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March 2019 |
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AV Update |
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From the Editors
AVs are disruptive, and this means that the past is a poor
guide to the future. One of the examples of this is public
transit and the ways in which driverless taxis and other
types of AVs will change transit. Here in Ottawa, Canada,
Stage 2 of a new Light Rail Transit (LRT) system is moving
ahead with little consideration for how AVs will impact the
LRT business case and design. The Ottawa Citizen has
published an opinion piece by Barrie Kirk on this. In it,
Barrie explains why the City of
Ottawa should hit the pause button on Stage 2 for 12 months
for an assessment of the significant impact of AVs on the
LRT business case and design. The full opinion piece is
here.
Canadian AV News
Planning for CAV Canada 2019 is in high gear.
Canada's largest CAV conference will feature a wide range of
presentations on technology development, testing and the
many opportunities and challenges related to deployment. The
conference web site is
here.
At the moment, this is a one-page "hold-the-date"
announcement. Additional information will be included by
mid-April -- and will be in next month's AV Update.
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Invest Ottawa, Ottawa's economic development
agency, and Aurrigo, the autonomous vehicle
division of RDM Group of Coventry, UK, have
announced a partnership to test and validate
PodZero, a driverless shuttle providing first-mile
and last-mile transportation solutions, leveraging
Ottawa’s four season climate. This partnership will
also include regional pilot projects that leverage
the autonomous shuttles over the next few months.
The full news release is
here. |
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Stacy Janes, who was Chief Security Architect of
Irdeto’s connected transport division in Kanata ON, is
now Head of Cyber Security at Waymo. This is an
excellent move for Stacy; we congratulate him and wish him
much success in his new role.
We don't often see AVs included as part of an election
platform, but here is one excellent example. The Province
of Alberta is having an election on April 16, 2019 and
the Alberta Party has made AVs one of its election
platforms. It proposes to spend $1.6 billion adding 261 Km
of new lanes to the QE2 highway between Edmonton and Calgary
and introduce AVs on the redesigned highway. It states that
AVs can bring $10 billion of economic benefit to Alberta
and, coupled with AI, there is the potential to expand
Canada’s economy by 1.6% ($26 billion). More
information is on the Alberta Party’s website at
this link.
In the wake of GM’s
decision to close its Oshawa ON production plant, the
Government of Ontario announced a $40 million funding
initiative on February 15, 2019 to give a boost to Ontario’s
auto sector, attract new investments, retrain laid-off
workers with new skills and provide more funds to the
Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN) to develop
WinterTech technology and a Talent Development program. The
new funding will be spread over 3 years. More information
is at
this link.
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB)
believes autonomous vehicles will be a boon for blind people
and those with vision impairment. Accordingly, it is
collaborating with Transport Canada and the University of
Toronto to ensure that future AVs will have features needed
for people with such disabilities. This is done through an
extensive online survey, a literature review, and consulting
with vision impairment experts. More information is at
this link and CNIB’s site at
this link.
In a related story, the parent company
of Aurrigo Canada in the UK is launching a six-month pilot
in April 2019 aimed at people with vision impairment. Using
its modified 4-person pods, the pilot will run in Brighton
UK in collaboration with Blind Veterans UK. Aurrigo
will explore the use of voice activated controls, as well as
improved lighting and prominent colours on grab rails and
seats. More information is at
this link.
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In February 2019, the City of Kelowna BC published a
brochure focusing on future transportation technologies.
The City believes the future trends in transportation are
connected, automated, shared and electric. Furthermore, the
City indicates that these technologies will become
mainstream between now and 2040. A copy of the brochure can
be downloaded at
this link.
International AV News
The Economist magazine of February 23, 2019 carried a
short article on why retirees and retirement communities are
most likely to adopt autonomous vehicles as their primary
means of transportation. The reasons for this are threefold.
First, the environment of a retirement community is simpler
for an AV to navigate compared to busy urban streets.
Second, there is strong demand for mobility, and third,
retirement communities are a large market. California based
startup
Voyage
is one of the leading companies in this particular area. The
article can be viewed at
this link.
