Last week, police in Tempe, Arizona, released dash cam footage showing the final seconds before an Uber self-driving vehicle crashed into 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg, who died at the hospital shortly afterward.

While Herzberg is visible for less than two seconds in the camera footage, she might have become visible earlier to a human driver, since human eyes are better at picking out details in low-light situations. The police also released internal dash cam footage showing the car’s driver, Rafaela Vasquez, in the seconds before the crash. Vasquez can be seen looking down toward her lap for almost five seconds before glancing up again and realizing what is about to happen.

This is not the first collision involving a self-driving vehicle. Other crashes have involved Ubers in Arizona, a Tesla in ‘autopilot’ mode and many others in California. While it is still not clear as to who is to be blamed for the latest incident, most of the other crashes were due to human error.

Image source: ReadWrite

Why do autonomous vehicles crash? The first cause is when the sensors don’t detect what is happening around the vehicle. In the case of Herzberg, she was walking with a bicycle across a poorly lit roadway. About 1.4 seconds elapse between the time when Herzberg starts to become visible and the video’s final frame. Each car and each sensor works differently. In some, GPS may work only with a clear view of the sky or the camera may function properly only with ample light. Researchers aren’t clear about the ‘ideal’ set of sensors in an autonomous vehicle, and can’t keep adding more and more to the fleet because of cost limitations.

The second cause is when the vehicle encounters a situation that the software didn’t plan for. Much like human drivers, self-driving cars also make many decisions at any given second. So, when a self-driving car sees something it’s not programmed to handle, it becomes difficult to assess what is going to happen next. So, the challenge for programmers is to combine information from all sensors to create an accurate representation of the surroundings. If that doesn’t happen, the vehicle can’t take a call.

Before we can release autonomous vehicles on the road completely, they need to be programmed with a whole set of instructions about dealing with the out-of-the-ordinary, and plan for extreme adverse situations. A human driver, for instance, might even break a few traffic rules to save lives. The autonomous car needs to be taught how to do the same instead of waiting or the situation to pass.

Additionally, self-driving cars must be taught to understand their surroundings and the context. In the crash involving Herzberg, the car should have been tested and rated based on how well it performed difficult tasks, including assessing danger in fraction of a second. This is a lot like a human driving test, but that is how it should be if the two have to co-exist safely on the road.

Another approach to this could also be explicitly stating rules in formal logic, like how nuTonomy, which is running an autonomous taxi pilot in cooperation with authorities in Singapore, is doing. NuTonomy’s approach to controlling autonomous vehicles is based on a rules hierarchy. Top priority goes to rules such as “don’t hit pedestrians”, followed by “don’t hit other vehicles” and “don’t hit objects”. Rules such as “maintain speed when safe” and “don’t cross the centreline” get a lower priority.

Image source: The Verge

Learning how to drive is an ongoing process for both humans and their autonomous cars, as both adapt to new situations, road rules and technology. Time will tell the better approach, but for now, the research still has a long way to go.

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Google seems to be the most experienced when it comes to clocking miles in autonomous vehicles. However, it wasn’t very clear what Google (or Waymo now) plans to do with the vehicles it is working on. It might change soon as Google recently filed a patent application for what could be a feature useful for driverless pick-ups and drops. Filed earlier this month, the patent would help the autonomous vehicles in effectively determining passenger pickup and drop locations.

Google is looking to operate fully autonomous vehicles in which, with some initial input from passengers, the vehicle can move itself to the location. However, not all locations will be suitable for pickup or drop and while an Uber driver can figure that out easily, it might not be possible for the autonomous vehicle. This is exactly the challenge Google is looking to deal with this patent. A centralised dispatching system which would provide a set of suitable locations for waiting or pickup/drop increasing the safety of these vehicles.

The tech giant hasn’t entirely stayed away from the ride sharing space. Google Ventures is a stakeholder in Uber and in Q3 last year, Google started car pooling in its home region through Waze. The Google self driving project is now operated under the Waymo brand and it recently announced its plans deploy fleet of self-driving vehicles in association with Chrysler. It is being reported that the two could eventually launch a ridesharing service to go against the likes of Lyft an Uber, possibly expanding the pooling service they launched earlier with Waze.

It isn’t clear how exactly Google plans to move ahead with its ride-sharing plans but it is apparent that it might have to go against its ally Uber sometime in future.

