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Transcript of AUVSI's Unmanned Systems Mission Critical: Intelligent Transportation
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 i
VOLUME1 NO.1 • SPR ING2011 • AUVSI • 2700 Sou th Qu in cy S t ree t , Su i t e 400 , A r l i ng ton , VA 22206 , USA
Insidethisissue:
SmartTransportation
DOT’s connectedvehicle work
Europe’s Sartre road trains
BlindDriverChallenge
24-25 MAY 2011WWW.AUVSI.ORG/T3I
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Join us as leaders from the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation and industry share
the latest developments in intelligent vehicle technology.
Learn how collaboration among key interests can advance concepts leading to saving lives on the battlefield and on the nation’s highways.
Network with government officials and industry leaders.
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and presentations, networking events and more than
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Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 3
6 ESSENTIALCOMPONENTS New products and technology
9 Q&A A leading expert talks transportation
VOLUME1 NO.1 • SPR ING2011
AMAZINGRACEA turn left is a step in the right direction for visually impaired drivers. The National Federation of the Blind sponsored ademonstration of technology that lets blind people drive.
Page13
21 STATEOFTHEART Who’s doing what, where
31 FUTUREJOBS Making the industry work
OntheCover:A blind driver laps the track at DaytonaInternational Speedway thanks to robotictechnology. Photo courtesy the NationalFederation of the Blind.
CONTENTS
Using this Ford Escape, roboticized with TORC Technology’s ByWire XGV system, and tactile interfaces developed by Virginia Tech, a blind man successfully drove a lap at the Daytona International Speedway.
4 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Mission Critical is published four times a year as an official publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Contents of the articles are the sole opinions of the authors and do not necessarily express the policies or opinion of the publisher, editor, AUVSI or any entity of the U.S. government. Materials may not be reproduced without writ-ten permission. All advertising will be subject to publisher’s approval and advertisers will agree to indemnify and relieve publisher of loss or claims resulting from advertising contents. Annual subscription and back issue/reprint requests may be addressed to AUVSI. Mission Critical is provided with AUVSI membership.
CARTALkImagine your car is talking about you. Don’t worry, it’s saying nice things. It’s trying to save you money, time and keep you from having an accident.
39 POPCULTURECORNER The entertainment world’s view
41 TECHNOLOGYGAP What needs to be done
43 UNCANNYVALLEY Concerns about new technology
44 TESTING,TESTING Peek at ongoing research
45 TIMELINE Tracing technology
47 ENDUSERS The people moving the technology
Page23
Page33
AdvertiserIndexInsitu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
TORC Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
ROADTRAINSPOTTINGHell is driving with other people. A technology consortium in Europe is trying to change that with its Sartre program.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 5
Editorial
VicePresidentofPublications andCommunications,Editor
Brett [email protected]
ManagingEditorDanielle Lucey
AssociateEditorStephanie [email protected]
ContributingWriterMagnus Bennett
AdvertisingSeniorAdvertising
andMarketingManagerLisa Fick
[email protected]+1 571 255 7779
A publication of
PresidentandCEOMichael Toscano
ExecutiveVicePresidentGretchen West
AUVSIHeadquarters2700 South Quincy Street, Suite 400
Arlington, VA 22206 USA+1 703 845 9671
Welcome to the f irst issue of
Mission Critical.
It looks a little different from the
Unmanned Systems magazines you may
be used to seeing. For one thing, it’s first
and foremost an electronic publication.
This means it can be animated on the web,
with pages that turn like real pages and
embedded links that can take you straight
from the page to the web to get more in-
formation.
Mission Critical will be published quar-
terly on the web and will be free to AUVSI
members. Each issue will tackle a specific
theme and cover it in depth with feature
stories, graphics and news departments
all aimed at one specific area relating to
unmanned systems, robotics technologies
and their use. This issue is devoted to in-
telligent transportation.
The accident and death toll from auto-
mobiles around the world is staggering,
as is the amount of fuel wasted sitting in
traffic, not to mention the pollution that
results. This is where unmanned systems
technology can come into play. It can
make cars safer, more efficient and even
more fun to use.
How do we get there? AUVSI and the
National Defense Industrial Association
are helping to facilitate the dual use and
technology transfer of unmanned ground
robotics technology between the U.S.
Department of Defense, Department of
Transportation, NASA and the civil and
commercial markets. This is called the
Transportation Technology Transfer Ini-
tiative, or T3I, and you’ll read more about
it in the pages to follow. It’s intended to
help lead to vehicles that can communicate
with each other and with the environment
around them to make transportation safer
and more efficient.
Part of this effort is aimed at building pub-
lic acceptance of the technology. People are
often concerned about new technologies
until they see what can be accomplished
with them.
For instance, the first modern elevators
were introduced in the 1800s. To help
quell safety concerns, Elisha Otis dem-
onstrated one in 1852 that had a braking
system that would hold it up even if the
cable broke. Electric elevators came into
use later in the century and led to a new
revolution, that of skyscrapers, buildings
that wouldn’t be possible without them.
Throughout most of these years, elevators
had human operators. Over time, however,
that need faded. Now, having a human op-
erator in an elevator is unusual. They have
proven their safety and reliability, and
people accept them as a daily part of life.
Cell phones are another example of how
technology can take off and change our
lives. The first commercial cell phone went
on sale in the early 1980s and was the
size of a brick. Now phones are tiny and
everywhere: just in the last two decades,
the number of mobile phone subscrip-
tions jumped from a little over 12 million
to more than 4.6 billion, connecting the
world in a way never seen — or more ac-
curately — heard of before.
Future issues of Mission Critical will look
at the areas of first responders, medical
and home robotics, and exploration, in-
cluding by oil and gas. We hope you will
join us for the journey.
President’s messageMichaelToscano
6 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Essential Components
DARPA isn’t the only one
getting into the flying au-
tonomous car game. Three
Chinese researchers from
the Department of Indus-
trial Design at the School of
Mechanical & Automotive
Engineering at South China
University of Technology
came up with the YEE car
concept, which also has a fly-
ing mode, as a way for future
city dwellers to get around.
“What we design is a car
easy to operate, which
precisely satisfies the high-
efficiency of the rapid pace
of life; the intimate design
and the use of new energy
best embodies the contest
theme: the harmonious
coexistence of ‘people-car-
nature,’” says Lai Zexin, one
of the designers.
The design, which won the
Gold Award of Best Creative
Future at the First Interna-
tional Concept Car Design
Contest held in Beijing, fea-
tures propellers fixed into
the back wheels, looking a
lot like spokes, and would be
solar charged.
The concept depends on
building pocket airports.
These small areas, about the
size of two football fields,
would service these two- to
four-seater flying SUVs.
The designers have the lofty
goal of flying by 2015. The YEE unmanned flying car concept, which aims to fly by 2015. Photo courtesy South China University of Technology.
‘Roads?…Wedon’tneedroads’
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 7
Third time’s the charm: The Volvo C30 Electric is equipped with three climate systems. One supplies the passengers with heating or cooling, one cools or heats the battery pack and one cools the electric motor and power electronics. Photo courtesy Volvo.
keepingpassengers,andbatteries,warm inSwedenVolvo is using an innova-
tive heating method to keep
passengers in its new C30
Electric vehicle toasty warm
without frying the car’s bat-
tery driving range.
The C30 Electric has three climate sys-
tems: One heats or cools the passengers,
one heats or cools the battery pack — key
on an electric vehicle — and one cools
the electric motor and vehicle electronics.
The system for the passengers uses a bio-
ethanol powered heater that keeps pas-
sengers comfortable in winter but doesn’t
compromise driving range. It carries up to
14.5 liters of bio-ethanol.
For shorter trips, the battery pack itself can
be used to keep the car’s interior warm.
“The driver can program and control the
climate unit to suit the trip,” says Lennart
Stegland, director of Volvo Cars’ Special
Vehicles. “Ethanol is the default mode that
is used when the battery capacity is need-
ed for driving [to] extend mobility to its
maximum. However, on shorter distances,
electricity can be used to power the cli-
mate system.”
Volvo has been subjecting the C30 Electric
to rough winter conditions, making sure
it runs smoothly in temperatures as low
as minus 20 degrees Celsius, where that
bio-ethanol heater would definitely come
in handy.
ThePinnacleofcombustionengineefficiencyWhile much attention is being paid to
hybrid or all-electric vehicles, Silicon Val-
ley company Pinnacle Engines says inter-
nal combustion isn’t going away but can
be made better.
Pinnacle Engines plans to commercialize
a “breakthrough, ultra-efficient engine”
and market it worldwide, backed partly by
venture capital — it has raised $13.5 mil-
lion so far. The company plans to market
the engine through a licensing agreement
with an Asian vehicle original equipment
manufacturer that it hasn’t yet named.
The engine delivers 30 to 50 percent bet-
ter fuel economy without driving up cost
significantly, the company says. It uses
the Cleeves Cycle, developed by company
founder Monty Cleeves, which can alter
the combustion depending on conditions.
“This engine technology provides the
fuel economy and CO2 emissions of a hy-
brid at a price that the whole world can
afford,” Cleeves says.
Look for the engines under a vehicle hood
near you starting in early 2013.
High-techvaletcomestoChicagoA new Chicago garage will use robotic
technology to park cars, meaning valets
are less likely to go tearing around in your
Ferrari while you’re at the ballgame.
The Green Park Eco Garage, a fully au-
tomated parking structure that can hold
more than 100 vehicles, is slated to open in
the city’s Bucktown district by the end of
2011. The garage will use a robotic system
that doubles parking capacity compared
to a traditional parking structure.
The structure of the garage itself will
also help the city’s efforts to go green:
Developers are using recycled materials,
energy-efficient lighting and a “green”
rainwater-collecting roof to construct the
building in an eco-friendly manner. But
drivers will want to stay out of the garage
during the city’s cold winters; since only
cars will go into the garage, the developer
is leaving the interior completely unheat-
ed.
Watch a video of the sys-tem in action by scanning this barcode with your smartphone.
