Tag Archives: CES

How will Connected Vehicle Technology Affect Trucking?

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On February 3rd, 2014, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx stated that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) would begin to take steps to enable Connected Vehicle Technology for light vehicles.  Should the NHTSA be making the same announcement for heavy trucks?

There were approximately 800,000 heavy or tractor-trailer truckers on U.S. highways at the end of 2012[1].  Heavy trucks are a vital part of the U.S. economy.  They carry close to 70% of our nation’s freight and are the backbone of a $642B transportation business[2]. The trucking industry is essential to U.S. Economic health, but has a safety record that has caused the government to increase its regulations and oversight mandating that truck drivers spend less time driving because of safety concerns.

Freightliner Truck

Figure A – Typical Tractor-Trailer (courtesy of Freightliner Trucks)

In 2012, 3,921 were people killed and 104,000 people injured in crashes involving 317,000 heavy trucks (gross vehicle weight rating greater than 10,000 pounds)[3].  In the same year, heavy trucks were involved in 8.3%[3] of all fatal crashes, yet drove about 10%[2] of all miles driven on U.S. roads and highways.   In his announcement, Secretary Foxx stated: “connecting all of the nation’s vehicles could reduce non-alcohol-related traffic accidents by as much as 80 percent”.  However, if this doesn’t include heavy trucks could this really be possible?

Truck Accident

Figure B - Heavy Truck Accident (courtesy of KHOU.com)

Is Connected Vehicle Technology the solution to improve safety with heavy trucks?  Connected Vehicle Technology is based on Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication.

V2V - Connected vehicles communicate directly with one another within a 1000 foot radius.  They broadcast their location, speed, direction and status plus other data in a safety message 10 times per second.  If a connect vehicle suddenly decelerates, i.e. the driver slams on brakes, other connected vehicles in its path would be alerted almost instantly.  This would mean that a chain collision could likely be avoided.  U.S. DOT studies state that 80% of all multiple vehicle crashes could be prevented through V2V communication. Based upon this, the number of heavy truck crashes that cause injury could have been reduced from 77,000 to 15,400 and 3100 lives could have been saved.

V2I – With V2I communications, Connected Vehicles get real time road information about congestion, traffic accidents, or weather conditions through messages.  This will allow truckers to re-route their connected vehicles to avoid congestion and thus save fuel and time. It will also increase the real time accuracy for estimating arrival times of heavy trucks.

Connected Vehicles

Figure C - Connected Vehicles communicating with each other

Secretary Foxx’s recent statement to start the regulatory process mandating all new light vehicles come equipped with V2V communications capabilities signifies that the DOT feels that it is time to move Connected Vehicle Technology from R&D to deployment.

We believe the U.S. DOT, following its recent announcement about light vehicles, must announce in 2014 that it will mandate that future new heavy trucks have Connected Vehicle capabilities as well. With more than 8% of all vehicle fatalities involving heavy trucks, the U.S. must mandate this technology for all vehicles including heavy trucks.  Additionally, the value of this technology improves greatly as the percentage of vehicles that broadcast the safety message increases.  If the government doesn’t put the same requirements on heavy trucks that they have on light vehicles, it eliminates 10% of the opportunities for reducing crashes.  And most critically, we’re eliminating it with vehicles that create the highest likelihood for a fatality in a crash - heavy trucks.  Once deployed, Connected Vehicle technology will dramatically improve safety for both trucks and every other vehicle on the road.

To get a firsthand view of what it is like to ride in a Connected Vehicle, read our Connected Car Ride blog entry. There we describe live demonstrations of prototype Connected Vehicles we experienced at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  You can also see a video of a connected car around the 1:58 mark of this video from c|net.

Videos Page

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Sebastian Thrun

Sebastian Thrun: Google’s driverless car

We’ve added a new page to the site for Videos on DriverlessTransportation.com.  We have generally concentrated on videos from the last three months, however we did start the page with three videos that we think are key to the history of Driverless Transportation.  These are:

  • Sebastian Thrun’s Ted talk where he discusses what drove him to driverless cars.
  • Google’s Self-Driving Car Test with Steve Mahan.  This video shows some of the huge promise from this technology.
  • Chris Gerdes’ Ted talk where he talks about the autonomous racecar that is developing at Stanford.

The other videos range from a panel discussing self-driving cars at Stanford, to a discussion on the design and plans for Zoox to Audi’s keynote address at CES.

