfitted with Qualcomm hardware powered by AT&T’s 4G LTE cellular network and Nokia’s computing technology. Read more from Automotive News.

Image: Rendering of self-driving minivan with exterior airbags by Waymo

Big Rebound By Visteon Pushes D20 to a Gain

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After a one-week set-back, the Driverless Transportation Weekly Stock Index (D20) returned to its winning ways, largely thanks to a big rebound by Visteon Corporation.

Twelve price gainers out-weighed eight price losers to help the D20 beat the Dow and S&P 500.

The D20 gained 1.23 points, or 0.6 percent, as it climbed to 215.04 while the S&P 500 added 0.2 percent to close at 2,438.30 and the Dow remained virtually unchanged at 21,394.76.

Visteon (VC), the automotive parts maker, was the D20’s price gain percentage leader of the week, adding $3.54 to its stock price and closing at $95.91 per share. It rebounded nicely from last week’s 8-percentage-point drop in price.

Blackberry (BBRY) missed its quarterly revenue forecast, which hammered its stock price, dropping it 7.8 percent and making it the D20 price-percentage loser of the week.

Visit the Driverless Transportation D20 Stock Index page to learn more about it and its component stocks.

Up-and-Comers:

Navya, maker of the Arma, a driverless shuttle bus, has announced that it will deploy two Armas to the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. It is part of the Mcity Program, the University of the Michigan-led partnership with driverless and connected vehicle makers to improve safety, sustainability and accessibility in an urban test facility.

News Roundup: Congress Set to Weigh 14 Driverless Vehicle Bills, Univ. of Michigan to Get Two Self-Driving Shuttles, and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

A roundup of new headlines to come out of the driverless, connected-car industry this week:

Congress to weigh 14 driverless vehicle bills next week

The federal government is racing to address emerging mobility technology. Their efforts are being led by a series of 14 driverless vehicle bills that will hit the House floor next week. Some of the bills may be swooped up into a larger package the House will be considering. The bills address a number of issues, including whether autonomous vehicles should have to obtain approval for their technology before going to market, establishing guidelines for the sharing of data, and allowing some test vehicles to be exempt from traditional automobile standards. Read more from The Hill.

 

Tesla’s VP of Autopilot, a former Apple engineer, abruptly leaves

A mere six months after joining Elon Musk’s team, former Apple engineer of 12 years, Chris Lattner, has left his position at Tesla Motors as vice president of autopilot software. Lattner announced his departure on Twitter, saying it “turns out Tesla isn’t a good fit for me after all.” He added that he was eager to hear about interesting open roles for “a seasoned engineering leader,” and that his resume was easy to find online. Shortly after, Tesla announced that Lattner’s role was being filled by two people evenly — existing Tesla Autopilot hardware chief Jim Keller, and a new hire, Andrej Karpathy, who reportedly has a PhD from Stanford University in “computer vision.” Read more from The Register.

 

Two driverless shuttles to debut on Univ. of Michigan campus

Mcity, the University of Michigan’s public-private partnership for mobility research including driverless vehicles, will launch a driverless shuttle service on the school’s North Campus this fall. The two shuttles were manufactured by Navya, and are fully automated. Each shuttle can seat up to 15 passengers. “This first-ever automated shuttle service on campus is a critical research project that will help us understand the challenges and opportunities presented by this type of mobility service and how people interact with it,” Huei Peng, director of Mcity and a professor of mechanical engineering at U-M, said in a statement. The shuttles have been being tested since December. Read more from The Detroit Free Press.

 

Image: Still from Univ. of Michigan YouTube video

Driverless Tests Go Live in Virginia

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Burney Simpson

Virginia has taken another step to on-road automated vehicles following the enactment of legislation supported by the Va Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI).

Automated vehicles now can carry standard license plates and operate on Virginia’s roads as long as the vehicle is being operated by an institution of higher learning as it conducts technology research.