Source

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Uber started testing its driverless cars in San Francisco on Wednesday as an expansion to its original launch of the service in Pittsburgh earlier this year. CEO Travis Kalanick shared a video about Uber’s driverless car and how it works. However, only a few hours after the driverless Volvos started rolling out on the San Francisco streets, California Department of Motor Vehicles issued statement saying that Uber was operating these vehicles illegally.

Uber has previously stated that it doesn’t require these permits as a driver will be in the seat ready to take control of the vehicle. According to them, the rules apply to vehicles that can drive without someone controlling them. Their blog post talks about the permits and it says “We have looked at this issue carefully and we don’t believe we do.”

“First, we are not planning to operate any differently than in Pittsburgh, where our pilot has been running successfully for several months. Second, the rules apply to cars that can drive without someone controlling or monitoring them. For us, it’s still early days and our cars are not yet ready to drive without a person monitoring them.”

However, that hasn’t stopped DMV from telling Uber that it will face legal action if it doesn’t comply. It has also been reported that before the orders were issued, Uber’s test vehicle was also caught on camera running a red light. Uber holds that it was a driver error and the vehicle was not part of pilot and wasn’t carrying customers.

Google, Tesla and General Motors already have permits to test driverless vehicles in the region. Uber isn’t new to issues with the regulators and has been in the legal grey area on numerous occasions.

Getting a DMV permit to test driverless cars isn’t very complicated. The companies are required to have a significant amount in insurance and need to show that the test drivers are adequately trained, both not a problem for Uber. However it would also mean that Uber will have to report every detail of all the vehicles being tested, including when drivers have been driving in manual. Google publishes its monthly reports giving a detailed account of the same. It could be the reason Uber is resisting the idea of a driverless permit and actually emphasised the point in the blog post even before any initial challenges appeared.

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Driverless cars are the new black. They are being looked at as the next big thing in ground transportation and Uber as the hero of this upcoming trend. The American ride hailing company recently started actually sending driverless vehicles to pick passengers for their Uber rides in Pittsburgh, of course not without their experts taking notes and ready to take control.

What was just a simpler method to call a cab is about to be the name that could (potentially) revolutionise the entire transportation and urban planning structure. Of course Uber isn’t the only one making the attempt here, far from that, but it certainly seems to be in an aggressive position.

The reasons are obvious. Right now, Uber is in a strong spot because of the network of full and part time drivers it has built over these years. This comes with trust it has built with these drivers over time, exactly why new driver partners keep signing up to drive with the platform. Another factor driving this is the other side, travellers. It is a chain in which both the sides are driving each other, just like many other examples you would pick from the access economy. If they are not aggressive and someone like Ford or Tesla has a fully autonomous car ready, it won’t be hard for them to scale up and eat Uber for breakfast. Replicating the technology once it is here won’t be tough and it would be easier for any brand to work on just the demand side rather than both demand and supply side.

However, to actually make a significant impact on the travel and transportation industry, brands won’t just have to work to get people acquainted to the idea of driverless cars. They will have to get people to ditch the idea of keeping a car. Uber has driven that change for some, but there still will be people who would not want to give up the ownership for the freedom that comes with it. Uber alone won’t be able to get people to give that up. To achieve that, car rental companies will have to play their part. Uber will offer the service but to get people there, car rental services will have to be the bridge.

Compared to the cab hailing services, these companies are making it even easier for people to not own a vehicle for short or long distance travel. Ownership of fleet will also be a big question when the ride hailing companies have developed road ready driverless cars. The likes of Uber don’t own any vehicles and the rental companies can actually take ownership of the fleet.

There are too many factors that will come into play and while we all are making guesses, how all this will shape up in the time to come is anyone’s guess.

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With all the buzz about an autonomous future, Uber and Tesla have been placed on the poster for innovation in automobile and ground transportation by the entire tech community. Uber has been getting all the attention with its driverless experiment in Pittsburgh but its home rival Lyft wants the world to know that you shouldn’t just ignore its potential.

In a Medium post published recently by Lyft co-founder John Zimmer shared his predictions for the future of ground transportation. With this post, he highlights the obvious problem with private car ownership. The cars just aren’t used enough to justify building our cities around them. With ridesharing gaining momentum and vehicle ownership on the decline, the future cities will be built around people and not cars.

He highlights three key shifts; a widespread autonomous fleet accounting for majority of Lyft rides within five years, car ownership will fade significantly by 2025 and cities’ physical environment will change as a result.

