Autonomous Vehicles, LEAF and others...

TomT said:

I hope they didn't use the same technology in the autonomous Leaf...

From the IIHS's test on collision avoidance systems: "The tests demonstrate that most manufacturers still have work to do in perfecting the systems. The insurance trade group, for instance, found the braking wasn't enough to stop the vehicle in the 12 and 25 mph tests of the Infiniti JX SUV. The Toyota Prius V wagon scored so poorly that it didn't qualify for an IIHS front crash prevention rating."

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-crash-tests-20130928,0,4466908.story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Click to expand...

GRA said:

Considering how early it is in the deployment of these systems, I'm impressed some are as good as they are (and very happy that one of the top brands is Subaru, as my last two cars have been Subies).

Click to expand...

Nissan Robotic Car Group Maps New Route to Product Development

Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., which has pledged to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020, has launched a new R&D group in Silicon Valley to help it reach its goal. The group’s leader, former NASA researcher Maarten Sierhuis, said the company is working to lead change in its own business—never an easy task for an incumbent in any market.

In August, Nissan became the first major automaker to promise to deliver fully autonomous vehicles to the market, and it set an aggressive timetable of just seven years. It even promised to bring a variety of the cars to market, and to introduce them at an affordable price...

It is exceedingly difficult—and some would say impossible—for a large, established and successful company to lead a technological revolution within its own market. “Incumbents never, never disrupt their own business. Ever. Never. Never. If there is a law of business, that’s it,” Steve Jurvetson, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, told CIO Journal. Mr. Jurvetson has been following the evolution of self-driving cars since at least 2005, convinced that they will be safer than human drivers and help reduce traffic accidents. “In 20 or 30 years, we will look back and wonder how we ever let anyone drive,” he said...

Click to expand...

...My generation—the millennials—numbers some 90 million teens and 20- and early-30-somethings. This makes us the largest demographic cohort alive today—and the auto industry's biggest headache. We're supposed to be driving more as we age, yet young people drove 23 percent fewer miles in 2009 than in 2001. Only two thirds of 16- to 24-year-olds in 2011 even possessed a driver's license (the lowest rate since 1963). Meanwhile, nearly a third of us prefer to live in cities, where we can abandon cars for trains, buses, cabs, bikes, and our own legs.

Don't get me wrong; I savor the freedom of cars and happily borrow the one my wife bought before we married. Cars are versatile enough to drive to the grocery store one day and across a continent the next. You can toss camping gear in the trunk, blast your favorite music, roll down the windows, and put a dog in the backseat (and roll down its window too). No other mode of transportation permits the same degree of speed, comfort, and flexibility.

Yet I recoil from the idea of buying one. Cars equal liability. Accidents are practically inevitable, no matter how well you drive. They cost more and more to own and maintain, and (electric or not) they defile the environment. And good luck parking one anywhere without it getting ticketed or towed.

So what would it take you, the automakers, to sell me, a punk kid of the "expectant" generation, a car?

One, lose the driver's seat. Or at least make it optional. Cars should drive themselves. I'd rather sit in the back with some toddlers watching Finding Nemo for the 100th time or take a nap with the dog. You don't want me driving anyway. About 34,000 people in the United States died in car crashes last year. Some of these incidents are inarguably related to the 39 percent of teens who text while driving, even when they know that it's not only against the law, but also remarkably dangerous.

Instead, put robots in charge. Machines can't be distracted by text messages, music, or spilled soda. Plus, they're faster than human brains at computing the mundane information required to safely operate a vehicle. We've already seen the rollout of self-parking, lane-keeping, automatic-braking, and cyclist-collision-avoidance systems—it's time to give autonomy a try....

Click to expand...

edatoakrun said:

PaulScott said:

...It should further be noted that those of us who grew up driving are the only ones with any romantic notions of driving. Many young people these days don't even want cars, much less want to spend time driving them. As we old farts die off, the next generation will gladly sign on to robot cars since they will be cheaper, safer and will allow more productivity.

Click to expand...

The reality (for most people, most of the time) today, driving is an experience ranging from miserable to boring, largely restricted either to suburban/urban traffic, or to freeways engineered to be (relatively) safe, even when driven on by incompetent and/or inattentive human drivers.

But does anyone here truly enjoy the monotonous hours of freeway travel, on roads designed to reduce the risks, but also take most of the fun, out of the road miles?

Now that I avoid freeways whenever possible (to save time in my LEAF, up here in DC-less-land) I realize I always used to drive so damn fast on freeways, largely because driving on them is such a depressing experience.

