Drive.ai based in California is about to launch a self-driving ride-share service in Texas. Drive said it will offer rides to more than 10,000 people in Level 4 self-driving vehicles.
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The six-month pilot project will be within a geofenced area that will include retail, entertainment and office spaces.
Drive.ai teamed up with Frisco Texas
The company is partnering with Frisco Texas, a city of about 170,000, and its transportation management agency. The exact drop-off areas are to be finalized between May and the July launch date. During this period the company and the city are educating the public about the self-driving technology in the compact vans that are being used in the program. The agency will also gauge public response to determine final drop-off locations.
Level 4 self-driving vehicles
Level 4 self-driving vehicles are described by Wikipedia as follows: "Level 4 ("mind off"): As level 3, but no driver attention is ever required for safety, i.e. the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat. Self driving is supported only in limited spatial areas (geofenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver does not retake control." The highest level 5 is completely autonomous with no human intervention required.
Geofencing
A geo-fence is a virtual perimeter rather than an actual fence for a specific geographical area. It could be a radius around a point location or it can be a set of predefined boundaries, as would be the case in the Drive.ai pilot project.
Drive.ai CEO claims technology is safe
Sameep Tandon who is CEO and co-founder of Drive.ai claims: “Self-driving cars are here, and can improve the way we live right now. Our technology is safe, smart, and adaptive, and we are ready to work with governments and businesses to solve their transportation needs.”
However, several recent crashes have raised questions about the safety of the technology. A Waymo minivan was recently hit by a vehicle in Chandler Arizona. Back in March, an Uber vehicle hit and killed a woman in Tempe Arizona. No doubt with more tests such events are likely to occur and often they may not be the fault of the self-driving vehicle although in some instances they may contribute to the crashes.
The mayor of Frisco, Texas Jeff Cheney, was upbeat about the project: “Today definitely marks a mobility milestone for our entire region. It also gets us closer to achieving one of our council’s ‘Top Ten’ goals, which is to improve traffic throughout Frisco, one of the fastest growing cities in the country.”
Besides the city, other partners in the pilot project include the Hall Group, Frisco Stations Partners and the Denton County Transportation Authority.
The Chinese search engine and technology company Baidu has gained approval from the Chinese government to begin testing its self-driving cars in a sign of China's strong support for the industry.
The approval comes in spite of the fact that an Uber autonomous vehicle with a back up driver killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. However, it may be that Uber is not to blame as discussed in a recent Digital Journal article.
Baidu's certificate allows it to test vehicles on 33 roads about 105 kilometers or 65 miles in length altogether. The tests will be in less-populated suburbs of the city. Baidu is regarded as a leader in developing autonomous cars in China.
Baidu
Baidu Inc is a Chinese multinational technology company. It specializes in Internet-related services and products, but also Artificial Intelligence and is a leader in the development of autonomous vehicles. The firm was established back in January of 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu.
Baidu is headquartered at the Baidu campus in Beijing. Baidu has the second largest search engine in the world with a 76.05 market share in China. In October of 2017 Baidu's market cap was US $94.6 billion. In 2007 it became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ 100 index.
Project Apollo
Project Apollo is Baidu's new autonomous vehicle platform. The platform is designed to help car manufacturers produce self-driving cars more quickly. The platform consists of both hardware and software. It will provide BaIdu partners with the tech and open-source code needed that will aid vehicles perceive obstacles, plan routes and navigate around roads.
Baidu says it will first open Project Apollo for cars in restricted environments beginning this July. It will offer it for driving in simple urban road conditions later in the year. This is part of a plan to see a gradual rollout of self-driving features that should see fully autonomous vehicles on Chinese highways and regular roads by 2020.
Other Chinese companies are working on autonomous cars
Earlier in March China also issued licences to the SAIC Motor Company based in Shanghai and startup NIO to begin testing autonomous vehicles. China's own ride-hailing giant, Didi Chuxing, is also working on its own autonomous vehicles.
China is still behind the US in terms of testing autonomous vehicles on public roads but Baidu may help them catch up and make up for lost ground. Baidu CEO Robin Li got in trouble last year when he tested a company self-driving car at a conference in defiance of China's rules outlawing the tests. Now it is legal but only on approved roads.
Sylvia Moir, the police chief of Tempe Arizona told the San Francisco Chronicle that it was unlikely that Uber was at fault in a deadly accident involving a self-driving car that killed a woman on Sunday evening in the city.
The interview with Moircan be found here.Her comments created somewhat of a stir. This appears to be the first case where a person has been killed by a self-driving car. However, in July of 2016, a driver of a Tesla vehicle on auto-pilot was killed when the vehicle ran into a truck.