These of course are his predictions and observations, not really an outline of the plans Lyft has drafted. However, pretty much what he has shared makes sense. The change has already started and the interest of major automobile companies in sharing economy is a clear sign that they are anticipating and accepting the change. Ford recently invested in Zoomcar, Volvo launched cars that can use phones as keys for easy sharing, PSA group invested in another car sharing startups and these are just some of the examples.

“Ridesharing has already begun to empower many people to live without owning a car. The age of young people with driver’s licenses has been steadily decreasing ever since right around when I was born. In 1983, 92% of 20 to 24-year-olds had driver’s licenses. In 2014 it was just 77%. In 1983, 46% of 16-year-olds had licenses. Today it’s just 24%. All told, a millennial today is 30% less likely to buy a car than someone from the previous generation.”

Zimmer also highlights how ridesharing is the first phase of the movement to end car ownership and with autonomy entering the picture, transportation will turn into a subscription service which will be more flexible than owning. Heavy users will pick subscriptions like Netflix while occasional users will opt for pay as you go sort of plans.

As consumers won’t keep holding onto their private vehicles when there is a shift to transportation as a service model, this would allow for an easier shift towards cleaner vehicles. There are lot of details to be worked out before this becomes a reality but the change is certainly heading towards us.

That said, Zimmer hasn’t really shared much on how Lyft plans to achieve that apart from the fact that they are working towards the same with General Motors and also used the opportunity to tag public demonstrations of self-driving technology by his competitors as marketing stunts. Zimmer has painted a pretty picture of the future of transportation but there are more questions to be answered about the future of Lyft too.

You can find the Medium post here.

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The automobile industry has largely been driven by the legacy players and it was hard to imagine the words “automobile” and “startup” used together until a while back. Now however, things are changing as new trends emerge and automobile industry shifts towards mobility industry. Many tech startups are driving the new trends that we see including autonomy in cars. If you are interested in a driverless future, here are some startups you should keep a track on.

(Image: Nissan by cwkarl/CC BY-ND 2.0)

1- NuTonomy

NuTonomy was founded by MIT PhD graduates Karl Lagnemma and Emilio Frazzoli in 2013. While some startups and corporations are focusing on building technologies for future cars, they are working on retrofitting existing vehicles to make them driverless. The company is testing a fleet of self driving taxis which they expect to deploy in Singapore by 2018. NuTonomy cars are also being tested in other parts of the world with JLR.

Website

2- Nauto

Palo Alto based Nauto was founded by Stefan Heck and Fredrick Soo in 2015. Instead of relying on LiDar sensors being currently used by the likes of Google and others, Nauto uses pro-sumer cameras along with already existing tech like motion sensors, GPS and few other sensors. Merging dashcam info with AI, the system detects what is happening in front and helps the driver avoid dangerous situations. This isn’t exactly driverless at this point but by increasing the level of autonomy, it will accelerate the shift.

Website

3- Drive.ai

Silicon valley startup that has been working quietly under the wraps for quite a while got permissions to test on public roads in California earlier this year. Founded by Sameep Tandon and Carol Reiley, the startup is working on applying deep learning techniques to driverless cars. The company claims that the system will be better for extreme conditions when driving situations are far from ideal.

Website

4- Cruise automation

This Silicon Valley startup was in news recently for being acquired by General Motors. The startup launched in 2013 with semi-automatic conversion systems for vehicles and has developed algorithms that allow the vehicle to be more aware of road and surroundings. The startup has full fledged driverless systems and the association with GM will allow it to reach the goals quickly.

Website

5- Oxbotica

Oxbotica is a spin out company from the University of Oxford. The system developed by them, called Selenium can pull data from various systems and then use a series of algorithms to determine the position, surrounding conditions and possible route. The software learns as the vehicle is driven around and then can offer autonomy. They plan to develop software for not just autonomous cars but warehouse robots, forklifts and public transport vehicles.

Website

6- Comma ai

George Hotz took up the job of bringing self driving technology to masses at very low prices and started Comma.ai. Hotz termed Mobileye “behind the times” as he believed the same can be achieved at lower costs and promised aftermarket self driving kits for less than USD 1000. The company recently released data of its car driving on public roads and to keep development costs down, they are inviting people to share their driving data through a dashcam app.

Website

7- Otto

Launched by a group of former senior Google employees, including one from Google’s autonomous car project, Otto aims to make trucks driverless. This will make trucks more efficient as they can be used for longer part of their life and just like the promise driverless cars bring, driverless trucks will make roads safer.