One of the shortcomings of AVs has been their inability to
understand hand gestures from other motorists or the police.
Waymo claims now that this problem has been solved.
A short video released by Waymo on February 20, 2019 shows
Waymo's self-driving car approaching a traffic light that is
not working. The car comes to a stop before entering the
intersection and waits for the officer's signal that it can
proceed. More information at
this link. The 17 second YouTube video can be viewed at
this link.
As we mention from time to time in this newsletter, autonomy
is not limited to just ground vehicles, it also covers air
and marine autonomous vehicles/systems. In an interview with
Bloomberg, Boeing’s CEO, Dennis Muilenburg,
states that he expects Boeing to test flight prototype air
taxis in 2019. He likens the future transportation system to
a three-dimensional highway to provide more capacity and
relieve traffic congestion. “Pilotless rotorcraft will
eventually ferry people and cargo across clogged urban
areas”, Muilenburg said. More information and the interview
video at
this link.
Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) has
developed a web-based open source Autonomous Visualization
System (AVS) for autonomous vehicle development across
multiple platforms. Uber states that AVS frees developers
from having to build custom visualization software for their
autonomous vehicles. AVS provides a new standard for
describing and visualizing autonomous vehicle perception,
motion, and planning data. More information is at
this link.
In February 2019, the Union of Concerned Scientists
published a 38-page report titled ‘Where Are Self-Driving
Cars Taking Us?’. This report examines the future
deployment of AVs in the Washington D.C. area through
extensive computer modelling to quantify impacts on jobs,
mass transit, emissions, traffic congestion, impact on
low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour. For
more information or to download the report, click
here.
BMW and Daimler are pooling their resources
and jointly investing US$1 billion for developing
all-electric on-demand autonomous mobility. Both companies
had been involved in several ride-sharing and AV ventures
previously. The two automakers say that the combined
programs already have 60 million active customers. They also
expect to create up to 1,000 new jobs in the joint
venture. More information and statements from the CEOs of
Daimler and BMW are at
this link.
On February 19, 2019, the UK’s Faculty of Advocates
composed of the Scottish Law Commission and the
Law Commission of England and Wales published a 30-page
report on automated vehicles. This report is mainly
concerned with legal implications of AVs should something
untoward happens. For example, in the traditional software
systems, it is possible to examine the software source code
to spot flaws or errors in programming. This is not the
case with neural networks increasingly incorporated in the
current AVs. For more information and to download the
report, click
here.
After its acquisition of Mobileye in 2017 for US
$15.3 billion, Intel Corporation has raised its
profile in the AV world. It created a new business unit
called the Automated Driving Group (ADG), dedicated to the
next generation of advanced driver assist systems and
autonomous driving solutions. This has led to joint
development efforts with Baidu, VW, BMW, Navinfo,
China’s SAIC and many others (see
this link). Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data
and services market opportunity to be up to US $70 billion
by 2030. More information is at
this link.
One measure of the reliability of automated technology for
ground vehicles is the number of disengagements that the
vehicle goes through over a certain number of miles.
Disengagement occurs when an AV’s sensing and control
systems are uncertain about the course of action it should
take when in automated mode. It then disengages and hands
the control back to the human driver. The chart below shows
the number of disengagements reported by various companies
involved in AV research & development. This data is for the
State of California only and cover the period
November 2017 to December 2018. It is clear that Waymo
(on the far left) has a clear lead over the competition.
More information at
this link.
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Not surprisingly, FedEx Corporation has been
busy developing a delivery robot in line with many
other companies reported in this newsletter
previously. FedEx has tapped the expertise of
DEKA Development & Research Corp. whose most
famous product was the Segway a few years ago.
FedEx will start testing the new delivery robot in
its hometown of Memphis and other cities. It is
reported that FedEx will be working with Lowe’s,
Pizza Hut, Target, Walgreens and Walmart
among others in this endeavor. More information is
at
this link. |
At this year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin
TX, Elaine Chao, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation,
announced on March 12th the launch of a new Council at US
DoT to support emerging transportation technologies.