The Uber car had a backup driver and was not one of the fully autonomous cars that have no safety driver which are also being tested in Arizona and California. Moir said in the interview: “I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident. I won’t rule out the potential to file charges against the [backup driver] in the Uber vehicle.”
The accident described
The crash happened near Mill Avenue and Curry Road in Tempe. The Uber car was northbound when 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was struck while pushing a bicycle across the street. She was taken to the hospital where she died later from injuries sustained in the crash.
The vehicle was traveling 38 mph in an area where police said the speed limit was 35 but a Google Street View of the road last July shows the speed limit in that stretch at 45 mph.
There is no crosswalk where the accident happened and the victim came off the median out of shadows.
Moir remarked on the fact that Herzberg crossed the street where there was no crosswalk: “It is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated, managed crosswalks are available.”
There is also a sign warning pedestrians not to use an inviting brick-paved walking path across the median. A tweet notes that if the woman had walked a further 100 yards there was a pedestrian corridor.
Rafaela Vasquez the 44 year old backup driver gave a statement to police.
Safety driver had little time to react
The police viewed footage from two of the vehicles cameras. One camera faced toward the street, and the other inside the car faced toward the driver. Based on what the police saw Moir judged that Vasquez had little time to react: “The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them. His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”
Moir's conclusion
Moir summed up her observations: “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway.”
Moir's comments bring negative reactions
Advocates for safe streets describe Moir's comments as tone deaf, inappropriate and possibly misinformed. The Tempe Polic Department has since issued a statement that says that the department does not determine fault in vehicle accidents.
Friends of the family also demanded that Uber be held accountable and even said that Uber should be shut down.
The executive order by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in March stipulates that if one of its self-driving cars negligently kills a person then the corporation that operates the vehicle is liable. The company would be criminally liable just like a person.
The University of Waterloo located in Waterloo, Ontario, will become partners with two leading institutes in China to pursue research in connected and autonomous vehicle technology.
The university will partner with the Qinqdao Academy of Intelligent Industries (QAI) and the State Key Laboratory for Management and Control of Complex Systems (SKL-MCCS). An agreement was recently signed by all three parties.
The nature of the research
The Waterloo center's research activities will involve automated vehicle testing, human-like autonomous driving, applied artificial intelligence and deep learning in automated driving.
A number of initiatives are included in the agreement, including a shared research center for automated driving, faculty and graduate student exchanges, plus a Waterloo PhD program that will focus on autonomous vehicles, and the potential for Chinese startup companies to establish research and development facilities in the Waterloo region.
University of Waterloo taking a global view of research in the area
Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor of the university said: “Waterloo is committed to taking a global view on research and development and this partnership represents a significant step in our goal of advancing the world’s understanding and use of new technologies. Our dedication to innovation and these types of partnerships will help us to continue to shape the future of Canada and the world’s technologies and economy.”
Yanchen Gao, senior vice-president of QAII for Intelligent Technology Research and Development and Incubation also stressed the international aspect of the research saying: "The Waterloo collaboration is another significant step to strengthen QAII's international profile, and we are committed to make it a great success. Parallel driving for intelligent vehicles is one of our hallmark technologies and we hope our joint venture with Waterloo brings networked autonomous driving to reality."
Funding of the research
The Chinese partners are committed to contributing up to one million dollars Canadian each year for five years. The university will provide $4 million to build a new autonomous lab in 2018. It is seeking matching funds from the government to support its initiative. Funding from other external sources will be pursued by all partners. The partners expect that many university-industry partnerships will be created using this joint research platform.
President of China's QAII and director of SKL-MCCS praises partnership
Fei-Yue Wang claimed:"I have been in close academic collaboration with Waterloo Engineering for 30 years in control, robotics, and intelligent systems and I am glad to witness this exciting opportunity to bring our cooperation to a new and much more grand level. Waterloo has been a world leader in engineering and computer science education and research and the Waterloo mechatronic vehicle research program has provided a solid foundation for the success of our collaboration.I am confident our joint effort will make Waterloo, QAII, and SKL-MCCS the leader and best in research and development of artificial intelligence and intelligent technology for autonomous driving. I also hope our joint effort will lead to the world's first PhD program specializing in intelligent vehicles and make Waterloo the hub of innovation and incubation in intelligent vehicles and technology."
The University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo is a public research university. Its main campus of about 1,000 acres is located in Waterloo next to Waterloo Park. The university has six faculties and ten schools faculty-based. In 2016 the university had 30.600 undergraduate and 5,300 graduate students.
The university is a member of the U15 a group of research-intensive Canadian universities. It is famous for its cooperative education programs that allows students to integrate their education with relevant work experiences. It claims that its program is the largest post-secondary coop education program in the world with more than 17,000 undergraduate students in more than 140 coop programs.