Website

Also read: 9 industries that will be affected by the arrival of driverless cars

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The inevitable has happened. Everyone associated with driverless cars feared that the incident involving Tesla Model S will hurt sentiments around autonomous vehicles and put the regulating authorities on the defensive. As a result, Chinese officials have asked automobile manufacturers to stop testing driverless cars on Chinese highways until proper regulations are in place.

According to the head of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, She Weizhen, they have a preliminary draft of the regulations that will be implemented. However, a timeline of when the guidelines will be released and implemented hasn’t been shared.

Until a while back, China has been pushing for driverless cars urging automobile manufacturers to adopt new technologies and work towards bringing new innovations in mobility space. However, now they are trying to strike a balance between public safety and innovation in auto industry.

In China, Baidu has been actively involved with driverless cars and LeEco also recently showcased its Tesla rivalling product. With this new announcement, the developments in this space will slow down. The Tesla Model S incident is still being investigated thoroughly and its legal consequences could significantly impact how automakers all over the world go on about autonomous vehicles. They might face an increased political pressure with tough regulations putting the developments on a slower pace.

However we are optimistic as the reports suggest that as the draft of rules is ready, they will be finalised soon and the manufacturers will be able to resume testing once they are in place.

Source: engadget

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For the past few days, the news of a Tesla Model S driver suffering a fatal crash has been doing rounds of the internet. It is a tragic loss indeed but it also puts light on some of the questions that are unanswered in the race for driverless cars. There is no denying the fact that autonomous vehicles can have significant impact on travel and other industries and they hold potential to significantly change ground transportation. However, the big question is if this incident would hurt the sentiments around this upcoming breed of vehicles and slow down the progress.

Tesla took its time, with the accident occurring on May 7 while the news came out only recently. The Model S in Autopilot failed to identify a white trailer against the bright sky and crashed without any attempt to slow down. There have been incidents in the past involving Tesla’s Autopilot however Tesla has always highlighted that it is a beta feature which is why there is a certain set of warnings and limitations associated with it. It is getting better but still requires attention from the driver.

There has been mixed response to the news of driverless cars in the past. The masses have been both against and in favour of this upcoming trend however this incident could make people sceptical. An incident was inevitable however it also sends the message that technology isn’t perfect and the users need to be more responsible. However, this could be an unfortunate sequence of less likely events and the potential of autonomous vehicles to make travel safer and faster can’t be dismissed at all.

A recent announcement by BMW could offer a solution. The major tech companies and automakers are working on their variants of driverless cars. BMW recently announced a new partnership with Intel and Mobileye to develop a new technology with the objective of putting driverless cars on roads by 2021. According to the three companies, their new platform would be made available to multiple manufacturers and join the alliance. They are trying to create common technology standards that would help multiple manufacturers update the vehicles faster and leverage the learning from any incidents or setbacks. According to Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich, this will be critical for advancing the safety aspects.

However the recent incidence could also result in an increased political pressure to tighten regulation thereby slowing down the developments in this space. The legal consequences of this incident could also have a significant impact on how the tech and auto companies go on about autonomous vehicles in future. The liability in such an incident has been a topic of discussion for a while and it is unclear how this one will be handled. The beta helped Tesla generate meaningful data about road conditions and driving patterns just like any other beta test run by tech companies. However, this incident will force regulators to rethink if partial automation has got major risks.

It is certain that full automation in vehicles will revolutionize things and make transport safer. However it is still long way off and might require to leaders to join hands for good.

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BMW, Mercedes Benz, Volvo, Google, GM, Lyft and many others are working on making the next big thing in ground transportation a reality. Many of these automobile and tech companies have promised to bring driverless cars by the year 2020. This will have a significant impact on travel and automobile industry.

(Image: Shelly by cblue98/CC BY-SA 2.0)

While these two major industries seem to be affected by the upcoming cars, the impact could be much greater than we can see right now. We discussed and debated on the topic and here is how we think autonomous vehicles will affect different industries:

Car rental

Arguments vary about how things will change for the car rental industry. The conventional taxis are already at disadvantage with the entry of cab hailing companies and the episode doesn’t seem to get better for them even when driverless cars arrive. Brands like Uber and Lyft will have a different situation though. Both the companies are pushing for driverless cars working with other brands that have expertise in automobile industry and once these cars arrive, these companies will be able to eliminate the friction that arises with the communication on driver’s end.