8 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
EssentialComponents— continued from page 7
Rethinkpossible:BMWsnext inslewofcarstogotelecomBMW is taking hands free to a whole new
level — the luxury automaker recently
teamed up with telecommunications
giant AT&T to create “an enhanced suite
of safety and infotainment services” that
will be available on future BMW models.
This kind of connectivity is advanced but
stands on the shoulders of a technology
suite BMWs already offer — BMW Assist,
which lets drivers access emergency and
concierge call services, gives them traffic
and weather information, news and fuel
prices.
Exactly what these “enhanced” services
are remains a mystery, but other always-
connected cars to recently hit the market
might hint at future BMW capabilities.
The Chevy Volt uses an OnStar app, avail-
able on Android, Blackberry and iPhone
to monitor its charging status and give
it a deadline for when you need the car’s
charge to be full. The app also starts the
car, locks or unlocks it and — in a move
that will make pocket dialing infuriate the
entire neighborhood — honk the horn.
The European model of the Nissan Leaf
uses wireless company Telenor Connexion
that allows a smartphone or even a PC to
access the car. Both systems help alleviate
a large issue with electric cars: their slow-
to-respond A/C and heating systems. Now
both can be started remotely.
CEO of Telenor Connexion Per Simonsen
says the company has agreements in place
with Volvo, Scania and Daimler for similar
systems.
Both the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, frontrunners of electric car technology, already offer remote access to the vehicles through smart phone apps. Photo courtesy Nissan.
Vision ConnectedDrive is only a BMW concept car, debuted at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, but imagines out con-nected vehicle technology to include full Internet access, along with many driver assist functions. Photo courtesy BMW.
RobotcarconnectsgamersanddriversA popular piece of gaming technology is
hitting the road.
Researchers at the University of Bundes-
wehr Munich in Germany have used the
Microsoft Kinect controller as a sensor in
a robotic car. The 1:10 scale vehicle has
the Kinect mounted at the front with a
Microsoft notebook riding on the back.
The vehicle uses a simplified version of the
software used by the university’s MuCar-3
from the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge.
Researchers now plan to install an accurate
odometer in the vehicle.
Watch a video of the robotic car by scanning this barcode with your smartphone.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 9
Q & a
Q: You have talked about the need toobtainautomotivelevelsofreliabilityinroboticsystems.Whatisthebestwaytoaccomplishthat?
A: Integration and testing, I should say
safe testing, and really testing to failure.
That’s a standard, traditional automotive
approach, testing to failure, doing root
cause analysis and going back and prov-
ing it and then re-implementing it and re-
integrating it into the platform.
Q: TARDEC has worked for years onrobotic convoy technologies aimedat reducing thenumberofpeopleneeded tologistics resupply.What’s thestatusof thatwork,includingontheConvoyActiveSafetyTechnology(CAST)effort?
A: The CAST program has been in
existence about four years. We’ve had
some LOE, limited objective experiments,
around the United States where we were
specifically doing the data collection, and
more from the standpoint of a couple of
focus control groups. So we would have
drivers who would be doing a task, and
they were tasked like, we want to do long
haul, so just driving in a repetitive, boring,
loop for hours on end and then still being
able to do some cognitive tasks, being able
to report out, recognize objects on the side
of the road, these kind of things, versus a
group that had the capability to actually
implement the leader-following capabil-
ity into the vehicle and then checking the
same thing. And we’ve seen significant, sig-
nificant increases in the ability to keep the
attention and the focus on the road and
be able to take the gaze from road driving
and actually be able to start recognizing
things or objects of interest on the sides of
the road. So definitely ... in benign envi-
ronments, where you do get some of the
worst drowsy driver, highway hypnosis-
type maladies with the driver, this works.
It certainly does work.
Now we’re trying to consistently drive the
costs per unit down, and we’ve got it down
to something like $20,000-30,000, but
even that’s too expensive. But we know we
can do this, and we’ve done some night
ops, we’ve done multiple trains, … we’re
looking at Jeeps, we’re looking at M113s,
so we’re looking at how we can put those
together. It’s still almost exclusively a driv-
er in the driver’s seat, although we do have
the capability to operate one vehicle from
another if we need to.
Q: Inthenearterm,doyouforeseethistechnology aimed more at assistingdrivers thangetting themoutof thevehiclecompletely?
A: I think so. There’s lots of reasons for
that. As much as I understand the technol-
ogy and am confident in the technology,
you can’t have a 100 percent reliable sys-
tem. But I still think the best way to really
move this forward is incrementally, and
incrementally in all aspects, not just tech-
nology but even the concept of operations.
I think incrementally, I don’t want to do a
wholesale change where I’m taking opera-
tors totally out of the vehicles. Let’s leave
them in the vehicles, but now let’s provide
this like a driver’s aid, a driver’s assist. Let’s
get some confidence in the technology,
some real trust in it, and let’s get people so
used to it that we can declare success when
they complain about a vehicle that doesn’t
have it.
Q: When do you think this technologywillbeusedinthefield?
A: I would imagine that we’re going to
look at some serious testing of this prob-
ably in theater, whether it’s in Iraq or Af-
ghanistan, but I imagine we’ll see some
limited testing on this probably within
the next two years if not sooner. I know
there are some talks about it going out and
being tested, again in a safe manner. Me
personally, I would like to see it happen
faster. I think the technology exists now,
and it’s one of the programs that I’d like
to see move forward where we start testing
these again in some kind of safe manner
for actually CONUS military, so we have
OCONUS, the overseas, and CONUS, the
continental United States.
Q: Are you getting any resistance frompeople in the military to this tech-nology?
A: I think they like it. We really have to
flesh it out because … it’s the proverbial,
‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at
a time.’ You look at all the things this tech-
nology could do, and you’ve just got to fo-
cus on one thing. So I don’t think anybody
is necessarily resisting it, it’s just a matter
of let’s get a truly focused plan, lay this out
as strategy, so to speak, on how this par-
ticular convoying could be realized and
moved out.
What I’m talking about is potentially im-
plementing these on military bases, so now
are we not only talking about the soldier,
but we’re talking about the military family
and the military community. We’re look-
ing at, can we expose a whole different seg-
ment of the population ... and in order to
Dr. James Overholt is director of the Joint Center for Robotics at U.S. Army Research and Development Com-mand (RDECOM)-Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC). He has worked with TARDEC for more that 25 years. He recently also completed an eight-month detail assignment as the systems and control program manager at the Army Research Office in Durham, N.C. Mission Critical caught up with him at the recent annual symposium sponsored by AUVSI’s Pathfinder Chapter in Huntsville, Ala.
10 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Q&A— continued from page 9
get that kind of permission we’re going to
have to be able to show those people that
make the decisions that, OK, these guys are
going to run these safely, and you’re always
kind of balancing that with you don’t want
to have something so safe that you won’t
be able to push the boundaries. So it re-
ally is an interesting balancing act between
total safety and being able to push out on
the abilities of intelligent technologies be-
ing integrated in.
Q: You’re talking about ARIBO, whichwouldtestvariousroboticsystemsonmilitarybases?
A: It’s a notion of, let’s set up a living
laboratory — again, safe — where we
test intelligent vehicles on our roads, do-
ing some real simple functions, putting
hours and miles on these vehicles to un-
derstand when they work, when they don’t
work. When they do work, test to failure,
and when they don’t work, we bring that
information back, we work with the inte-
grators and providers ... and say, ‘OK, let’s
make it better.’ And then get it right back
out there and test it again. So the notion
is, let’s do robots in our buildings, let’s do
robots on our roads and let’s do robots
on our perimeters for security. It makes a
lot of sense to be able to do that. It’s just
a matter of getting the program fired up,
and I think there are a lot of long-term
benefits that we could realize from doing
that activity.
Q: You’reworkingonconvoytechnology,andEuropeandJapanareworkingon“platooning”efforts,wherethere isa lead,human-drivenvehiclethatcancontrolastringofcarsbehind it.Doyouthinkplatooning isgoingtobethewaythatsomeofthistechnol-ogyfirstgetsoutontotheroad?
A: I think so. … Is there real gain in the
sort term and the long term? My gut feel-
ing is there probably will be, but I think
the numbers will hopefully prove that
out. But I can see that happening here in a
short period of time.
Japan is really looking at it as a national
effort. Cutting down on CO2 emission is
really significant. There are lots of differ-
ent ways of doing it but as it turns out, it
comes down to if you can start reducing
fuel consumption, you cut down on CO2
emissions. … If they [the Japanese] could
integrate those technologies into these ro-
botic convoys, they could realize as much
as a 10 percent CO2 reduction. So it’s real-
ly remarkable technology that’s wide rang-
ing — it’s safer, it’s potentially greener and
it allows us to do a lot more functionality
with the vehicles.
Q: Whereareweintermsoftechnology,say specifically regarding convoyingorplatooning?
A: We are pretty good at doing line of
sight. From an autonomy standpoint,
and there’s a lot of different people doing
things, there’s a wide range, and it’s a dif-
ficult problem to look at ... but I can say
with a good deal of confidence that we’re
pretty good at operating in benign envi-
ronments without a lot of people around
on unstructured roadways. We can do
that. We’re so good at it because also we’re
far enough away from humans that we
don’t run necessarily into the safety issues.
So from an autonomy standpoint, there
are certain realms and regions we’re really
good at. We have to move out in other ar-
eas.
Q: What connection do you have withthe automotive industry in terms ofswappingideasorsystems?
A: The Detroit auto industry has fallen
on hard times the last few years. Our lab at
TARDEC, in some ways, reaped the benefit
of it. We hired some amazing folks from
the automotive industry. One of the things
that they brought to the table was a totally
different perspective on military robotics.
You’re so engaged in this area for so many
years, it is great to get a refreshing look at it,
so we have some great people who under-
stand the tech from their end, and they’ve
been introducing me more and more, and
introducing our group within the Army, to
what’s going on in the auto industry and
the tiered suppliers especially, in robust
cheap componentry, in what they’re doing
in terms of vehicle-vehicle architectures.
Q: Whatwilltheworld’sroadslooklikeinthefuture,say2050?