In 2001 the university announced the development of the Waterloo Research and Technology Park in the north campus. The park was designed to house many high-tech industries in the area. It has the support of the university, Waterloo Regional Municipality, the provincial and the federal government. The aim is to provide businesses with access to the university faculty and co-op education students, and the university's infrastructure and resources. The project was started on June 2002.
The university has also worked in partnership with the Higher Colleges of Technology in Dubai. It even had a Dubai campus that opened in 2009 and provided degrees in chemical engineering, civil engineering, financial analysis, risk management, and information technology management. However in October 2012 the university's board of governors decided to close the Dubai extension.
Waterloo's research in the field of engineering has been ranked 43rd in the field in the 2011 URAP rankings and second in Canada. The engineering program has been rated as among the best in the world. It is often ranked second or even first in Canada although it has a much lower ranking on the world scale.
There are three categories of cars that could be called smart cars. One smart car is a brand the German-based Smart Car, although its primary assembly plants are in France and Slovenia.
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The second type of smart car embeds modern technology into the car design allowing for many new innovative features. Finally, there is the robotic, self-driving, or autonomous car that can function without a driver.
In 1982, CEO Nicolas Hayek of SMH the maker of Swatch watches started to develop the idea of a small and stylish city car that would use the same type of manufacturing and personalizatiion features that had been successful in making Swatch watches popular. Although the car was briefly backed by Volkswagen, the Smart Car later became part of Mercedes-Benz:A deal was announced on March 4, 1994, at a press conference at Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Stuttgart that the companies would join forces in founding Micro Compact Car AG (MCC). 49% of the initial capital of 50 million Swiss francs were provided by SMH and the remaining 51% by Daimler-Ben
It is now part of a division of Daimler AG.
The main types are the Fortwo and the Forfour. The brand name SMART actually comes from Swatch, Mercedes or SM plus ART. The cars are marketed in 46 different countries in Asia, North America, South America, Africa, Australia, and Europe. The Fortwo, the most popular of the models had a production level surpassing 1.7 million units in 2015. In rural Manitoba where I live, there are very few Smart Cars but more are to be seen in Winnipeg the capital and a fair-sized city.
In 2007 Daimler began field-testing an electric version of the Smart Car. The company has kept refining the electric vehicle and a fourth generation Fortwo electric model was shown at the September 2016 Paris Motor Show. It was launched as the 2017 model. It has a 17.6 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack with 80 horsepower. Estimated range on a charge will be 99 miles. The appended video shows Smart Cars being made.
A robotic car is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without any human direction or input. So far in the US as of May 17 automated cars are permitted on public roads only if there is a human driver at the wheel at all times ready to take control according to Wikipedia. In order to detect their surroundings, robotic cars, use radar, laser light, GPS, and computer vision. The cars have advanced control system that analyze incoming data so as to identify clear navigation paths. as well as obstacles in their path.
The first precursors of technology for robotic cars was developed as far back as that 1020.s and 1930.s but the first really autonomous cars were developed in the 1980ès at Carenegie Mellon University's Navlab,in 1984 and at a project of Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich, the Eureka Prometheus Project in 1987. In 1995 the Navlab 5 made the first robotic car coast to coast journey:.Of the 2,849 miles between Pittsburgh, PA and San Diego, CA, 2,797 miles were autonomous (98.2%), completed with an average speed of 63.8 miles per hour (102.3 km/h).[8][9][10][11] Since then, numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles.
Once robotic cars become common it is expected there will be many fewer collisions, and less insurance costs. With more robotic cars it is also expected that traffic flow will be better. The cars will provide enhanced mobility for the disabled as well. Aside from the technological challenges of developing vehicles that are fully robotic, there are legal problems concerning liability for accidents. There will also be the need for regulations governing the cars which presumably should be made at the federal level but there may be political issues with that in the US and perhaps in some other countries as well. There are also concerns about hacking of the control mechanisms of the cars.
A third type of smart car is the intelligent car that embeds in it new technology that can help the operator of the car as well as those riding in it. Often the technology can help with navigation as the Mercedes in the appended video is able to drive for a short period without the operator controlling the steering wheel. Future cars will probably have an advanced cruise control system which you can just set and the car will function as a robotic car but you will still be able to control it should you wish. There will probably be more systems that over-ride driver errors such as ABS that keeps your brakes from locking, and avoid errors such as driving too fast into a curve, or not braking as you approach an obstacle.
As the appended video shows, even keys are becoming smarter with the fob and key for the Mercedes also able to sense the key fob as being near and unlock the door for you without ever having to take it from your pocket, and it can even open the windows and the sun roof for you. However, not everything works perfectly. The Mercedes slowed the car down to 45 miles per hour when it saw a speed sign indicating that was the speed limit. Unfortunately above the number the sign said "trucks". The driver remarks that it was a German car and did not understand English.