The Council’s official name is Non-Traditional and
Emerging Transportation Technology (NETT) Council.
Secretary Chao indicated that the main thrust of this new
Council is to coordinate among the 11 operating
administrations under USDoT to remove barriers to
innovations in transportation technologies such as AVs,
connected vehicles, etc. More information is at
this link.
On March 13, 2109, the UK’s Guardian newspaper
published an article titled ‘The racism of technology -
and why driverless cars could be the most dangerous example
yet’. Based on research at Georgia Tech, it
argued that photos used to train a self-driving car to
recognize human figures are predominantly pictures of white
people. This could lead to AVs having difficulty in
identifying pedestrians of other races. Georgia Tech’s
research concluded that AI systems were consistently better
at identifying pedestrians with lighter skin tones than
darker. Sadly, this issue is not just confined to AVs. Low
tech systems such as hand dryers and motion-activated water
taps also fail to work properly in the presence of a brown
hand but will trigger for a white one. More information is
at
this link.
And finally, Arab News published an article on
February 22, 2019 throwing light on another facet of AVs. It
argues that owning a car and driving has become part of our
DNA in modern times. And this has been reinforced and
exploited by countless car commercials. However, no one has
bothered to ask the ordinary man or woman in the street if
they really want to give up both and opt for a shared
automated ride. The article also focuses on the upside of
AVs: putting a dent in the 1.2 million fatalities every year
due to auto accidents. To put this figure in perspective, it
is equivalent to 500 planes each carrying 200 people
crashing every month. More information is at
this link.
(Editor's note: the source article
says 160 A320 crashes per month, but we think there is an
error in their math.)
Upcoming AV-Related Events
April 8-9, 2019:
Autonomous & Connected Vehicle Europe 2019, Berlin,
Germany
April 28 – May 1, 2019:
IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia
April 29 - May 2, 2019: AUVSI's
Xponential, Chicago IL
May 8-9, 2019:
IoT613
Conference, Gatineau, Quebec
May 21-23, 2019:
Autonomous Vehicle Test & Development Symposium Europe,
Stuttgart, Germany
June 2-5, 2019:
Canadian Institute of Transportation Engineers (CITE)
annual conference at the Westin hotel in Ottawa
June
4-6, 2019:
TU-Automotive Detroit conference & exhibition for future
auto tech, Novi, MI
June 9-12, 2019:
UITP Global Public Transport Summit; Stockholm, Sweden
June 11-14, 2019:
HxGN Love, Las Vegas NV
June 13, 2019:
Third Annual Autonomous Vehicle Summit; San Francisco
CA.
June 15-18, 2019:
Autonomous Vehicle Symposium; Orland FL.
June 25-27, 2019:
Autonomous Ship Technology Symposium, Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Sept 9-10, 2019:
CAV Canada 2019, a national CAV conference organized by
the Kanata North Business Association, Invest Ottawa and
CAVCOE; Brookstreet Hotel, Ottawa
Sept 22-25, 2019:
Joint TAC and ITS Canada conference, Halifax,
Nova Scotia
Sept 22-25, 2019:
IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii
Oct 2019:
World Congress and Challenge for Self-Driving Transport,
Dubai, UAE
Oct 21-25, 2019:
ITS World Congress, Singapore
Jan 7-10, 2020
CES
2020, Las Vegas NV
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AV Update
is a free, monthly roundup of news and analysis in the world
of automated vehicles and their impact on all levels of
government and the private sector.
Chief Editor:
Ahmad Radmanesh
Contributor to this issue: Barrie Kirk
To subscribe, click
here.
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here.
We welcome all comments; please send them
here
© CAVCOE 2019
CAVCOE (formerly the Canadian Automated
Vehicles Centre of Excellence) provides advice to public and
private sector organizations to help them plan for the
arrival of self-driving vehicles
300 Earl Grey Drive, Suite 222,
Ottawa ON K2T 1C1, Canada.
info@cavcoe.com
www.cavcoe.com |
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