A: I don’t know if you saw ‘Minority Re-
port,’ I don’t think we’ll be at that point
where cars are going 150 miles per hour,
but … there are some regulatory issues
happening that in my opinion are seminal
in the field.
I think in 2012, at some point in 2012, all
cars sold in the United States under 10,000
pounds gross vehicle weight will have an
electronic stability package on them. And
that to me is a seminal moment. It means
the technology has matured to such a level
that there is trust in it. The technology is
there that now will take some of the so-to-
speak driving functions out of the hands
of the users, particularly in emergency
situations. I could see us having [a] ve-
hicle system, especially in populated areas,
where you’ll have anti-collision. ... I think
you’ll see a rebirth, in some sense, of the
urban areas that are somewhat catalyzed
by what’s going on in intelligent electron-
ics, software, into vehicles. I think it will
start bringing people more into the cities.
Now from the military standpoint … cer-
tainly the amount of intelligence we’re
going to see in these vehicles is going to
increase. I think we will see some level of
autonomy. I think you will see weaponry
on vehicles. I think that is a coming thing
that we as a military community have to
grapple with. … I think you’re going to
see in a very short time period the ability
to have a few controllers, multiple robots.
And I think that kind of swarming, team-
ing behavior between robotic entities is
really an exciting and intriguing area that
could be a significant force multiplier for
the military in general.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 11
Amazingrace: blind, but now able to drive BYDANIELLELUCEY
For the first time in history, blind driver
is not an insult.”
Fesh from the driver’s seat, face still
flush, Mark Riccobono’s first words to the
press and attendees from the National Fed-
eration of the Blind brought laughs and a
room full of applause.
Riccobono had just turned what some
consider a joke into reality, becoming
the first blind driver to ever go around
the racetrack at Daytona International
Speedway.
A precursor to the Rolex 24 — a 24-hour
Grand-Am feat of driver endurance — the
Blind Driver Challenge was the brainchild
of the NFB, whose members have spent
more than a decade waiting for their goal
to be achieved.
You don’t need to see to appreciate racing
at Daytona. Huge wafts of gasoline and
burning rubber hang in the air each time
a car blasts by grandstands, which hold
the nearly 400 members of the NFB who
turned out from all over the country for
the event. And then there’s the noise: When
the speed of the cars out for the Rolex 24
race hit that wall in the crowd’s ears, Dop-
pler shifting from an impending roar to a
passing whiz, the speed and pure muscle
of what’s in front of them is evident.
For the NFB, the January event was about
proving what they’ve always known: You
don’t need to see to appreciate driving.
What members did need was a little help
and ingenuity from some friends in the
robotics community to make that pos-
sible. The NFB issued a call to action to
all American universities, and experts
Virginia Tech and TORC Technologies
answered. Using technology from the
DARPA Urban Challenge, TORC Tech-
nologies took its ByWire XGV roboti-
cized Ford Escape and coupled it with
Mark Riccobono becomes the first driver to loop the track at Daytona International Speedway. Photo courtesy NFB.
Base PlatformProblem Solved
Ethernet Interface
Full Support & Documentation
Intelligent Power Distribution
Proven Hybrid Platform
Integrated Safety System
6 kW Power Supply
request a free consultationto see if the ByWire XGV is the right
fit for your next robotics project
“...the obvious choice was TORC Technologies’ ByWire XGV solution.”
- UC Berkeley
540.443.9262torctech.com
Base Vehicle
Drive-by-Wire System
Power Options
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 13
BlindDriverChallenge— continued from page 11
Virginia Tech’s driver feedback inventions
to turned robotic autonomy into personal
autonomy, for the first time enabling blind
people to drive.
MarkLike most blind people, Riccobono never
imagined that he would be able to drive.
Riccobono, 34, has been legally blind,
meaning he only had 10 percent of nor-
mal vision, since he was 5 years old due
to a congenital eye condition. He contin-
ued to lose his vision as he got older and
was completely blind in his left eye by
age 13. Though he is still partially sighted
in his right eye, Riccobono says it’s only
colors and shapes.
“There was no prospect of being a driver;
there was no thought of being a driver. I
put the idea out of my head,” Riccobono
says of the year he turned 16, usually the
time when kids reach for the keys. He relies
on carpools to get to work and uses public
transportation to get his four-year-old son
Austin to daycare every morning.
The NFB got on Riccobono’s radar when
he attended the University of Wisconsin
Madison in the mid-1990s.
“I didn’t know any real tips or tricks or al-
ternative techniques that blind people use,”
says Riccobono. Unable to read Braille,
Riccobono says he was “really struggling”
when he came across NFB’s Madison af-
filiate. Interest piqued, he attended the
national convention that year in Anaheim,
Calif.
“I found a whole network of people that
were willing to challenge me to go beyond
where I thought I could,” he says. Ricco-
bono rose through the ranks, becoming
the Wisconsin location’s president from
1998 to 2003 before accepting the position
of executive director of research and train-
ing programs at NFB’s national headquar-
ters in Baltimore, Md.
NFB’s headquarters is fairly large, about
100 employees. Riccobono spends his days
interacting with members and coworkers,
and through the use of innovative technol-
ogies, his typical day is pretty standard.
He uses a standard PC with a screen-access
software, which reads what’s on his desk-
top out loud to him, that lets him inter-
act with email, the Internet and Microsoft
Word. He navigates a page using keyboard
commands instead of a mouse. He keeps
print documents on his desk, some in
Braille and some that his assistant reads to
him. Through a software that NFB helped
develop through a spinoff company, called
K-NFB Reader Mobile, Riccobono’s cell
phone is outfitted with a camera that can
read what it sees to him.
“Wherever I am, I can read using this tech-
nology,” he says. He can write hardcopy
notes in Braille through a slate and stylus
he carries with him.
For the last decade there have been rum-
blings inside the NFB of increasing the
autonomy of blind people in outside-of-
the-box ways. Putting a blind driver be-
hind the wheel of a car was first pitched in
2001 at an NFB national conference by the
organization’s president Marc Maurer.
“Eleven years ago, we started talking about
the blind driver,” said Maurer at the Day-
tona event to a crowd of NFB members,
worked up to fever pitch by a man they
clearly revere. “Building an automobile the
blind could use, and they said we couldn’t
do it. … When we started thinking about
what blind people can’t do, how many of
us have said the first thing is that we can’t
drive? And we thought about our inde-
pendence and what we could do to make
the world better, and we built the idea that
we would bring together inspiration and
technology.
“And today, to all of those to said it was
just a stunt, and to all of those that said
we couldn’t, and to all of those who said
that it would never happen, we say you just
watch us move.”
It is under Maurer’s reign that the national
Riccobono lost almost all of his sight by age 13. Photo courtesy NFB.
We thought about our
independence and what
we could do to make the
world better, and we built
the idea that we would
bring together inspiration
and technology.
Base PlatformProblem Solved
Ethernet Interface
Full Support & Documentation
Intelligent Power Distribution
Proven Hybrid Platform
Integrated Safety System
6 kW Power Supply
request a free consultationto see if the ByWire XGV is the right
fit for your next robotics project
“...the obvious choice was TORC Technologies’ ByWire XGV solution.”
- UC Berkeley
540.443.9262torctech.com
Base Vehicle
Drive-by-Wire System
Power Options
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Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 15
BlindDriverChallenge— continued from page 13
headquarters broke ground on its new
Jernigan Institute in 2004, a facility fo-
cused on advancing technology to increase
the independence of the blind.
“It was just part of the visionary set of
things that was being talked about,” says
Riccobono. The foundation set its time-
line for driving, among its other goals, in
the 25-year time range, he says. But the
opening of the institute in 2004 marked a
switch from talk to action.
“That was the first time it was apparent
that it was a little more serious than just
a bold vision,” he says. In 2004, the NFB
pursued universities to work on the chal-
lenge.
GettingsetMichael Fleming has been working in the
robotics industry since college. He got his
start as a student at Virginia Tech, where
he got both his bachelor’s and master’s in
mechanical engineering. He went on to
work as a research associate for the col-
lege. Fleming was inspired to start his own
company after realizing that much of the
university’s technology wasn’t being used
in real-world applications.
“I came to conclusion with some of my
colleagues that we had all this great tech-
nology, but unfortunately the technology
wasn’t going anywhere,” said Fleming in
an interview with Virginia Tech. “When
the graduate students would leave, they
would leave a thesis, and that technology
was not being ported to address critical
needs that we see within society.”
In 2006, with the help of Blacksburg, Va.’s
VT KnowledgeWorks — an entrepreneur-
ial incubation program for the Virginia
Tech community — Fleming secured a
spot for TORC in the Virginia Tech Cor-
porate Research Center (CRC). The com-
pany is still located there five years later,
having grown from four employees to
nearly 30.
TORC focuses on empowering other
engineers by offering a suite of modular
and easy-to-use products that can be used
to more rapidly customize, integrate, and
deploy safe and reliable robotic systems.
Its products are now used by leading
academic, commercial and government
organizations to shorten the development
process, lower costs and mitigate develop-
ment risks.
In the mid-2000s DARPA, the mad scien-
tists of the Department of Defense’s array
of agencies, began a series of high-profile
unmanned ground vehicle competitions
Virginia Tech students test out the roboticized Ford Escape before the Blind Driver Challenge. AUVSI photo.
16 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
BlindDriverChallenge— continued from page 15
designed to build the bridge between re-
search and real-life, working autonomous
systems.
In its last feat, the 2007 Urban Challenge,
DARPA tasked innovators to come up
with a way that a completely autonomous
car could navigate a 60-mile urban area
course. Stop lights, traffic, obstacles and
all, the participants had a six-hour win-
dow to complete the course.
Eighty-nine teams from around the globe
competed to win the glory and prize
money of the Urban Challenge. Under-
grad and graduate students from Virginia
Tech joined up with TORC to form Team
VictorTango for the competition. Averag-
ing just about one mile per hour slower
than the top team, VictorTango placed
third.
The competition vehicle, a modified 2005
Ford Escape Hybrid, was the same plat-
form used for the Blind Driver Challenge.
TORC helped create all the software
that allowed the Escape to autonomously
navigate.
