Driverless cars: A bad joke or the future?

[Giannis]

I was reading the two press releases that Volvo issued today about their advanced driving systems and I though about creating one thread to post everything that is related to all driverless car research programs here and keep the forum tidy.

I'll make the start!

Volvo Car Corporation takes the strain out of the daily commute with a technology that automatically follows the vehicle in front[

Volvo Car Corporation has taken another step on the journey towards autonomous driving - self-driving vehicles - by demonstrating a new traffic jam assistance system. The new system, whereby the car automatically follows the vehicle in front in slow-moving queues up to 50 km/h, will be ready for production in 2014.

"This technology makes driving more relaxed in the kind of monotonous queuing that is a less attractive part of daily driving in urban areas. It offers you a safe, effortless drive in slow traffic," says Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President Research and Development of Volvo Car Corporation.

The traffic jam assistance function is an evolution of the current Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Keeping Aid technology, which was introduced in the all-new Volvo V40 earlier in 2012.

The driver activates the traffic jam assistance function by pushing a button. When active, the engine, brakes and steering respond automatically. The Adaptive Cruise Control enables safe, comfortable driving by automatically maintaining a set gap to the vehicle in front, at the same time as the steering is also controlled.

"The car follows the vehicle in front in the same lane. However, it is always the driver who is in charge. He or she can take back control of the car at any time," says Peter Mertens.

Commuting lasts longer than the annual vacation

Slow-moving queues are part of urban commuting. Americans spend more than 100 hours a year commuting to work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. This is more than the average two weeks of vacation time (80 hours) many Americans have per year.

Drivers in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles spend even longer times queuing to and from work every day.

"The situation is of course similar, or even worse, in major urban areas all over the world. Our aim with the traffic jam assistance is to make commuting a bit less stressful for the driver," says Peter Mertens.


Aiming for leadership

Autonomous driving - with steering, acceleration and/or braking automatically controlled by a vehicle that requires very little human interaction - is a major focus area in Volvo Car Corporation's development work.

"Our aim is to gain leadership in the field of autonomous driving by moving beyond concepts and pioneering technologies that will reach actual customers. Making these features reliable and easy to use is crucial to boosting customer confidence in self-driving cars," says Peter Mertens.

The low-speed traffic jam assistance system is the second technology for autonomous driving recently presented by Volvo Car Corporation. A few weeks ago, the company demonstrated the SARTRE project (Safe Road Trains for the Environment), which focuses on platooning in highway and motorway traffic at speeds of up to 90 km/h.

Positive consumer response

Volvo Car Corporation's firm focus on designing cars around people includes investigating consumer attitudes towards self-driving cars.

In 2011, Volvo Car Corporation invited a number of premium car owners to evaluate future driver support technologies at the company's test track, including an early traffic jam assistance prototype. One of the guests commented: "A perfect support for making commuting less stressful. It will take away the cramps and knee pain that I get when constantly having to adjust speed and distance in slow-moving queues."

Introduced in 2014

The traffic jam assistance technology will be part of VolvoCar Corporation's new Scalable Product Architecture, SPA, which will be introduced in 2014.

"SPA is a stand-alone Volvo project that will enable us to take the company's technological future into our own hands. Most of our volume will be based on this new architecture. It will give us a high degree of commonality and the right scale of economy to be competitive in the future," says Peter Mertens.

Volvo Car Corporation urges seamless, federal framework for regulating autonomous vehicles[/LEFT]

Entering the field of autonomous driving - self-driving vehicles - is the next step in Volvo Car Corporation's development of the world's safest cars. "Autonomous driving has potential for improving road safety, traffic flow and fuel economy. To make this happen it is important to avoid a patchwork of various state regulations," stated Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President, Research and Development of Volvo Car Corporation, at a seminar in Washington, D.C., yesterday.

The seminar "Policy Implications of Autonomous Vehicles," which was arranged by the Embassy of Sweden and Volvo Car Corporation, focused on the policy opportunities and challenges of autonomous vehicles.