“Conducting naturalistic data collection with a standard license plate — meaning the vehicle could not be easily identified from other vehicles on the roadway — allows us to perform a realistic comparison to other vehicles and traffic,” Myra Blanco, director of VTTI’s Center for Public Policy, Partnerships, and Outreach, said in a press release.

The new law also allows moving images to be viewed in a vehicle while an automated driving system is activated. Previously, the state had banned videos to be shown inside a moving vehicle.

A lead sponsor of the legislation was Del. Glenn Davis of Virginia Beach (See “Careful Steps on Driverless Laws for Tennessee, Virginia”).

CONNECTED CORRIDORS

VTTI offers important test operations for auto OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and others.

In the driverless arena, it launched last summer the Virginia Automated Corridors, 70 miles of roads in the northern and central parts of the state for the testing of automated and connected vehicles.

The VAC includes a segment of the congested Washington, D.C., Beltway, along with state routes, suburban and rural roads, and winding mountain lanes (See “Va Tech Leaves ‘Em Eating its Dust in the Race to be the Top Driverless Test Track”).

The VAC is a partnership between VTTI, the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Transurban, and Here, the high-definition mapping business.

Virginia Tech also operates the 2.2 mile Virginia Smart Road, a closed-research facility near Blacksburg in southwest Virginia.

Blanco told Driverless Transportation last year that VTTI and the VAC offer a “one-stop shop” for autonomous car testing.

EVERYTHING FROM A TO Z

“We will do everything from A to Z. We provide license plates, insurance, the facilities, and so on,” said Blanco. “And we are an independent evaluator, something like Underwriters Laboratory. That’s key. We will facilitate the full process, and you will have an independent evaluator.”

Last October VTTI earned national visibility with a demonstration of automated and connected vehicles in Northern Virginia with Sen. Mark Warner, U.S. Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology Greg Winfree, Virginia state officials, Tier 1 auto suppler Continental, and others.

However, state competition for driverless testing dollars has gotten tougher since then.

Michigan last year opened its 32-acre Mcity testing facility near Ann Arbor, attracting Ford and other auto OEMs. In January, the state announced a 330-acre testbed for autonomous vehicles in nearby Willow Run.

California’s Silicon Valley area boasts GoMentum Station with tests from Daimler, Honda, and others.

California Ratchets Up the Driverless Battle

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The battle among states for driverless-vehicle technology and testing dollars is heating up.

California Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang last week introduced a proposal that she says will keep the state in the forefront of developing autonomous technology.

The Republican from Diamond Bar introduced AB 2682 that would require the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to hold hearings if the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposes a model state policy on driverless vehicles.

NHTSA has said it plans to announce the policy this year.

California has been a driverless leader with Mountain View-based Google working on its vehicles for over five years in the Golden State.

However, Google has been frustrated by driverless proposals by the California DMV that would require equipment like steering wheels, and that drivers have special certificates to operate the vehicles.

Google believes the proposals are onerous while the DMV argues the rules should be tough as the revolutionary technology evolves.

BUSINESS-FRIENDLY STATES

Chang’s proposal presumably would open up the DMV’s rule-making process.

“The DMV is not exactly known for being an incubator for high-tech,” Chang said in a press release. “We are competing with business-friendly states like Texas to keep the tech in California so we need to make sure we don’t lose another opportunity for keeping jobs in California – and potential federal funding.”

Google began testing in Texas last year, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has asked for $4 billion to speed the development of driverless vehicles.

States are also competing for testing dollars.

California’s Silicon Valley is home to the GoMentum Station and its 20 miles of test roads. Michigan opened the 32-acre Mcity facility in Ann Arbor in July, and plans to develop the massive Willow Run site in Ypsilanti (See “Michigan Launches 330-Acre Autonomous Vehicle Test Site”).

Another major player is the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. It is expanding its well-established auto testing operations in Blacksburg to the highly-congested Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

TENNESSEE – AIN’T NO PLACE I’D RATHER BE

Also last week, the Tennessee Senate’s Transportation and Safety Committee approved SB 1561 that would allow driverless testing in the state. The full Senate is to hear the bill this Wednesday.