Check it out.  They are all very interesting.  If you have others we should be linking to, please let us know.

Prof. Rupert Stadler

Prof. Rupert Stadler, chairman of the board of management of Audi AG

Connected Car Ride

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I spent much of December and the entire plane ride out to CES reading functional and technical documents on the DOT’s Connected Vehicle Safety program so when I saw that Ford had a test version of the technology that I could check out I was very excited.

Ford Car Formatted

In case you aren’t familiar with the Connected Vehicle program, it is a safety program designed to have cars communicate with each other so that drivers can be made aware of other vehicles and what they are doing.

ConnectedCar Blog

The picture above is a good example of how this can be beneficial.  Suppose the yellow car in front slams on its brakes to avoid the ducks entering the roadway.  Unfortunately the driver of the red SUV is in the middle of reading a text message and doesn’t notice the yellow car’s brake lights.  Because the red SUV is blocking his view, the driver of the blue car doesn’t see the yellow car stopping either.  In this scenario, a three car accident is very likely.

However, with connected vehicle technology the drivers in both the red SUV and the blue car would be notified the instant that the yellow car slammed on its brakes.  This is because that technology has each car broadcasting out a basic safety message which includes location, speed and braking information ten times a second.  When the systems in the blue and red vehicles get the message, they will instantly notify its driver so that the appropriate action can be taken.  In this case, slamming on the brakes and avoiding hitting the car in front of them.

This is just one of the scenarios that this technology should help with.  One of the big challenges in this area, prior to the introduction of fully driverless vehicles, is how should the driver be notified when an issue arises.  A lot of research is being done in this area by the DOT, automobile companies and research institutes at major universities like Virginia Tech and Stanford.

Given this, it was very interesting to see what Ford is doing.  During CES, Ford setup a small test track in a parking lot outside the convention center in Las Vegas.  There were three Ford cars as part of the test.  I rode in a Taurus.

In the first test, we went forward and one of the other cars was in the lane next to us in our blind spot.  When we put on our blinker to turn, the seat nudged us from behind and a set of red lights was displayed in a heads up display in the windshield.  This seemed like a pretty good indication that something was amiss.  We went through a number of other scenarios including one like in the picture above.  In this case, we got the red lights in the windshield and both sides of the seat indicated a problem.

The last scenario was at an intersection with a truck parked to block our view of the cars driving on the cross street.  One of the other cars was coming at a high speed from our right.  As we approached the intersection, the seat again warned us on the proper side but this time the lights in the dash flashed from right to left indicating a problem coming from the right.  All in all, it seemed very effective.  The middle part of this video from c|net, the part of V2V, shows exactly what Ford was demoing at CES.

As a father of three young adult drivers  and a driver myself, I see this as a huge safety enhancement and something that the government should be mandating in the next generation of vehicles.

John

CES Driverless Car Features

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In addition to riding in the Induct automated car at CES this year, I also got to see a number of other technologies related to driverless transportation that are, or will be in new car showrooms soon.

Three of these were related to parking.  There were systems on display from Audi, Valeo and Bosch.  In addition, I got to test out an emergency braking system from Bosch.

Audi Formatted

Audi showed two things in their demonstration.  The first was having the car park itself in a perpendicular spot.  The driver “pulled into the lot” (it was really in a relatively small piece of a lot), got out of the car and, using his cell phone, told the car to go park itself. 

During the process, the “driver” is required to hold down a button on his or her phone. If you let up on the button then the car will stop.  While this is an interesting safety feature, it does mean that you can’t just get out of the car and let it completely park itself. 

Audi’s second demonstration showed the car pulling into and out of a garage by itself.  In this case, the driver got in and out of the car outside the garage.  That didn’t seem like a typical process in real-life but perhaps it was just for the demo.

The other thing that Audi showed was how little space was required for the electronics: the entire package is controlled from a device in the trunk that was only about the size of an iPad.  Previous versions filled up most of the trunk with electronics so this was a big improvement.

The system is not yet available to consumers and they were very non-committal about when it might be.

Valeo Formatted

The next demonstration that I saw was from a Tier 1 supplier, Valeo.  Similar to Audi’s demonstration, Valeo showed the car finding a spot in a row of cars and then parking by itself, and similar to Audi, it was all controlled from a smart-phone.