"Volvo Car Corporation aims to gain leadership in the field of autonomous driving by moving beyond concepts and pioneering technologies that will reach the customers. We already have several driving assistance systems in the pipeline. But the legal situation for this technology still remains unclear," said Peter Mertens, adding: "We want to address this by supporting efforts to legalize testing of autonomous systems as well as initiating a constructive co-operation with policymakers."

Concern about legal patchwork

Peter Mertens expressed Volvo Car Corporation's concern that a state-by-state approach in the United States could lead to a patchwork of different laws and regulations.

"It is important that the U.S. Government underlines that regulation of motor vehicle safety systems and components is their jurisdiction. NHTSA research on the issues associated with autonomous vehicles could be the first step toward adoption of performance ratings on technology for autonomous driving," he said. "It is also crucial that state legislation doesn't restrict the use of active safety and support systems. They should be explicitly excluded from the definition of autonomous driving," Peter Mertens added.

Autonomous systems ready in 2014

Volvo Car Corporation is already spearheading the development of innovative safety technologies that help drivers avoid accidents.

The first focus areas in the development of autonomous systems are slow-moving queues and, in a longer perspective, road trains on motorways and fully autonomous vehicles. A system for traffic jam assistance will be introduced already in 2014.

"Allowing the car to act automatically is crucial when moving towards our vision that future cars will not crash at all. Our present systems for auto braking, lane keeping aid and adaptive cruise control could be described as the first steps. Now, we are moving towards technologies with a higher degree of autonomous driving in normal traffic situations," said Peter Mertens.

Benefits for society and drivers

On top of improved safety, the technology offers several advantages:

• Autonomous driving can cut fuel consumption significantly.
• It has the potential for shortening travel times by improving traffic flow.
• It paves the way for more freedom behind the wheel by creating possibilities for the driver to safely focus on something else while the car is driven autonomously.

"The average driver spends about 250 hours commuting every year. We believe that being able to use the time more efficiently will benefit both the individual and the society," stated Peter Mertens.

 

[klier]

You can say a lot of things about it, but a bad joke is one of the last...

Sunny said it well the other day. Driving will become like horseback driving is today. Recreation.

 

[Sunny]

Volvo Car Corporation takes the strain out of the daily commute with a technology that automatically follows the vehicle in front

I can already imagine one of those fake motivational posters with an image of a line of Volvos in a ditch.

 

[Zonda]

Calling the car transportation is like calling sex breeding.

Transportation will become driverless, but not the car.

 

[klier]

Transportation will become driverless, but not the car.

Oh?
I'm surprised because all evidence is pointing in exactly that direction.

 

[Wolfgang]

Continental tests vehicle’s ability to stop if pedestrian steps in front of car, even if driver does not respond.

Continental Adding Mexican Radar Plant

ALZENAU, Germany – Continental already operates four automotive electronics plants in Mexico and is adding a fifth to produce short-range radar sensors to enhance vehicle and pedestrian safety beginning in 2014, an executive says at a media event here.

Short-range radar (24 GHz) is merely one piece in the German supplier’s product portfolio dedicated to Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, an emerging suite of technologies that includes cameras, radar and infrared lidar sensing that enables adaptive cruise control, pedestrian protection, forward collision warning, blind-spot detection, lane-change assist and autonomous emergency braking (AEB).

The location of the new plant in Mexico will be decided in coming weeks, and it is possible the facility will be co-located at one of the supplier’s current electronics plants in Cuautla, Guadalajara, Nogales or Tlaquepaque, Executive Vice President Friedrich Angerbauer tells WardsAuto.

At least five auto makers will source short-range radar sensors from the facility, and volume will quickly surpass 1 million units annually, says Angerbauer, who leads the ADAS business unit for Continental’s Chassis & Safety division.

The supplier’s sole source for the sensors is a factory in Ingolstadt, Germany, currently running at full capacity. The Ingolstadt facility launched the second-generation short-range radar sensor within the past year and is ramping up output. The new Mexican plant will produce the second-generation sensor, he says.

Continental is investing heavily in these systems because auto makers and governments want to eliminate traffic fatalities, and research is finding many of the active-safety technologies effective in reducing or avoiding collisions.

BASt, the German Federal Highway Research Institute, says 70% of all serious accidents potentially could be avoided by driver-assistance systems.