“The [Blind Driver Challenge] vehicle has
its roots in the DARPA Urban Challenge
technology. The new challenge was adding
a blind driver in the loop,” says Andrew
Culhane, business development manager
at TORC. “We were able to insert several
TORC products on day one to get us 80
percent there — the remaining 20 percent
was the tricky part, communicating with
Virginia Tech’s nonvisual interfaces.”
The ByWire XGV is a packaged vehicle
conversion that includes TORC’s By-
Wire modules, which allow for computer
control and monitoring of the vehicle’s
systems, the SafeStop wireless emergency
stop system and PowerHub power man-
agement and distribution modules neces-
sary to power the additional components,
sensors, computers and technologies
adding to the system.
Light detection and ranging (lidar) scan-
ners on the vehicle detect objects by send-
ing out thousands of light pulses. The
return light establishes distance, and those
thousands of light points determine the
profile of an object or negative space.
The camera looks at those pixels from the
lidar and populates them with color that
helps classify the environment. The soft-
ware then takes that image and tries to
predict what those objects are doing in real
time — it’s essentially the same way eyes
and the brain work together.
As for the additional hardware, a combi-
nation of scanning laser rangefinders and
machine vision cameras were added to
provide real-time sensory input.
All of this information gets fused together
with data from a GPS unit, which works
with TORC’s autonomous navigation soft-
ware and finally passes the information
back to the driver through the Virginia
Tech Robotics and Mechanisms Labora-
tory’s nonvisual interfaces.
But it was not the XGV alone that pow-
ered Riccobono’s car. He had to actually
maneuver the vehicle himself.
Students at Virginia Tech masterminded
the key pieces missing for this odd retro-
fit — turning an autonomous vehicle back
into a manned car, but a manned car that
still uses all the same software as a robotic
vehicle to help make decisions.
The students took to task, working under
Virginia Tech professor Dennis Hong.
They came up with two innovations,
technologies that would give Riccobono
feedback as he was driving the car. The
technologies didn’t force him to perform
a task, but told him what to do.
The SpeedStrip interface sent vibrations up and down Riccobono’s back, letting him know how much to accelerate or decelerate. AUVSI photo.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 17
Through a senior design project, the stu-
dents developed haptic sensors — devices
that provide touch sensation — that would
steer Riccobono in the right direction.
Four of the eight seniors sent to the Day-
tona event worked on SpeedStrip, a pad
the driver sits on that gives him informa-
tion on his acceleration. The interface uses
vibrations up and down the driver’s legs
and back to let him feel how fast to drive.
When that speed is neared, the vibration
slows to a stop. The students started work
on the device in 2006.
The second interface that involved the
other four seniors was DriveGrip, a pair of
fingerless gloves that send vibrations down
the driver’s fingers, which was designed in
the last year. A soft right turn would send
a vibration to Riccobono’s right pointer
finger, and a harder right turn would go
across more of his right-hand fingers.
Like SpeedStrip, once the car is correctly
oriented, the vibration stops. The gloves
initially experienced wire fatigue when
the students tested them, so they replaced
them with wire cables, like the ones used
on a computer.
GoVirginia Tech and TORC tested the vehicle
for two days in December at the Virginia
International Raceway. The NFB tested on
its own in Baltimore using simulators that
the students sent headquarters.
The simulators were about getting used
to the nonvisual interfaces and how they
communicate information to a blind
driver, says Riccobono. The simulators
were equipped with video game pedals,
DriveGrip and SpeedStrip.
“The limitation of the simulator is of
course you do get valuable information
from getting in the driver’s seat,” says
Riccobono. “The noise of the engine, there
are all these environmental cues you pick
up on.”
Though a simulator can’t give that kind
if information, Riccobono says it was
valuable to get a sense of the interfaces.
And what testing on the simulator lacked
in real-world feel, it made up for in safety,
he continues.
Multiple people tested on the simulators
so the NFB could downselect to one driver
for the Daytona race day.
“We’ve had varying success,” says Ricco-
bono. “Some people have very low per-
centage [accuracy] on their first run, being
in the lane and on target, but some actu-
ally do very, very well on their first try.” It
shows that Virginia Tech’s technology is
intuitive, says Riccobono, but that training
on any new device is also necessary.
Locking up the deal to drive the real system
at Daytona before the Rolex 24 Grand-Am
Virginia Tech engineered DriveGrip to let the driver know which direction and how hard to turn. They’re looking to continue improve on interfaces in the coming year. AUVSI photo.
race was surprisingly easy, he says.
“The whole team, Grand-Am, they run
the race, but the Daytona international
Speedway team [is] also a tremendous
team of folks,” he says. “Not one person we
met said, ‘Well, what do you mean you’re
going to bring a blind person out here?’
They bought into the vision. And it just
shows that they have imagination, be-
cause we certainly didn’t expect it to be as
friendly, open, warm, when we said, ‘Hey,
we want a blind person to drive on your
track.’”
Riccobono tested at Daytona only during
the week of the race.
“Daytona had a parking lot that they al-
lowed us to use, and we did some testing
…some actually do very, very well on their first try. It shows
that Virginia Tech’s technology is intuitive…
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Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 19
BlindDriverChallenge— continued from page 17
in a parking lot, mostly it was just to make
sure, to keep the driver in shape and to test
the system, test some of the things we were
doing in the demo,” says Riccobono.
The day before the Blind Driver Challenge,
a number of NFB members showed up to
the test parking lot, and Riccobono drove
them around in what he calls the first blind
driver taxi service.
Most meaningful to Riccobono was being
able to take his wife and two children on
their very first family drive.
“The first family road trip,” says Riccon-
bono, “and it was wonderful — a really
moving experience personally to make
that realization that for the first time I
could strap my family in and take them
somewhere on my own direction.”
The day of the race was “a little nerve
wracking,” he said. A few hours before the
challenge, Riccobono joined the 400 mem-
bers of the NFB and spoke with some of
the group, which put him at ease, he says.
“I was really at peace at that point. It was
actually much more nerve wracking wait-
ing to get out to the car.”
Once he was on the track, “it was about the
moment,” he says. “It was about showing
really the achievement of the vision and
the work that we had put in.”
Driving at speeds up to 30 miles per hour,
Riccobono drove around the track at
Daytona, dodging cones and barrels and
avoiding boxes being thrown out of a van
in front of his car.
“The truth is I was so focused it just
seemed, well at the beginning it seemed
very slow, much slower than I expected.
Maybe I was driving a little slower because
I wanted to be right on, but once I hit that
International Horse Shoe [the infield track
section at Daytona], that was really the key
moment for me.”
Riccobono aced the course.
Though the Blind Driver Challenge proved
that robotic technology could enable driv-
ers that need assistance, Riccobono says
the NFB’s relationship with TORC is likely
not over.
“We think the guys at TORC are great, and
they’ve done great work with us,” he says.
And Virginia Tech isn’t done innovating
new ways to make blind drivers a reality.
The students are now working on Air-
Pix, a third interface that outputs tactile
information through small holes, much
like how air blows through a table hockey
board. That device may cut down on the
numbing effect a driver would experi-
ence after a long time of using an interface
like DriveGrip — much like how motor-
cyclists’ hands grow numb after hours of
vibration.
The next step for the NFB is to build out
the challenge, says Riccobono, getting
more universities engaged and finding
funding to continue academic research.
“The ideal would be to have a series of
challenge events where universities could
enter their interfaces,” he says. Then they
could have a series of blind drivers test the
technology at once. “At some point, we’d
love to have a race.” n
Danielle LuceyismanagingeditorofMission Critical.
TORC Technology’s ByWire XGV system turns any manned vehicle into a robotic platform. AUVSI photo.
…for the first time I could
strap my family in and take
them somewhere on my own
direction.
· Discounts on Exhibits, Sponsorships, Advertisingand AUVSI Products
· Access to Members Only networking, education and Select VIP Events
· Listing in Unmanned Systems Magazineand AUVSI’s Online Directory
· Complimentary Job Listings onAUVSI’s Online Career Center
· Research reports and knowledge sharing through AUVSI’s OnlineCommunity
· Chapters and Regions around the Globe
Join today at www.auvsi.org/membership
MAXIMIZE YOUR VISIBILITY —BECOME A CORPORATEMEMBER TODAY!
MAXIMIZE YOUR VISIBILITY —BECOME A CORPORATEMEMBER TODAY!
full page membership ad Dec2010 12/9/10 10:15 PM Page 1
To watch a video of the Blind Driver Challenge, scan this barcode with your smartphone.
20 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Innovations come from all over the world. Here is a graphical look at how different places around the globe stack up in terms of autonomous vehicle technology. Look for more in-depth stories on places followed by an asterisk.
Parma,ItalyParma University’s VisLab took up
its own Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge in 2010, logging in a
15,000-kilometer autonomous caravan trip tracing the ancient spice route
from Italy to Shanghai, China. The first vehicle drove somewhat autonomously,
with occasional human intervention, and a follower vehicle was close
behind, tracking the leader with visual and GPS information.
state of the artArlington,Va.*
AUVSI heads the Transportation Technology Transfer Initiative (T3I)
to facilitate the transfer of intelligent vehicle technology between the
Department of Defense and the civil transportation sector.
Hannover,GermanyGotting KG demonstrated leader-follower technology
using a Smart car and a tractor at the CeBIT Computer Fair
in 2009 as part of its Gotting Konvoi concept, and is seeking partners for follow-on work for low-speed, off-road convoys in
areas like mining pits.
Victorville,Calif., andtheMojaveDesert
The DARPA Urban Challenge and prior pair of Grand Challenges set the stage for autonomous vehicles
one day becoming reality.
HH
PikesPeakNot only did Audi take its Autonomous
TTS research car up this epic incline late last year, it went there quickly. The 12.42-mile
course was completed in 27 minutes. Not bad compared to a manned 17-minute ascension. The research car was a joint effort between Volkswagen/Audi, Stanford University and
software company Oracle.
H
MountainView,Calif.*Google’s headquarters, where the company started testing its autonomous Priuses in October. (Mission Critical realizes the true
plural is Prii, but does anyone actually say that?)