I am old enough to remember when families went for a drive because it was enjoyable.

And I moved out of the San Francisco bay area, ~20 years ago, in part to be able to continue my hobby of driving.

Would many under ~50 years of age today, even understand those concepts?

The good news is that outside the overpopulated regions where most "drivers" live, many of the pre-freeway roads are still there, and often free of traffic (but still very dangerous per mile driven, BTW) and I now enjoy them in my LEAF.

But I also realize how my present attitudes towards driving are eccentricities, not representative of the larger population.

Click to expand...

johnrhansen said:

They already make a self driving vehicle. It's called public transportation

Click to expand...

smkettner said:

So my EV just takes me down to the bus/train station and a company EV picks me up at the central stop and takes me to work.
Might save a bundle on entertainment venue parking fees. Just drop me off right at the front door.
Urban business/housing could expand to the next level if less parking is needed.

Click to expand...

Preparing a Nation for
Autonomous Vehicles
Opportunities, Barriers and Policy Recommendations

...Potential Benefits

AV operations are inherently different from human-driven
vehicles. AVs can be programmed to not break traffic laws.
They do not drink and drive. Their reaction times are quicker
and they can be optimized to smooth traffic flows, improve
fuel economy, and reduce emissions. They can deliver
freight and unlicensed travelers to their destinations. This
section examines some of the largest potential benefits that
have been identified in existing research. The exact extent of
these benefits is not yet known, but this paper attempts to
place estimates on these benefits to gauge the magnitude of
their impact assuming varying levels of market penetration.

Safety

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to dramatically
reduce crashes. Table 1 highlights the magnitude of automobile
crashes in the United States, and indicates sources of
driver error that may disappear as vehicles become increasingly
automated.

Over 40 percent of these fatal crashes involve alcohol,
distraction, drug involvement and/or fatigue.* Self-driven
vehicles would not fall prey to human failings, suggesting the
potential for at least a 40 percent fatal crash-rate reduction,
assuming automated malfunctions are minimal and everything
else remains constant (such as the levels of long-distance,
night-time and poor-weather driving). Such reductions
do not reflect crashes due to speeding, aggressive driving,
over-compensation, inexperience, slow reaction times, inattention
and various other driver shortcomings. Driver error
is believed to be the main reason behind over 90 percent of
all crashes.16 Even when the critical reason behind a crash is
attributed to the vehicle, roadway or environment, additional
human factors such as inattention, distraction, or speeding
are regularly found to have contributed to the crash occurrence
and/or injury severity.

The scope of potential benefits is substantial both economically
and politically. Over 30 thousand persons die each
year in the U.S. in automobile collisions,17 with 2.2 million
crashes resulting in injury.18 At $300 billion, the annual
economic cost of crashes is three times higher than that of
congestion19 and is highlighted as the number one transportation
goal20 in the nation’s legislation, Moving Ahead for
Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) (Section 1203§150.b.1).
These issues have long been the top priorities of the U.S.
Department of Transportation’s Strategic Plan. Traffic
crashes remain the primary reason for the death of Americans
between 15 and 24 years of age.21...

Click to expand...

Wall Street Journal said:

Nissan Motor Co. said a self-driving version of its electric Leaf car made its first foray onto public roads.

Click to expand...

Wall Street Journal said:

The Leaf drove on Japan’s Sagami Expressway in Kanagawa prefecture, southwest of Tokyo. Nissan vice chairman Toshiyuki Shiga and the prefecture’s Governor, Yuji Kuroiwa, rode in the car during the test, which marked a major step toward Nissan’s goal of selling self-driving cars to consumers by 2020.

Click to expand...

If you happen to see a Fluence Z.E. without a driver (or passenger) making its way, Knight Rider-like, along the roads of the Renault Technocentre, don’t panic, you’re not hallucinating. The car in question is the result of the Advanced Urban Mobility Platform (AUMP) program. Project manager François Chauveau explains: “Driving a car is generally a pleasure, but sometimes it’s not, like when you spend hours looking for a parking space or you have to park in an underground lot. This is exactly why restaurants have a valet service – at a price, of course! That’s where the idea comes from: why not simply an automatic driver? And in the same spirit, how about a car that picks up its driver rather than the other way round?”


...The advantages are obvious. Users enjoy a more comfortable experience as they don’t have to journey to the parking lot and the car arrives with the right battery charge for the trip, while Renault optimizes the operation of its taxi pool...