Unlike Audi, however, the operator didn’t have to hold a button during the entire process, so he could have walked away.  He did have a button on his cell phone to stop the car. I had an interesting discussion with one of Valeo engineers on how this becomes even more capable.  I also asked how it would handle parking in a multi-story parking garage.  He said that in order for the car to work there, it would need to have been given an electronic map of the garage.  (This could happen through a wireless connection as the car approaches the garage).

He thought you’d find this system in production in a couple of years.  We’ll see.  It seems like it still has a few very significant issues that will need to be overcome.

Bosch Formatted

Tier 1 supplier Bosch performed a third set of demonstrations.  The first thing they demonstrated was automatic parallel parking, which is a technology that is available today.

I was especially interested in Bosch’s Emergency Braking System, of which I got a firsthand demonstration.  They had setup a test track that had a parked car at the end.  As we approached the parked car, “Timmy”, a replica little boy, popped out into our path. The system detected Timmy and slammed on the brakes.  It was very abrupt but Timmy came out fine.  Without this system, we very easily could have hit poor Timmy.

Two small cameras mounted on the windshield side of the rear view mirror controlled the system.  I didn’t notice them until the Bosch driver pointed it out.

All in all, it was great to experience these technologies first hand.  The first wave of electronic safety and automation in cars is definitely upon us.

John

CES - Rode in a Driverless Car

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Rick and I have been talking about driverless transportation for over a year now, and we started getting into it seriously about 6 months ago.  In that time, I have been to shows across the country, sat in on webinars, watched dozens of videos, talked with hundreds of people and read multiple books, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of articles and dozens of papers, all on the subject of driverless transportation. But yesterday was the first time that I got to ride in a driverless car.

IMG_0195

I can tell you, believe all the hype, because it is very very cool.  The revolution has started and in the not too distant future the world will be a much changed place.

My first ride was in a Navio by Induct.  It is designed for controlled environments like campuses, airports and city centers.  The current model will hold 8 people and can go up to about 12 miles per hour.  They have tested other vehicles at highway speeds so I expect we’ll see a series of different models from them in the future.  Their vehicles are currently in use in both France (Induct is a French company) and Singapore.

IMG_0210

The ride was very smooth and the vehicle seemed very well designed.  I didn’t get a complete feel for its capabilities, though, as we were on a very small test track.

Unlike much of the other Driverless technology that is at CES in 2014, you can buy this now for only $250,000.  That may at first seem like a lot but it should be able to pay for itself in around 18 months because a driver isn’t needed.

If I had only brought my checkbook, I could have bought one and had it drive me home.  (Might have been a bit chilly driving through the Midwest though.)

Based upon what I saw today, I think we’ll be hearing a lot from Induct in the not too distant future.

IMG_0196

John

CEA’s 5 Technology Trends To Watch 2014

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CEA Paper

The Consumer Electronics Association, (CEA) the annual host for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas each January, recently published a paper entitled, 5 Technology Trends to Watch 2014.  One of these technologies is Driverless Cars.

One of the first sections of this paper is a series of survey results done by the CEA.  These results seem totally meaningless.  For example, they asked people about their “willingness to ride in driverless vehicles” and only 49% of the people said they would be willing to ride in a driverless vehicle at less than 35 miles per hour.  However, we’ve travelled through numerous airports with modern autonomous train systems that go between terminals and have never seen a case where more than half the people walked instead.  Asking the general public detailed questions about technologies they may know little or nothing about seems like a complete waste of time.

The article later breaks down a series of additional questions by race.  Why would this be in any way relevant?

The paper then goes through a reasonable discussion of some of the telecommunications and software challenges for connected vehicles but of course in the limited space it only really scratches the surface.

The best part of the paper is the discussion on the challenges for drivers to take over control of the car from the computer if required.  This issue basically stems from the computer or the human being detecting that the human being needs to take over driving and the time that it takes to make this transition especially if the human being is not paying close attention.  (People don’t do that today when they should be driving so it seems really unlikely that they will when they are just sitting there).  The transition from auto-pilot to manual control in airplanes is one of the safety issues that aerospace safety experts still worry about.  We too see this as a potentially large problem as early limited driverless vehicles are rolled out.  This is well summed up in their quote from David Jenkins a retired pilot:

Computers make great monitors for people, but people make poor monitors for computers.

So, this wouldn’t be the first paper that we’d recommend to review but it does bring up some interesting points (once you get past the surveys).