HDaytonaBeach,Fla.*
The National Federation of the Blind, TORC Technologies and
Virginia Tech demonstrated the first ever Blind Driver Challenge in early 2011.
H
H
H
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 21
Gothenberg,Sweden*The site of Volvo’s Sartre autonomous road train
concept testing.
Berlin,GermanyFreie University Berlin’s AutoNomos project has sprouted a different kind of connected vehicle: one that latches
into your brain. BrainDriver, though not road-ready yet, uses human-machine
interfaces that could allow your electric-magnetic signals to send a
car where you want it to go.
AbuDhabi,UAEThe Tourist Club Area, like most other places in Abu Dhabi, is packed with cars and people, making transportation a chore.
To relieve some of the street congestion outside one of its parking garages, Abu Dhabi Commercial Properties started
using a robotic parking garage. A robotic platform places newly
dropped off cars in a large stacking system and keeps
track of all of the cars’ locations through cameras tracking license
plate numbers.
Shanghai,ChinaGM debuted its autonomous car con-cept, EN-V at last year’s World Expo 2010 Shanghai. The name is sort for Electric Networked-Vehicle, and the
concept aims to transform urban trans-portation. The autonomous two-wheeled car for two could one day cut down on traffic and parking availability issues if its vehicle-to-vehicle communication
method catches on.
Tokyo,JapanCompany ZMP, headquartered in Toyko, will begin selling an auton-omous vehicle this year for around US $84,000. Though it looks more like a golf cart than a BMW, ZMP is moving autonomous transportation into the hands of consumers faster
than most thought possible.
Adelaide,AustraliaMAGIC 2010 proved that robotic com-
munication is a reality, with winning Team Michigan using 14 robots that collaborated with simple barcode scanning technology.
Though not full-sized vehicles, this type of communication is paramount to many
autonomous vehicle concepts.
H
H
HH
H
HH
H
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 23
Cartalk:Thescienceandpoliticsbehindvehiclesthattalktoeachotherandtotheroadways
BYSTEPHANIELEVY
“Here I am!”
This small declarative statement could
soon become a rallying cry for a new
generation of vehicles that help their
driver avoid crashes, save gas and redefine
transportation as we know it.
It’s a start to a new reality in which vehicles
rely on connected and cooperative systems
to communicate with the road and each
other, making driving safer. It’s the idea
that seems counterintuitive at first, but
has the data to back it up: By taking hu-
man error out of operating vehicles, more
human lives can be saved each year, along
with gasoline and wear and tear. It cuts
CO2 emissions as well.
For now, “Here I am!” is the first step in
establishing and deploying vehicles with
vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to
infrastructure (V2I) technologies.
“It’s sending out information about
where a vehicle is and where it’s heading,”
says Mike Schagrin, program manager at
the U.S. Department of Transportation’s
Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint
Program Office. “It’s not about who the
passengers are or who the vehicle is, but
where it is, so other equipped vehicles can
pick it up and know a vehicle is there.”
That’s the V2V part; V2I has the vehicle
communicating with infrastructure at
critical and often dangerous places — in-
tersections. For instance, a traffic light
could tell an approaching vehicle when
it’s going to turn red. Depending on how
much time it has, the vehicle could either
decide to continue on or alert its driver
that it’s time to start slowing down.
The Department of Transportation calls
all this “connected vehicle” research, where
the vehicles can talk to each other and to
the infrastructure on which they move.
“For the vehicle-to-vehicle testing, we
have a lot of research that’s geared towards
The basic rallying cry of the connected vehicle: “Here I am!”All images courtesy the U.S. Department of Transportation.
24 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Cartalk— continued from page 23
deployment that’s going on right now,”
Schagrin says. “This is a multi-modal
effort across the Department” that in-
cludes the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration, Research and
Innovative Technology Administration,
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administra-
tion, Federal Transit Administration and
Federal Highway Administration. “We are
also working very closely with the auto in-
dustry under partnership agreements,” he
says.
”We have reached the stage of having
some fairly mature technology and have
demonstrated the capability in numerous
venues.”
WirelessIn V2V communication, a “here I am”
automated signal emanates wirelessly
from a vehicle, allowing it to interact with
other vehicles on the road. Should a situ-
ation arise where there is a risk of a vehi-
cle-to-vehicle collision, the vehicle would
issue a warning to the driver so the driver
can try to avoid the collision.
“The kind of warning that we found was
optimal was a combination of visual, au-
dible and haptic, like a seatbelt tightening
or seat vibrating,” Schagrin says. “That
actually proved to be very effective in our
limited trials.”
In January, at Washington, D.C.’s Robert
F. Kennedy Memorial stadium, DOT offi-
cials took part in a test ride in Ford-built
vehicles equipped with a Wi-Fi like sys-
tem.
“In the demonstration, Administrator
[Peter] Appel and Deputy Assistant Sec-
retary [Brodi] Fontenot endured several
hair-raising potential crash scenarios,” says
the official blog of Ray LaHood, the U.S.
Secretary of Transportation. “And from
potential crash scenario to potential crash
scenario, the new technology alerted the
driver before it was too late and in ways
our current vehicles simply cannot do.”
Saferchickens crossingtheroadIntelligent cars and trucks may be able to talk to each other and refrain from running into each other, but there is still the issue of vehicle-to-pedestrian accidents and collisions, as human beings remain low-tech and don’t yet come with “here I am” technology installed.
The U.S. DOT’s Mike Schagrin says that while the Department of Transportation is conducting some studies on this issue, it is not the main focus of their current research. However, the technol-ogy to reduce vehicle crashes could also be extended to vehicle-pedestrian crashes.
“One area that we are now investigating is in the area of transit. Pedestrian crashes don’t happen all that frequently, but when they do they’re very newsworthy,” Schagrin says. “We are put-ting some resources into how we recognize the pedestrian.”
PreviousresearchA 2001 study from the U.S. Department of Transportation Fed-eral Highway Administration found that automated pedestrian detectors at intersections increase pedestrian awareness while decreasing vehicle-to-pedestrian crashes. The systems can detect the presence of people and activate the “Walk” sign without the pedestrians having to push a button.
The study took place in three cities — Los Angeles, Phoenix and Rochester, N.Y. — and defined vehicle-to-pedestrian “conflicts” as “any pedestrian-motorist interaction in which either the pedestrian or the motorist stops or slows down so that the other can proceed.”
With automated pedestrian detection devices in place, the num-ber of vehicle-to-pedestrian conflicts when a pedestrian began crossing the street fell by a whopping 89 percent; conflicts at the end of a pedestrian’s walk fell by 42 percent. These traf-fic systems also decreased the number of conflicts associated with right-turning vehicles by 40 percent and reduced all “other” types of conflicts by 76 percent.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 25
Schagrin says the current V2V technologies
can address up to 80 percent of all possible
dangerous traffic scenarios. Drivers would
start to see these benefits on the road when
as few as 8-10 percent of vehicles use V2V
technologies. Schagrin explains that the
more vehicles that use these systems, the
more drivers will reap the benefits.
“The cost itself isn’t terribly great, it’s a
simple electronic device, but the issue with
the vehicle-to-vehicle scenario is you have
to have multiple vehicles equipped that are
within range of each other to start getting
the benefits,” Schagrin says. “When you
get more and more penetration, you cre-
ate greater benefits.”
ThestateofsmarttechnologiesIn a 2009 presentation at the Intelligent
Vehicle Technology Transfer (IVTT) Joint
Military/Civilian Workshop on IntelliD-
rive (the former name of the DOT’s con-
nected vehicle effort), Tim Schmidt, chief
technology officer for the DOT, explained
the system as “a suite of technologies and
applications that use wireless communica-
tions to provide connectivity.” Through
sensors, processors, software and com-
munications technology in vehicles, infra-
structure and control centers, DOT and its
government and industry partners aim to
create this connectivity with and between
vehicles, infrastructure and wireless con-
sumer devices.
The Department of Transportation sup-
ports connected vehicle research because
of the solutions it offers to current traffic
problems such as safety, mobility and en-
vironmental consequences. For instance,
there are 6 million car crashes annually
in the United States, leading to more than
30,000 deaths each year and a direct eco-
nomic cost of $230 billion. Connected ve-
hicle technologies are designed to increase
drivers’ situational awareness and reduce
or eliminate these devastating crashes.
“You don’t need to have every vehicle
equipped in order for benefits to start being
generated,” Schagrin says. “You can start
saving lives right away. As the adoption of
the technology becomes greater, more and
more lives are going to be saved.”
The economic consequences of conges-
tion on U.S. roadways is also staggering;
between 4.2 billion lost work hours and
2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel, traffic
congestion leads to a $78 billion annual
drain on the economy. Therefore, one of
the goals of connected vehicle research is
to achieve transformational system per-
formance of surface transportation net-
works.
In-vehicle devices will use V2V technology to alert drivers of dangerous situations.
“The present data suggest that automated pedestrian detectors can provide significant operational and safety benefits when in-stalled in conjunction with conventional pedestrian push buttons at actuated traffic signals,” the report says.
The study theorized that automated pedestrian detectors are suc-cessful because of the increase in likelihood that a pedestrian will receive the “Walk” signal. These signals ensure a minimum amount of time for pedestrians to cross the street.
PuffinsandPussycatsCountries around the world have already put this safety informa-tion to some use. In 1993, the United Kingdom’s Puffin (Pedes-trian User-Friendly Intelligent) crossings responded to pedestrian demand without creating unnecessary traffic delays. The United Kingdom later introduced similar technologies to Australia and Sweden.
In the Netherlands the Pussycat (Pedestrian Urban Safety System and Comfort At Traffic Signals) system used a pressure-sensitive
mat to detect pedestrians waiting to cross the street and then infrared sensors across the intersection to detect crossing pedes-trians. The study says it had mixed results.
“Although pedestrians perceived Pussycats to be at least as safe as the old system, many pedestrians reported that they did not understand the functions of the mat,” the report said. “As may as half of all pedestrians refused to use the system.”
Going forward from this study, researchers hope to find out if the benefits of automatic detection outweigh the cost. Research-ers also aim to study a possible correlation between a reduction in inappropriate crossings (think jaywalking) and a reduction in vehicle-to-passenger conflicts or crashes.