Click to expand...

...Platoons are formed using GPS, wireless and remote radar sensing systems to allow a lead vehicle to remotely control the braking and speed of following vehicles. By forming a platoon like this, vehicles can travel closer together for better aerodynamics, smoother traffic flow, reduced fuel consumption and emissions, improved road capacity and reduced risk of collisions...

Click to expand...

...At CES, BMW is showing off a modified 2-Series Coupe and 6-Series Gran Coupe that can race around a track at the limits of adhesion, and slide around corners like a throttle-happy Formula Drift ace.

Both cars are outfitted with a LIDAR system, 360-degree radar, ultrasonic sensors, and cameras that track the environment. Partnered with the electronic braking, throttle, and steering control that’s standard on all new BMWs, the prototypes can run through a high-speed slalom, perform precise lane changes, and slide around corners, without any driver intervention...

Click to expand...

...At CES in 2012, Audi told us about a debuting technology that would mark a significant step along the path towards self-driving cars: Traffic Jam Assistant. This year, the German automaker invited us out to Las Vegas to see the jam-busting technology in action, on a relatively busy freeway.

The Traffic Jam Assistant (we're pretty sure that name is still in Beta) promises to relieve drivers from the tedium of slow-moving freeways by taking care of braking, acceleration and staying inside of the lane – all with no input from the human behind the wheel. While still a fair step from truly autonomous driving, the goal here is to give a commuter some respite from the mechanical, time-wasting traffic jam paradigm, potentially opening up a space for productivity in the process. (Audi can't come right out and say that TJA will allow you to use your cell phone in traffic, as that's still against the law in many places, but something like that is clearly on the radar... er... LiDAR.)...

Click to expand...

...The human passengers will know that having a smart golf cart take you where you need to go on a closed campus or in a pedestrian city center is preferable to dirty buses, especially since the Navia is all-electric and does not need any sort of track or special pathway. You just tell it where you want to go (using a touchscreen with pre-determined stops) and the vehicle's "advanced robotics, laser mapping technology and sensors" can navigate through busy streets to get you there. The box has a top speed of 12.5 miles per hour can carry up to eight passengers. It even has wireless induction charging built in (hence the company's name, we assume), so you don't even need a human to plug it in at night. Heck, Induct says that the Navia is able to run 24 hours a day, but doesn't say how many underground charging pads you'd need to install to get this kind of service. The Navia is already in used in Europe and Asia, as you can see in the videos below...

Click to expand...

Google’s Next Phase in Driverless Cars: No Brakes or Steering Wheel

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Humans might be the one problem Google can’t solve.

For the past four years, Google has been working on self-driving cars with a mechanism to return control of the steering wheel to the driver in case of emergency. But Google’s brightest minds now say they can’t make that handoff work anytime soon.

Their answer? Take the driver completely out of the driving.

The company has begun building a fleet of 100 experimental electric-powered vehicles that will dispense with all the standard controls found in modern automobiles. The two-seat vehicle looks a bit like the ultracompact Fiat 500 or the Mercedes-Benz Smart car if you take out the steering wheel, gas pedal, brake and gear shift. The only things the driver controls is a red “e-stop” button for panic stops and a separate start button....

Google won’t say if it intends to get into the car manufacturing business or simply supply technology to carmakers, but it says there are plenty of possibilities if it can persuade regulators to allow cars with no drivers. One potential use: driverless taxi cabs.

In an interview at Google’s headquarters here, Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder who is actively involved in the research program, said the company decided to change the car project more than a year ago after an experiment in which Google employees used autonomous vehicles for their normal commutes to work.

There were no crashes. But Google engineers realized that asking a human passenger — who could be reading or daydreaming or even sleeping — to take over in an emergency won’t work.

“We saw stuff that made us a little nervous,” said Christopher Urmson, a former Carnegie Mellon University roboticist who directs the car project at Google.

The vehicles will have electronic sensors that can see about 600 feet in all directions. Despite that, they will have rearview mirrors because they are required by California’s vehicle code, Dr. Urmson said. The front of the car will be made from a foamlike material in case the computer fails and it hits a pedestrian. It looks like a little bubble car from the future, streamlined to run by itself — a big change from the boxy Lexus SUV Google has been retrofitting the last few years with self-driving technology.

The new Google strategy for autonomous cars is a break from many competing vehicle projects. Mercedes, BMW and Volvo have introduced cars that have the ability to travel without driver intervention in limited circumstances — though none completely eliminate the driver...

Click to expand...