Tennessee state Sen. Mark Green said he introduced the proposal to encourage auto OEMs to expand their manufacturing in the state (See “Careful Steps on Driverless Laws for Tennessee, Virginia”).

Tennessee is already home to plants operated by GM, Nissan, and Volkswagen, along with the Tier 1 supplier Denso.

Ford Driverless in the Mcity Snow - Video

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Now this is a driverless test. Check out this video from Ford.

Let’s see how these babies work when its 20-below wind chill, the Hawk is hurling sleet, wheels spinning on black ice, and road lines blurred with drifting snow.

Ford made this recently at Mcity in Michigan, and they say they are the first to test driverless in snow. Not sure about that but they are surely testing under tougher conditions than their new partners from Mountain View, Calif. (See “Ford-Google Alliance Could Go Beyond Just Autonomous Cars“).

Photo by kyn_chung of Henning Solberg, Ilka Minor, Ford Focus RS WRC ally in Sweden 2010, is not of Mcity or any driverless test.

 

VTTI Report: Self-Driving Cars Have Lower Crash Rates Than Conventional Cars

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Jennifer van der Kleut

A new study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) declares what many have long suspected would be true-that self-driving cars have lower crash rates than conventional, human-driven cars.

Interestingly (but not surprisingly), the VTTI study was commissioned by Google, though the study’s authors say the findings are solely those of the institute.

As to how the study was conducted: “The report examines national crash data and data from naturalistic driving studies that closely monitors the on-road experience of 3,300 vehicles driving more than 34 million vehicle miles, to better estimate existing crash rates, and then compares the results to data from Google’s Self-Driving Car program.”

According to the report, self-driving cars have a rate of 3.2 crashes per million of miles, where traditional human-driven cars have a rate of 4.2 crashes per million miles. The study reportedly adjusted the data for unreported crashes, and takes into account the severity of the accidents.

Industry followers and news outlets alike have been closely following Google’s reporting of around 17 accidents involving its self-driving test cars in Silicon Valley, and just in the past week, the company’s report of the few hundred times a human passenger in one of their test cars had to suddenly take over control of the vehicle for safety reasons.

Early news outlets picking up on the report are already debating the study’s ultimate conclusions.

As Insurance Journal says, “The [study’s] authors note that the data also suggest that conventional vehicles may have higher rates of more severe crashes than self-driving cars, but there is insufficient data to draw this conclusion with strong confidence, given the small overall number of crashes for the self-driving cars.”

In truth, only one of Google’s roughly 17 accidents involved any reported injuries. That crash reportedly involved minor whiplash for the Google employees in the vehicle, and after being evaluated at a hospital, they were cleared to return to work. The driver of the other car also reported minor back and neck pain.

The study’s authors assert that there is “statistically-significant data that suggest less severe events may happen at significantly lower rates for self-driving cars” than conventional vehicles.

Insurance Journal also points out a January 2015 report by University of Michigan and the Sustainable Worldwide Transportation consortium of researchers, which said that “It is not clear that a self-driving vehicle would ever perform more safely than an experienced, middle-aged driver, and during the transition period when conventional and self-driving vehicles would share the road, safety might actually worsen.”

Another point many parties have brought up is that early data is not truly representative of the situation because self-driving cars have not yet been tested in varying weather conditions.

It has been less than two months since Ford began testing its self-driving prototypes in Michigan’s fierce winter weather, including snow and ice, at the Mcity testing grounds. Early findings from those tests have been positive, and Ford executives say the cars have been performing well in such conditions.

 

 

Testing Driverless Cars in Snowy Winter Weather - Check!

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Jennifer van der Kleut

It’s an announcement industry followers have been waiting for.

Finally, a company that is heavily invested in autonomous and connected-car technology is putting it to the test in extreme weather.