“More evaluations of this type are recommended to better understand the operational constraints of new technologies being applied for the first time in the pedestrian environment,” the report says. Looking at such applications is part of the Federal Highway Administration’s 15-year Pedestrian Safety Strategic Plan.
AUVSI Foundation’sStudent Competitions
S A V E T H E D A T E
19th Annual Intelligent GroundVehicle Competition (IGVC) June 3-6, 2011Oakland UniversityRochester, MI
4th International RoboBoatCompetitionJune 9-12, 2011Founders Inn & SpaVirginia Beach, VA
9th Annual Student Unmanned Air Systems (SUAS) Competition June 15-19, 2011Webster FieldPatuxent River, MD
14th International RoboSubCompetitionJuly 12-17, 2011SSC Pacific TRANSDECSan Diego, CA
21st Annual International AerialRobotics CompetitionAugust 2011Grand Forks, ND
VOLUNTEER, MENTOR, DONATELearn how you can support our studentautonomous vehicle competitions, mentor K-12 students, and fund programs that willbring hands-on robotic activities to schools and youth groups across the country. Visit www.auvsifoundation.org for moreinformation or to make a donation online.*The AUVSI Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit,charitable organization. All donations are tax-deductible.
Today, technology companies face a hiring crisis. The talent pool of students skilled inSTEM curriculum (science, technology, engineering and math) is shrinking as demandfor these qualifications grow.
The AUVSI Foundation was established to focus on the future of the unmanned systemsindustry and to develop hands-on educational programs to attract and equip students fora career in robotics. You can help the AUVSI Foundation in a variety of ways.
Spectators are welcome at all student competitions. If you would like more information, please visitwww.auvsifoundation.org. To sponsor, please contact Wendy Siminski at [email protected].
2011 Foundation competition ad 2/11/11 1:09 PM Page 1
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 27
“It’s all part of the interoperability work
where we have to make sure the data com-
ing out of one vehicle or device is usable
by another,” Schagrin says.
Finally, cars and trucks currently make up
22 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions
in the atmosphere, making them the sec-
ond largest source for carbon dioxide pol-
lution, behind factories. Connected vehicle
research can address the issue of the nearly
three billion gallons of wasted fuel in cur-
rent car models by maintaining vehicles at
maximum fuel efficiency and informing
travelers to make more fuel-efficient and
eco-friendly travel decisions.
“I don’t think there are any major technol-
ogy gaps right now for us to be able to do
this,” Schagrin says.
PartnersintransportationDOT has carried out a variety of projects
related to connected vehicles, efforts that
have included public agency and industry
partners.
Michigan, no stranger to automotive
transportation, has aimed at having a key
role in the U.S. DOT’s overall connected
vehicle efforts, and “playing a lead role in
advancing smart technologies to connect
vehicles and roadway” infrastructure is
a central component of the state’s long-
range (2005-2030) transportation plan.
Aside from the nationwide benefits in
safety, efficiency and pollution control, it’s
good local business: Department research
showed that an aggressive push in the re-
search and development of V2V and V2I
technologies could help create 16,000 jobs
statewide.
The state has “numerous” test facilities for
the work according to a July 2010 white pa-
per prepared by the Center for Automotive
Research. Among these is a U.S. DOT-built
Development Test Environment (DTE)
facility in southeast Michigan, the larg-
est single deployment of dedicated short-
range communication (DSRC) systems in
the country (DSRC is the bandwidth that
allows V2V and V2I communications to
work; the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission has allocated 75 MHz of
spectrum in the 5.9-GHz band for such
vehicle communications).
Michigan’s DOT has also tested 10 key con-
nected vehicle technologies and applica-
tions. An overall traffic management center
(TMC) sends congestion levels and other
information to vehicles. Vehicles then send
road updates back to the TMC. To com-
municate other vehicle-related circum-
stances to the driver, cars were equipped
with emergency vehicle pre-emption, inci-
dent beacons, merge warning systems and
an emergency vehicle warning. Emergency
vehicle pre-emption allows the driver to
press a button that makes the vehicle pass
through a green light at an intersection.
Cartalk— continued from page 25
Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication showing types of V2I messages that can be delivered to a vehicle.
28 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Cartalk— continued from page 27
Schagrin says cars can use technologies
like this to avoid “T-bone” crashes where
one car driving straight slams directly into
the side of another trying to cross; these
particular crashes cause a lot of damage
and are frequently fatal. Incident beacons
allow a disabled vehicle to broadcast its
distress signal to oncoming vehicles that
can then update the TMC. An emergency
vehicle warning emits a similar signal for
emergency vehicles like fire trucks and
ambulances.
Other test bed applications dealt with V2I
communications. Signal change count-
down allows a driver to watch a count-
down showing when the light will turn
green. A parking availability application
lets the driver access information about
nearby parking spaces and purchase one
of those spots. Also, as an alternative to the
fuel use tax, which is based on calculations
of the total number of miles a vehicle trav-
els, these smart cars had a mileage-based
user fee built in. Once these vehicles enter
a highway, a real-time in-vehicle display
called congestion-based pricing shows fee
and travel information. And for larger ve-
hicles, a bridge height warning mechanism
would give drivers of over-height vehicles
an advance warning.
Industry is also part of the work. The DOT
works with a group called CAMP, or Crash
Avoidance Metrics Partnership, which in-
cludes Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, Nissan,
Hyundai-Kia, Volkswagen and Mercedes-
Benz.
Ford, which built the systems demon-
strated in Washington in January, says it
is “rapidly expanding its commitment to
intelligent vehicles that wirelessly talk to
each other, warning of potential dangers
to enhance safety and flag impending traf-
fic congestion to help improve the envi-
ronment.”
DOT plans a series of six driver clinics
around the country starting this summer
with all of these companies to give con-
sumers an opportunity to experience these
safety applications first hand.
The U.S. DOT is also looking for addi-
tional partners, including possibly ones
not traditionally affiliated with the auto-
motive industry. In a new challenge, the
Connected Vehicle Technology Challenge,
DOT invites respondents to answer this
question: When vehicles talk to each other,
what should they say?
The agency wants “short descriptions of
novel, implementable ideas for products
or approaches that utilize DSRC to offer
Wireless connectivity allows cars to be continuously aware of each other so if one car brakes suddenly cars several yards behind the vehicle get a safety warning before they get too close.
DOT plans a series of six
driver clinics around the
country starting this summer
with all of these companies
to give consumers an
opportunity to experience
these safety applications
first hand.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 29
benefits to travelers or society at large.”
The six best submissions will win their
authors a trip to the 2011 Intelligent
Transportation Systems World Congress in
Orlando, Fla., this fall, where they will have
a chance to pitch their ideas to transporta-
tion experts, business professionals — and
potential investors.
ChallengestoovercomeAlthough DOT’s Schagrin sees no big
technological hurdles to V2V and V2I
technology, getting widespread adoption
and having a safe, secure and sensible op-
erating environment on the roads is a dif-
ferent story.
The missing link in many of these innova-
tions isn’t technology. Without legislative
and societal support, the potential pen-
etration levels Schagrin sees for V2V and
V2I innovations may stall.
“There are a lot of policy issues that need
to be addressed,” Schagrin admits. “There’s
privacy concerns, there’s liability concerns,
there’s governance of the overall structure
— who can provide an application, who
Connected vehicles can serve warnings of upcoming intersections.
can operate on the system, what happens
when you operate inappropriately on the
system — that all falls into the governance
structure.”
Although bandwidth for the system isn’t
a concern because of the DSRC spectrum
allocation, privacy is. What if your car says
something about you that you don’t like
while it’s doing all that talking?
The DOT is trying to alleviate cyber-se-
curity concerns by establishing a security
system where vehicles that send and receive
information with other vehicles or devices
have to first establish trust with each other
through a public key infrastructure (PKI)
security system. Schagrin admits this pres-
ents a catch-22 situation for engineers and
regulators alike.
“The greater the privacy, the less secure
the system might be,” Schagrin says. “Or
take it the other way; the more security
you want in the system, the less privacy
you might have.”
However, DOT says that any system for
connected vehicles would be anonymous
and would not allow for individual track-
ing.
Schagrin would not comment on the
current state of funding for V2V or V2I
programs as it appears in the current U.S.
federal budget. Congress was still wres-
tling with continuing resolutions to keep
the government functioning as spring
arrived, but still hasn’t finished a longer-
term agreement on a federal budget for
fiscal year 2011.
Although DOT’s Schagrin
sees no big technological
hurdles to V2V and V2I
technology, getting wide-
spread adoption and having
a safe, secure and sensible
operating environment on
the roads is a different story.
30 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
FORMOREINFORMATION:
Cartalk— continued from page 29
DecisionpointUltimately, Schagrin says the Department
of Transportation has set a decision point
of 2013 to determine the next steps for
V2V technology for light vehicles (a deci-
sion point for heavy trucks comes a year
later, in 2014). To prepare for this decision,
DOT will be deploying approximately
3000 vehicles in a real world model de-
ployment as part of their research and de-
velopment. It expects this model deploy-
ment to be structured in such a way as to
create a highly concentrated environment
of vehicles talking with each other.
This pilot program allows officials to get
real-world data on vehicle safety and user
acceptance. Researchers will gather user
acceptance data by having real drivers,
not other researchers, driving the smart
vehicles on real roads over a several month
time period. DOT will also set up driver
clinics later this year to allow additional
drivers to experience these safety appli-
cations in a controlled environment to
see how they work. Safety is still key:
DOT says that for both the model deploy-
ment and driver clinics, its number one
priority is driver safety. It plans to have
sufficient safeguards in place to ensure it
does not jeopardize the safety of individu-
als participating in the research.
“The decision point could either be
that we find out we need to do more re-
search, or we could decide to do NCAP,
which is the New Car Assessment Pro-
gram [also known as Stars on Cars], and
that’s a voluntary program in which we
would provide consumer information and
car companies would voluntarily decide
whether they want to include safety ap-
plications in technology or not,” Schagrin
says. There could also be a regulation to
mandate the technology and applications.