Continental claims the No.1 market position in this ADAS segment, which is expected to expand 40% within five years. The European New Car Assessment Program, which will roll out revised crash rating standards by 2016, is driving much of the growth.

Looking further into the future, the ultimate success or failure of fully autonomous vehicles will hinge on the reliability and performance of these systems.

But even before vehicles can drive themselves, significant research is focusing on systems currently in limited production. Euro NCAP finds premium brands such as Volvo, Infiniti and Mercedes have the best levels of standard AEB fitment, while Jaguar, Range Rover, Audi and Lexus offer it as optional.

AEB helps avoid crashes or mitigates their severity by using forward-looking radar, lidar or video systems to scan the road ahead, warn the driver and apply the brakes independently if the driver does not respond quickly enough.

The technology is not restricted to high-end vehicles. In Europe, the Mazda CX-5, FordFocus and Honda Civic offer the systems as standard or optional, but not in the U.S. The VW Up! small car, not yet available in the U.S., also makes emergency braking available in Europe.

Real-world performance data from Euro NCAP suggests AEB systems can reduce accidents up to 27%, and yet the device is unavailable on 79% of new cars sold in Europe.

Continental claims to have been first to market with several advanced safety systems, including radar-based ACC and blind-spot detection.

In 2008, Continental began supplying short-range lidar as standard for Volvo’s emergency brake-assist system, intended to prevent low-speed accidents in city driving. European research shows 75% of crashes occur at vehicle speeds less than 20 mph (32 km/h).

Insurance companies endorse AEB because it has been proven to reduce claims.

U.K.-based Thatcham Research, which is funded by British insurance companies and conducts crash tests as part of Euro NCAP, predicts the number of personal-injury and damage claims will fall by 800,000 by 2018 if AEB continues a steady rollout in new vehicles.

“Real-world data suggests AEB is working,” Matthew Avery, head of research at Thatcham, says in a keynote presentation at the Continental event here.

In an awkward moment, in a room full of Continental executives and media, Avery says another technology from the supplier, lane-departure warning, is not helping to reduce accidents. As a result, customers who buy vehicles with the technology are not getting insurance discounts, he says.

But U.K. customers who purchase Volvos with AEB are eligible for insurance discounts of up to 15%, Avery adds. He also praises the new camera-based EyeSight AEB system appearing on the Subaru Outback and says buyers can receive insurance discounts of up to 24%.

Subaru developed the EyeSight system internally, with advanced stereo cameras placed on either side of the rear-view mirror behind the windshield.

Continental says it also has developed a stereo camera system for AEB functionality and that production will begin by year’s end. tmurphy@wardsauto.com

http://wardsauto.com/vehicles-amp-technology/continental-adding-mexican-radar-plant

 

[Wolfgang]

Bosch introduces compact stereo camera.

Two eyes for binocular vision
Bosch stereo video camera enhances comfort and safety
Driver assistance systems make driving easier

• Technical basis for automatic emergency braking and construction site assistant
• Particularly compact stereo-camera platform
• Rapid 3D measurements provide accurate feedback on object distances and sizes
• Comprehensive Bosch expertise in image processing and safety systems

We need two eyes to see the world in binocular vision, the capacity that enables us to calculate object sizes and distances and perceive longitudinal motion. Bosch engineers have now succeeded in using a new stereo video camera to give driver assistance systems the same capability. “Stereo technology opens up new potential for video-based safety systems,” says Gerhard Steiger, president of the Bosch Chassis Systems Control division. Thanks to its binocular vision, it can measure distances to other objects using the video signal alone. On the basis of this, Bosch is developing functions that can independently take evasive action or steer the vehicle through a construction site. And of course these will work in conjunction with existing assistance functions such as ACC adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking.

The new Bosch video camera supplies data for many different tasks. The information it provides can significantly reduce both the risk and the consequences of collisions with vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists at speeds of up to 80 kilometers per hour. It thus offers the ideal basis for improving safety in urban traffic. Gerhard Steiger says: “A mono video camera requires extensive training before it can distinguish between different types of objects, such as pedestrians and cars, in its image field. In contrast, a stereo video camera can measure and detect all the obstacles based only on their movement and distance.” As a result, the stereo camera data alone can be used to trigger an automatic emergency braking process. If an accident cannot be prevented, the speed of impact and thus the severity of the accident can at least be minimized – and by priming the passenger restraint system, airbags and seat belt pretensioners can be deployed in the optimum way.