Ford Motor Co., together with the University of Michigan, announced this week that the partners have been testing the technology in snowy, icy winter weather over the past month, and will continue.

As Forbes points out, one of the factors that makes Michigan an ideal location for testing autonomous cars is the widely varying weather from season to season-that and, of course, the fact that the University has Mcity, its 32-acre testing ground with a fake cityscape, built specifically for testing autonomous and connected-car technology.

One burning question that industry professionals have long been asking is how well autonomous car technology would fare in extreme weather when rain, snow or ice might obstruct cameras and sensors. As WIRED puts it, “Radar and LIDAR do most of the work looking for other cars, pedestrians, and other obstacles, while cameras typically read street signs and lane markers.”

If those systems are obstructed, one could find himself in a dangerous situation. This is why many are eager to hear how Ford’s tests are going.

Jim McBride, Ford’s head of autonomous research, told WIRED that Ford creates a high-fidelity, 3D map of the area its test car is going to travel before a test drive. This form of “self-locating” helps its cars compensate in inclement weather conditions.

According to McBride, “Those maps include details like the exact position of the curbs and lane lines, trees and signs, along with local speed limits and other relevant rules. The more a car knows about an area, the more it can focus its sensors and computing power on detecting temporary obstacles—like people and other vehicles—in real time.”

News like this sheds light on why high-profile deals and partnerships with mapping and navigation companies like TomTom and Nokia’s HERE are such big business right now, and why industry analysts think Google’s acquisition of traffic tracking app Waze a few years ago will prove to be a big boon in the driverless race.

All in all, McBride told WIRED he is very confident Ford’s tests in snow and ice will go well.

“We’re able to drive perfectly well in snow,” he said.

Ford-Google Alliance Could Go Beyond Just Autonomous Cars

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Jennifer van der Kleut

A new article by Yahoo! Autos suggests that last week’s breaking-news announcement about a Ford-Google partnership could go beyond just the manufacturing of autonomous cars.

Google has been forthcoming with the fact that, although they are deemed to have the most advanced self-driving car technology in the game right now, with millions of miles of testing behind them, they do not wish to become a car company. Instead, they wish to license out their technology and software to established automakers. Hence, the partnership with Ford Motor Co.

Yahoo! Autos suggests the partnership may go well beyond that point, though, and perhaps include joint projects on connected-car technology and how that could provide even more cutting edge mobility solutions for consumers.

Ford just recently followed through on its promise to be the first automaker to begin testing connected and self-driving cars at Mcity, the University of Michigan’s new multi-acre testing ground.

Yahoo! Autos says Ford will soon begin testing at a new facility in North Carolina, as well as one in Silicon Valley.

Ford and Google are expected to make a formal announcement this week at CES 2016 (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. Stay tuned to DriverlessTransportation.com for more news out of CES.

Google to Pair With Ford to Build Self-Driving Cars

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Jennifer van der Kleut

Yahoo! Autos published a big scoop this week, reporting that three different sources confirm that Google will pair with Ford Motor Co. to build self-driving cars.

The three sources, who are all reportedly close to the project in some way, say the announcement will officially be made at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The project makes a lot of sense to a lot of people, and many industry analysts and experts have long suspected the partnership would be coming.

Search engine giant Google has been developing its self-driving car software for several years, and has logged more than 1 million miles on its fleet of more than 50 test cars in both California and Texas. It makes a lot of sense for Google to partner with an established automaker though, as it will save the tech firm millions or even billions trying to develop its own auto manufacturing.

Conversely, the partnership saves Ford a lot of time, work and money from having to perfect its own software. While Google has been testing its self-driving cars for years, Ford only just this summer began testing an autonomous car at Mcity, the “fake city” at the University of Michigan designed for testing connected and autonomous vehicle technology.

Naturally, many industry analysts are wondering if this partnership will eventually lead to an autonomous ridesharing business of some kind.

Read the full article on Yahoo! Autos.