While 2013 may seem right around the
corner, for Schagrin this deadline is a long
time coming. When the Department of
Transportation first started researching
intelligent transportation technologies,
he says the technology was very different
from its current state and despite all the
research, there was not much support for
an initiative that seemed “too far ahead of
its time.” Schagrin says he is confident in
V2V and V2I communication isn’t just for cars; trucks, buses and trains can get in on the conversation too.
the positive feedback he has received on
the new program thus far, and how it’s
going to play in to this fast-approaching
milestone.
“Over the past couple of years when the
economy has taken a downturn and the
car companies have been in trouble fi-
nancially — and this is a statement about
how committed everybody is — we saw no
drop-off in support for the safety research
at all,” Schagrin says.
“There was a full commitment through-
out everything, so that’s reassuring and
we’re all in this together. It’s not some-
thing the government can do by itself, it’s
not something that the car companies can
do by themselves; it’s a collaboration. And
we have maintained that collaborative en-
vironment over several years.” n
Stephanie Levy is the associate editor ofMission Critical.
http://connectedvehicle.challenge.gov/
http://www.thefordstory.com/
http://www.its.dot.gov/
http://www.michigan.gov/mdot/0,1607,7-151-9621_11041_38217---,00.html
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 31
Implementing intelligent transportation
makes lots of financial sense, particularly
in fast-growing cities around the world,
according to recent studies. What does it
mean for jobs, and what kind of jobs could
it create?
The time spent wasted in traffic around
the world is staggering, and it’s not going
to ease; a United Nations report says that
by 2050, about 70 percent of the world’s
population will live in cities. Those peo-
ple will want some way to move around,
whether that be cars, trucks, buses, rail,
bicycles, Segways or something else.
In the short term, much of the effort
directed at creating intelligent vehicle
systems is aimed at making the current
infrastructure work more efficiently. For
instance, the U.S. Department of Trans-
portation’s Research and Innovative Tech-
nology Administration (RITA) tracks the
benefit of intelligent systems in a monthly
report posted on its website.
One recent report cited the effect of an
“intelligent speed control” system in Los
Angeles that provided drivers with real-
time speed recommendations in con-
gested areas based on travel time data and
weather information. Rather than rushing
into a traffic jam, drivers could instead
travel at a more steady pace that would
reduce congestion all around. In the end,
the study found that such a system cut
fuel consumption by 10 to 20 percent and
lowered carbon dioxide emissions without
drastically increasing time spent on the
freeway.
As cities around the world implement
smart transportation systems, setting up
systems such
as this is one
way that jobs can
be generated. Taking
a tack from NASA in the
days of the space race, the
U.S. DOT has a program aimed
at keeping kids interested in sci-
ence and math as a way of developing a
future career in transportation.
The Garrett A. Morgan program,
named after the inventor of a safer
traffic signal, touts the high-tech jobs
that intelligent transportation systems can
provide, and urges children to become
aerospace engineers, environmentalists,
systems engineers, computer scientists
and communications engineers. “We want
you to help us build the transportation
systems of the future, and we want to help
you develop the technology skills needed
for tomorrow’s transportation jobs,” the
DOT’s ITS website says.
DisruptivetechAs intelligent transportation technology
becomes more “disruptive,” more changes
to existing jobs are likely. Just as the rise of
the automobile itself disrupted horse-base
transportation — including the oft-men-
tioned demise of the buggywhip indus-
try — intelligent transportation promises
much the same thing to the existing trans-
portation sector.
“In general, whenever there’s a major new
technology which you call disruptive or
transformational technology, and old
co m p a n i e s
and industries
get driven out of
the market or reduced
in their significance rela-
tive to the new technology
over time, there’s always going to
be some loss of jobs in the old sec-
tor,” says Bob Finkelstein, president of
Robotic Technology Inc. (for more on
him, see the End Users on Page 47).
Specifically, Finkelstein sees job loss in
industries such as trucking, cab driv-
ing and delivery services. For example,
the American Trucking Associations says
it has more than 37,000 members in the
United States. Finkelstein says future
smart cars would eliminate many of those
jobs because they would be able to provide
the same services with greater efficiency
and less cost.
“It’s easy to see there’s going to be a loss
of jobs in the area where people drive
for a living,” Finkelstein says. “You won’t
have drivers but you’ll have other sorts of
personnel in those businesses and indus-
tries.”
Military officials often say that unmanned
systems are anything but unmanned —
each system requires tens or hundreds of
support personnel to review data, work
the sensors, etc. That’s much the same in
the transportation world. The U.S. DOT
estimates that intelligent transportation
systems in the United States will create
600,000 new jobs over the next two de-
cades.
Whatdoesintelligenttransportationmeanfortheworkforceofthefuture?
Future Jobs
32 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
FutureJobs— continued from page 31
SmartsystemsneedsmartpeopleOne of the immediate needs of the intel-
ligent transportation industry is filling
the technology gap. Finkelstein calls these
potential positions “new jobs in the new
technology sector.”
“The new sectors of employment would
include jobs involved with creating intel-
ligent software and associated hardware
for these systems,” Finkelstein said. “That
is, advance sensors and sensor processing
and machine intelligence-related software
and communications, systems for com-
munication between vehicles, between the
infrastructure in vehicles, etc.”
Major automotive industries, university
TurnandfacethestrainFinkelstein sees many changes on the horizon for the auto-motive industry. Here are some ways future jobs may stack up, he says.
n New entrants into the automotive industry As vehicles get smaller and more sophisticated, more
companies might build them.
n New entrants into transportation-related services Changes to vehicles might bring changes to infrastruc-
ture, creating new opportunities in industries like con-struction.
n New major original equipment manufacturers Components such as sensors and software may become
as critical as engines and tires.
NewbusinessmodelsThere are likely to be some new tweaks to existing busi-ness models. In their book, “Reinventing the Automobile,” published by MIT, authors William J. Mitchell, Christopher E. Borroni-Bird and Lawrence D. Burns note that networked cars can use advanced Internet searches to help plan out-ings such as trips to a grocery store.
labs and other outside businesses like
Google have already entered the research
and development phase with autonomous
vehicles.
“The main need for furthering the tech-
nology is in the software arena,” Finkel-
stein says. “The sensors can be improved.
I think the available sensor technology
is sufficient if appropriate software were
available to achieve the hard levels of per-
ception and situational awareness, to be at
least as good as that of human drivers or
better.”
Beyond the market for software engi-
neers, there will be business technology
enterprises that help cater smart cars to
“If you want to go to a supermarket, your vehicle’s navi-gation system should show you the supermarkets that are accessible within a specified time or at a specified cost, and will be open when you get there. Furthermore, you can sometimes avoid a trip if opening times, availability of stock, best local prices and so on are known ahead of time.”
This, of course, opens the possibility of advertisements that would appear alongside these results.
“The combination of sophisticated road and parking space markets with urban search and location-based advertising opens up the possibility of some interesting new business models for personal urban mobility,” they write. “Currently, the responsibility for identifying destinations and paying for travel to them rests primarily with drivers. In the future, ad-vertisers might take over much more of that responsibility.”
In the end, Finkelstein says it’s difficult to decisively say where all these new jobs might originate or how many may arise in this new industry.
”It’s hard to determine the ultimate impacts of the new tech-nology on the industry and on society in general,” Finkel-stein says.
the consumer market. For example, Fin-
kelstein believes that smart cars will make
it unnecessary for most people to own
their own vehicles. As a result, services
that allow drivers to summon driverless
or driver-optional cars via cell phone or a
predetermined schedule may evolve, and
they will need employees to staff these new
companies.
“The enterprises dealing with mainte-
nance and retrofitting of these vehicles
will involve all sorts of jobs,” Finkelstein
says. “[Also,] transporting jobs across the
country with these sorts of vehicles with
convoying, there will be different kinds of
trucking and transport.” n
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 33
Roadtrainspotting
BYMAGNUSBENNETTDriving in often-clogged European traf-
fic may get easier in the near future,
as drivers may be able to relax and let
someone else take the wheel for a while
without ever getting off the road.
European researchers say they have suc-
cessfully tested technology that they hope
will pave the way for vehicles that can drive
themselves in “road trains” on European
freeways within a decade.
The European Union-financed Safe Road
Trains for the Environment (Sartre) proj-
ect carried out the first successful dem-
onstration of its autonomous vehicle
“platooning” technology in wintry condi-
tions at the Volvo proving ground, close to
Gothenburg, Sweden, in December.
During the demonstration, a lead truck
guided a Volvo S60 around the country
Hellisdrivingwithotherpeople.AtechnologyconsortiuminEuropeistryingtochangethatwithitsSARTREprogram.
road test track without any input from
the car’s driver. The lead vehicle wireless-
ly controlled the Volvo’s speed, distance
and steering. This was the first time the
Sartre development teams had tested
their systems together in the real world —
previous testing had been done on simula-
tors.
GettingSartreontheroadSartre, whose goal is in part to help tackle
Europe’s heavily congested road networks,
is being funded by the European Com-
mission, which is contributing 3.8 mil-
lion euros (US $5.2 million) toward the
total budget of 6.4 million euros (US $8.8
million).
The project is being led by British engineer-
ing consultants Ricardo UK in collabora-
tion with Idiada and Robotiker-Tecnalia of
Sartre’s first road train: A Volvo follows a lead truck outside Göteborg,Sweden, December 2010. All images courtesy Volvo Car Corp.
Reading and drinking
coffee while driving? Not
a problem as long as some
other vehicle is driving.
Spain, Institut for Kraftfahrwesen Aachen
(IKA) of Germany, SP Technical Research
Institute of Sweden, Volvo Car Corpora-
tion and Volvo Technology of Sweden.
In the first demonstration since the start
of the three-year project in 2009, the
lead vehicle — a Volvo automated safety
34 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Sartre— continued from page 33
truck — was fitted with a mouthful of
acronyms in the form of a range of safety
systems including ESP (Electronic Stabil-
ity Program), LKS (Lane Keeping Sup-
port), DAS (Driver Alert Support), LCS
(Lane Change Support) and ACC (Adap-
tive Cruise Control).