Automatic emergency braking must offer reliable and consistent performance. To quote Steiger: “You need to have proper safeguards in place to reliably trigger this kind of function, for example by combining video and radar sensors or employing the second eye of a stereo video camera.” The stereo system can of course also perform all the tasks typically associated with a mono video camera, such as recognizing traffic signs, helping drivers to stay in their lane, and automatically adjusting a vehicle's headlights to take account of vehicles in front and oncoming traffic.

Probably the smallest vehicle stereo-camera system in the market

By integrating the control unit for image processing and function control directly in the camera housing, the Bosch engineers have created a system that is impressively compact. With a 12-centimeter baseline distance, that is the distance between the optical axes of the lenses, the Bosch stereo camera may well be the smallest system of its kind currently available in the field of automotive solutions. As a result, it is particularly simple for automobile manufacturers to integrate into their vehicles. Each of the two CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) image sensors has a resolution of 1.2 megapixels. Thanks to its high-quality lens system, the camera is able to capture an angle of view of 25 degrees vertically and +/-25 degrees horizontally, and offers a 3D measurement range in excess of 50 meters. The highly light-sensitive image sensors are capable of processing very high contrasts and cover the full spectrum of light visible to the human eye.

Safety requirements are increasing

Also helping driver assistance systems gain market penetration are, on one hand, the European Commission's ever-stricter safety standards, and on the other, the consumer protection organization EuroNCAP (European New Car Assessment Program). Experts anticipate that from 2014, in order to receive the organization's highest rating of five stars, new vehicle models will need to be equipped with a significant proportion of driver assistance systems. Of these, automatic emergency braking is of particular importance. Steiger sums up the system's advantages: “Our new stereo camera with its integrated controller combines the functions of mono cameras with the benefits of stereo technology in a single unit. It therefore helps fulfill today's heightened safety and comfort requirements in a compact and cost-effective way.” Source: Bosch

 

[Centurion]

Driver-less cars are an amazing idea but unfortunately technology is only as good as the people behind it and we human are not perfect. There are a lot of legal barriers to legalizing driverless cars and that is accountability in the event of an accident.

Public roads are unpredictable and so are owners of cars. Some will skip maintenance and possibly damage their car ever now and then while parking, not to mention people possibly vandalizing it. All these unfortunates can easily compromise a "perfect" system, and when an accident happens, who is responsible? The driver or the people who engineered the system?

 

[Wolfgang]

An update.

With its six eyes (cameras) and six ears (radar sensors), the new Mercedes S class can see and hear enough to drive itself at speeds up to 60kph (37mph). Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche says the S class “marks the start of the era of partially autonomous driving.”


Who's at the wheel?
Bosch, Daimler, BMW executives see opportunities for self-driving cars

European automotive executives are bullish about the future of automated driving but they say it will take time for regulations to catch up with technology. They also say that no one wants to remove the fun of being behind the wheel.

Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche stressed the second point during the world premiere of the Mercedes-Benz S class in May. He said the automaker's flagship sedan "marks the start of the era of partially autonomous driving." With its six "eyes" (cameras) and six "ears" (radar sensors), the S class can see and hear enough to drive itself at speeds up to 60kph (37mph), Zetsche said.

According to the CEO, the ultimate goal is to remove the boring parts of driving but keep the fun. "We will never automate the cool part of driving … the uncool part, though, we can do without," he said during the car's launch.

Wolf-Henning Scheider, who oversees Robert Bosch's chassis systems unit, agrees with Zetsche's assessment. "There are many situations where you have real fun driving and you want to drive. But there are also driving situations where you think you could use this time for other topics," he said in an interview. "And if you take day-to-day commuting and traffic jam situations, we are convinced there is a market for automated driving functions."