Car manufacturers

Car companies, as they are now, stand to lose the most with the entry of driverless vehicles. Driverless cars will bring down ownership costs and reduce the number of cars in a household. Very often people own multiple vehicles with a large fraction of the vehicle life spent in parking. Driverless cars would allow a single car to be used by multiple users reducing the need of multiple vehicles. Car companies will become service companies and it has started with many major manufacturers like BMW and Volvo already operating rental companies. As expected, many of them, including GM and Ford are already working on their versions of autonomous vehicles.

Media & advertising

Media consumption is already on the rise and we will have more time to spare when our cars will start driving us to work. Most of us will choose to consume media during this time. Leaping ahead, the Swedish manufacturer Volvo even showcased a prototype infotainment system for autonomous cars when they arrive. Along with this, we might see brands use this as an advertising opportunity while we consume media. Location based marketing might just go up few levels.

Logistics

As the autonomous vehicles will make the entire ground transportation system more efficient, logistics is certainly going to see the advantages. Manufacturers are working on driverless trucks for long distance logistics while intra city transportation of goods will be taken care of by smaller vehicles.

Airlines

Short haul flights offer a very inefficient medium of transportation. The airports are generally located away from the city centre and travellers often spend hours travelling to the airport and waiting there for a flight that has a span of just 40-50 minutes. As autonomous vehicles will allow people to travel long distances without the driving fatigue, more people would prefer that over short flights.

Hotels

At times we book hotels because it is too late to drive back from a meeting or we are too tired after a long day during a business trip. This will again be eliminated with the entry of autonomous vehicles as instead of opting for a stay at a hotel, people would choose to travel while relaxing in the comfort of their car. This of course would follow at a much later stage after the commercial availability of driverless cars as initially it would require the driver to be engaged in some way or other before full autonomous vehicles come into play.

Insurance

Insurance is a huge business and a significant fraction of the industry is driven by the automobiles. A large number of vehicles get involved in crashes all over the world and almost 1.3 million causalities and 20-50 million injuries are caused by road accidents. Driverless cars will eliminate these road accidents removing the need of multiple kinds of insurances. With the insurances that will be applicable, liability will be a major challenge that will have to be tackled.

Real estate

Calling an Uber is easy and it gives you the option to skip driving in rush hour on a weekday. However one still prefers living closer to city centre to ensure basic amenities and workplaces are nearby. The costs of real estate are determined on the basis of location which means such locations are costlier. As the transport becomes more efficient and congestion is minimised, the location based pricing will have lesser role to play and more development will be seen in suburban areas.

Communication

Disappointing network coverage and spotty data connections will no longer cut it when we enter the era of connected cars. The cars will not only have to deal with a lot of data to drive themselves but will also exchange data with centralised systems and other cars on the roads and that means we will need robust networks with high speed connectivity. Along with this, data security will also become a major concern brining more opportunities in this field.

What other industries do you think will be affected by the arrival of driverless cars? Do share

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General Motors has been making it clear for a while about its plans for driverless cars. Lyft recently hopped on with GM on the driverless cars plan to compete with others in the race. Now giving yet another hint that driverless cars aren’t away, General Motors has announced that it will be buying Cruise Automation, a Silicon Valley start-up that is developing technologies for driverless cars.

Driverless cars are being seen as a major disrupter in travel and could possibly redefine ground transportation. An Audi strategist also suggested that they will heavily affect domestic flights and hotels. Cruise Automation has been working on the technologies for a while now. They have developed algorithms that allow the vehicle to be more aware of the road and surroundings. The start-up launched in 2013 with semi-automatic conversion systems and now have full-fledged driverless systems in place. They have also acquired permits for testing vehicles on public roads.

As tech companies like Google and Baidu try to disrupt the automobile industry by developing self-driving cars, the automobile manufacturers are taking the next best route, bringing tech innovators on-board. GM isn’t the only manufacturer to take this route. Ford partnered with Robotics Company called Velodyne LiDAR to develop self-driving systems. This way they can accelerate their progress and get there faster to match with Tesla and Google.

While the acquisition would allow GM to reach its goals quickly, the start-up will continue to operate independently. On the other hand GM, with its resources and massive scale, will catalyse the growth of Cruise Automation.

The deal hasn’t closed yet but will most likely be done in second quarter this year. The terms and numbers haven’t been disclosed however some experts estimate the deal to be worth USD 1 Billion. With GM further pressing the pedal on driverless cars, this is one development we would definitely be watching.

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