Although many of the pieces to achieve automated driving such as sensors that can control braking, steering, speed and the distance between vehicles are in place in models like the S class, BMW 7 series and Volvo XC60, Scheider says self-driving cars will not be a reality until they are proved "100 percent safe 100 percent of the time."

He said to have fully automatic driving, the car needs redundant sensors. "We need at least two sensors to measure the same thing and then check between them. And there is certainly still some development necessary to have both in place; they are not ready."

Another obstacle to overcome is making sure the system works flawlessly even when rain, snow or other elements reduce the car's ability to see and hear. Scheider said that by using cloud computing, car-to-car infrastructure and different sensor principles, it is possible to overcome the hurdles created by weather and other factors. "But there are many other questions to be answered to bring a fully automatic driving car on the road," he added.

Regulatory matter

BMW sales boss Ian Robertson said that the technology available today is "more than capable" to drive the car in many situations but regulation requires that drivers keep their hands on the wheel. "We're in phase where technology has overtaken regulation, and the question is how quickly do the two align," he said in an interview.

Government regulators are being cautious. A 2011 EU study on autonomous driving concluded that a number of key questions still need to be answered, such as:

• What effect does higher automation in the vehicle have on the driver?
• How to improve the driver interface without over loading them with information?
• How to achieve standardization for automated vehicle control and interface design without legislation?
• How to improve driver training for automated systems?
• Should the EU continue to allow a gradual migration of skill or introduce some form of universal training?
• How to integrate automated vehicles with other road users?
• Will other road users also require training?

5 years away?

Like their counterparts in the EU, regulators in the United States believe that self-driving cars could have huge benefits for drivers in the long run, but they should remain in the experimental phase for now. In the United States, Nevada, California and Florida have all passed laws allowing car companies such as Toyota and Audi to test self-driving cars on public roads. Several other states are considering following suit. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it "has considerable concerns" about certain rules being drafted by states, and "does not recommend at this time that states permit operation of self-driving vehicles for purposes other than testing."

The stance suggests that regulators will not allow these cars to be widely used within the next few years, even though some developers -- such as the tech giant Google Inc., which is also working on the technology -- have suggested that fully self-driving cars may be as little as five years away from the market.

Read more: http://www.autonews.com/article/20130705/ANE/307059994#ixzz2YAXMpQgA

 

[Human]

Given I don't get run over by some person who does not belong behind the wheel and also if I reach old age, say +/- 75.
That gives the industry, legislation and infrastructure 38 years to simplify and employ driverless cars.
Thus I won't care by then what cars are on the road nor who drives them or not. In short then, I don't care. For now I LOVE driving, so let me

 

[Cashmere]

It's just a matter of time but it will definitely happen. I can foresee myself sitting by the fireplace someday, reciting tales to my grand children of "how difficult life was in our time" and that we actually had to drive cars on our own and shift through gears - something which the forthcoming generation will probably take for granted, the very same way we take certain things for granted due to their ubiquity.

I still reckon that Google is in the driver's seat as far as autonomous driving is concerned. There is simply no company in the world that can match google's mapping infrastructure and it will be the company with the most accurate mapping data that will be able to roll out this service on a global scale.

 

[bmwownage]

I really don't see it happening any time soon. Using sensors is dangerous, they are easy to fail, easy to be affected by noise, and it may not judge properly. Even with trains, they just follow the track and supposedly they could be fully automated, even more reliably and safely with radio signals, but how many fully automated railways are there in the world? The dense ones are never fully automated even though they could be fully automated, reason being there are too many circumstances that human judgement is far superior, and computer judgement is far too often wrong. I would expect cars being able to communicate with each other with some signals before we talk about automatically driven cars.

 

[Wolfgang]

Since Google invested in Uber recently, might they become driverless?

https://www.uber.com/drivers
Analyzing Google's Massive Investment In Uber

 

[Cocojamrouge]

driverless cars are unimaginable

 

[GTA45E]

Google:

Driverless cars are mastering city streets!


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Google says its self-driving cars are motoring along: they can navigate freeways comfortably, albeit with a driver ready to take control. But city driving — with its obstacle course of stray walkers, bicyclists and blind corners — has been a far greater challenge for the cars' computers.
In a blog entry posted Monday, the project's leader said test cars now can handle thousands of urban situations that would have stumped them a year or two ago.
"We're growing more optimistic that we're heading toward an achievable goal — a vehicle that operates fully without human intervention," project director Chris Urmson wrote.
Urmson's post was the company's first official update since 2012 on progress toward a driverless car, a project within the company's secretive Google X lab.
The company has said its goal is to get the technology to the public by 2017. In initial iterations, human drivers would be expected to take control if the computer fails. The promise is that, eventually, there would be no need for a driver. Passengers could read, daydream, even sleep — or work — while the car drives.
Google maintains that computers will one day drive far more safely than humans, and part of the company's pitch is that robot cars can substantially reduce traffic fatalities.
The basics already are in place. The task for Google — and traditional carmakers, which also are testing driverless cars — is perfecting technology strapped onto its fleet of about two dozen Lexus RX450H SUVs.
Sensors including radar and lasers create 3D maps of a self-driving car's surroundings in real time, while Google's software sorts objects into four categories: moving vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and static things such as signs, curbs and parked cars.
Initially, those plots were fairly crude. A gaggle of pedestrians on a street corner registered as a single person. Now, the technology can distinguish individuals, according to Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne, as well as solve other riddles such as construction zones and the likely movements of people riding bicycles.
To deal with cyclists, engineers initially programmed the software to look for hand gestures that indicate an upcoming turn. Then they realized that most cyclists don't use standard gestures — and still others weave down a road the wrong way.
So engineers have taught the software to predict the behavior of cyclists based on thousands of encounters during the 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) or so the cars have driven autonomously on city streets, Hohne said. The software projects a cyclist's likely movements and plots the car's path accordingly — then reacts if something unexpected happens.
"A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area," Urmson wrote.
Before recent breakthroughs, Google had contemplated mapping all the world's stop signs. Now the technology can read stop signs, including those held in the hands of school crossing guards, Hohne said.
While the car knows to stop, just when to start again is still a challenge, partly because the cars are programmed to drive defensively. At a four-way stop, Google's cars have been known to wait in place as people driving in other directions edge out into the intersection — or roll through.
The cars still need work on other predictably common tasks. Among them, understanding the gestures that drivers give one another to signal it's OK to merge or change lanes, turning right on red and driving in rain or fog (which requires more sophisticated sensors).
And when will these and other problems be solved?
"You can count on one hand the number of years until people, ordinary people, can experience this," company co-founder Sergey Brin said in September 2012. He made the remarks at a ceremony where California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation legalizing the cars on public roads in the state.
To date, Google's cars have gone about 700,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) in self-driving mode, the vast majority on freeways, the company said.
California's Department of Motor Vehicles is in the process of writing regulations to implement that law. Nevada, Florida, Michigan and Washington, D.C., also have written driverless car laws.
Google has not said how it plans to market the technology. Options include collaborating with major carmakers or giving away the software, as the company did with its Android operating system. While Google has the balance sheet to invest in making cars, that likelihood is remote.
Traditional automakers also are developing driverless cars. Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said he hopes to deliver a model to the public by 2020.

----->> Google: Driverless cars are mastering city streets

A little late on this post, busy schedule.

 

[See Ya]

In a way, some cars have already been "driverless" when you consider how removed the driver is from the driving experience.

As for Volvo Car Corporation takes the strain out of the daily commute with a technology that automatically follows the vehicle in front, I already have to do that due to the average driver not knowing what the left lane is for, at least here in North America. They just sit there dreaming, so I have to follow.

 

[Cashmere]

The benefits of driverless cars to society.

 

[Sunny]

California's new self-driving car regulations prohibit falling asleep at the wheel

 

[chonkoa]

Considering all the variables involve and how heavily reliant this technology is GPS system, I have serious doubts.

• I wonder if satellite systems are immune to solar activity- not that I know of, all electronic systems will forever be subject the power of solar activity.
• Last I checked, there are still GPS black zones
  
• People- I wonder if you can mathematically model human stupidity.
• Sensors have a shelf life, and even their operational windows is subject to the elements.

 

[Wolfgang]

^ Somehow reminds me of these?

Masdar on Twitter

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