Tom Robinson, project director of intel-
ligent transport systems for Ricardo, de-
scribes the first demonstrations as a “ma-
jor milestone” for the European research
program, adding that Sartre is “making
tangible progress towards the realization
of safe and effective road train technol-
ogy.”
He tells Mission Critical that the demon-
stration focused on testing the control and
sensor system, while also assessing the first
iteration of the HMI (human-machine
interface).
“Issues such as longitudinal and lateral
string stability have been assessed with
the two vehicles,” he says. “Vehicles were
driven up to 40 kilometers per hour
[26.8 miles per hour] with a gap size of
10 meters [10.9 yards].
“Both a ‘join’ and ‘leave’ maneuver were
also tested,” he says. “The testing was suc-
cessful, and we gathered sufficient infor-
mation to enable further development to
continue.”
Erik Coelingh, engineering specialist at
Volvo Cars, said his company is pleased to
see the various systems work so well to-
gether the first time.
“After all, the systems come from seven
Sartre member companies in four coun-
The EU project Sartre is testing a technology for vehicles that can drive themselves in long road trains on motorways. This technology has the potential to im-prove traffic flow and journey times, offer greater comfort to drivers, reduce accidents, and improve fuel consumption and hence lower CO2 emissions.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 35
tries,” he says. “The winter weather pro-
vided some extra testing of cameras and
communication equipment.”
SecuringsafetysystemsSome of the safety systems used in the
demonstration were developed by various
E.U.-financed research projects, such as
Have-it and Intersafe-2.
Project leaders at Have-it (Highly auto-
mated vehicles for intelligent transport)
will be demonstrating their “radically new
approach” to highly automated driving in
Sweden in June.
The 27.7 million euro (US $37.85 mil-
lion) project, which is being coordinated
by Siemens VDO Automotive of Germany
in cooperation with academics and com-
panies from seven European countries,
has developed a step-by-step-approach
to transferring driving tasks back from
an automated system to the driver instead
of just switching off an ADAS (Advanced
Driver Assistance System) in the event of
an impending critical situation.
Meanwhile, the 6.5 million euro (US $8.9
million) Intersafe-2 project, coordinated
by Ibeo Automobile Sensor of Germany,
has been developing a Cooperative Inter-
section Safety System (CISS), which re-
searchers say will be able to significantly
reduce injury and fatal accidents at inter-
sections by using advanced onboard sen-
sors for object recognition and relative
localization.
HoponthetrainSartre has set itself a wide set of goals
for its autonomous driving project — to
improve traffic flows and journey times,
offer greater comfort to drivers, reduce
accidents and lower CO2 emissions by im-
proving fuel consumption.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Vehicles
are outfitted with a navigation system and
a transmitter/receiver unit. Drivers who
want to join up with a road train state
their destination and the navigation sys-
tem directs them to the nearest road train.
The car joins the rear of the train and the
lead vehicle takes control of the car, allow-
ing the car’s driver to read, sleep, relax, do
anything but worry about driving.
The lead vehicle would be able to take
control over the acceleration, braking and
steering of between six and eight vehicles
behind it via a platoon sensor envelope
that collates information. That informa-
tion would be presented to the lead vehicle
so it can understand what is happening
around all the vehicles.
Project leaders say the lead vehicle, which
could be a taxi, a bus or a truck, would be
driven by an experienced driver who is
thoroughly familiar with the route.
When it’s time to peel off from the road
train, the car’s driver regains control and
continues on his or her way by exiting off
to the side. The other vehicles in the road
train would close the gap and continue on
their way until the convoy splits up.
The project is mainly aimed at commut-
ers facing long journeys, allowing them
to read a newspaper, use a laptop or even
watch TV when driving to or from work.
As the autonomous system is being built
into the platooning vehicles themselves,
Reading and drinking coffee while driving? Not a problem as long as some other vehicle is driving. In a road train the cars are driving autonomously behind the truck. This technology could free time for the driver, improve safety and decrease the environmental load.
Sartre has set itself a wide
set of goals for its autono-
mous driving project — to
improve traffic flows and
journey times, offer greater
comfort to drivers, reduce
accidents and lower CO2
emissions by improving fuel
consumption.
36 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Sartre— continued from page 35
researchers say there will be no need to
extend the infrastructure along existing
road networks.
That, they argue, will prove a cheaper
option, because a system that involved
wiring up road networks with sensors
to help control the road trains would be
prohibitively expensive.
The Volvo Truck Corp. tells Mission Criti-
cal that safety is “a key issue.
“With the lead vehicle driven by a profes-
sional driver using a truck equipped with
cutting-edge safety features to support the
driver, we secure high safety for the entire
road train,” Volvo spokeswoman Jenny
Bjorsne says. “In addition — in the future
vision of road trains — the professional
driver of a lead vehicle will most likely
have additional training to ensure they
understand particular issues with road
trains.”
But the project partners accept there are
still significant safety and legislative hur-
dles to overcome — as well as public per-
ception issues — as they move forward.
Speaking ahead of the Swedish demon-
stration, Robinson tells Mission Critical, “A
particular example of acceptability is the
inter-vehicle gap size, which the initial re-
sults indicate is larger than we would want
to implement. As people become familiar
and more confident with the system, then
they will accept a smaller gap size.” In
other words, no tailgating until people get
used to it.
Robinson also points out that legal issues
will have to be taken into account. If pla-
tooning takes hold, things that are now
illegal, such as texting while driving, will
someday be encouraged.
“A serious consideration of the project
is legislation and how this may affect the
uptake of Sartre platooning,” he says. “The
program has an aim to allow following
vehicle drivers to undertake other activi-
ties such as operate a phone or laptop, and
these at present would be considered ille-
gal. The program is investigating the leg-
islative issues, will consider these in the
design and will also be discussing these
with relevant government stakeholders.”
AworldwithroadtrainsIn the meantime, Sartre’s partners are
stressing the benefits of the platooning
concept, which they say could be “signifi-
cant.”
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 37
They estimate that, compared with cars
being driven individually, the fuel con-
sumption saving for high-speed operation
of road trains will be in the region of 20
percent, depending on vehicle spacing and
geometry. Their argument is that as vehi-
cles in a train would be close to each other,
they would be able to exploit the resultant
lower air drag.
They also argue that accidents caused by
driver action and driver fatigue will be
reduced, and better use of road capacity
means that journey times can be reduced.
On its website, the Sartre project further
claims that for users of the technology,
“the practical attractions of a smoother,
more predictable and lower-cost journey
which offers the opportunity of additional
free time will be considerable.”
But the question remains what will hap-
pen after the end of this three-year project,
which is due to wind up in 2012. Ricardo
has pointed out that the concept is unlikely
to lead to a sudden switch to autonomous
driving on Europe’s freeways.
“Technically Sartre platooning could be
ready for rollout in 10 years,” Robinson
says. “Given the potential legislative is-
sues, it is more likely that incremental or
interim solutions — using knowledge and
technology from Sartre — will be offered,
such as platooning in dedicated lanes.”
But some observers in the United King-
dom remain to be convinced by the prac-
ticality of the project.
“To be quite honest, I am very skeptical
as to whether it is of practical relevance,”
road transport expert professor Colin
Bamford of Huddersfield University in
England tells Mission Critical. “The sheer
volume of traffic on all U.K. motorways
and elsewhere, is that I really cannot see
it working.
“A major consideration in the U.K. is that
the mass transit alternatives are not attrac-
tive for most road users,” he continued.
“There could be more potential for freight
services, where say one lane on a motor-
way is designated for freight only vehicles.
Even then I remain very dubious.”
Others said they will watch how the Sartre
project unfolds before reaching a conclu-
sion.
Truck haulage companies say the concept
is not entirely new, but they have no objec-
tion to the concept in principle.
As a car in the road train reaches the junction at which it needs to leave the highway, its driver retakes control and moves away from the convoy, which then closes the space vacated. Everyone else can continue eating, drinking, reading or talking on the phone.
38 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
Sartre— continued from page 37
“Mercedes-Benz proposed something
similar more than a decade ago for 40-ton
trucks and, as I recall, the regulatory ob-
stacles were considered to be quite as chal-
lenging as the technical issues,” says Jack
Semple, director of policy for the U.K.’s
Road Haulage Association (RHA). “At that
stage, there was no European Commis-
sion backing that I am aware of. This lat-
est project is led by companies, including
Volvo and Ricardo, which also have global
reach and reputation.
“The RHA would be interested to learn
more in due course,” he continues. “There
may be a range of traffic management op-
tions, and the fuel savings proposed are
clearly attractive. In 10 years’ time, they
may be all the more so.”
He adds, “Road safety would be one of
several concerns, but I can think of little
reason, in principle, for the RHA to op-
pose such technology, assuming it can be
shown to be reliable and introduced in a
way that haulers had access to it regardless
of company/fleet size.”
Road safety campaigners say they would
like to see a full evaluation of the safety as-
pects of the system.
Ellen Booth, campaigns officer for U.K.
road safety charity Brake, says, “As with all
new road technology, safety must be ab-
solutely paramount. This technology is in
its infancy, so we have yet to see what the
potential pitfalls could be.” Brake would
like to see a full-scale evaluation of the
safety impact of such a system in compa-
rable conditions to those it would face on
the road.
“Although human factors are undoubtedly
important in crashes, there may be other
risks associated with joining or exiting a
platoon, with technology failure or with
the magnification of any risks associated
with the driver heading up the platoon,”
she adds.
The project leaders say Sartre-developed
technology could “most likely” go into
production in a few years’ time. But, as
they readily accept, it could take substan-
tially longer to win public acceptance and
secure legislation, because 25 European
governments would be required to pass
similar laws for the concept to become a
reality.
In the meantime, the Sartre road train
rolls on.
The project leaders plan further tests
throughout 2011, introducing new chal-
lenges such as faster speeds, shorter inter-
vehicle distances and more vehicles.
The demonstrations will also feature more
complex platoon strategies, including
handling a platoon that is approaching a
slower vehicle.
“These tests are likely to be carried out to
different degrees at test tracks in Goth-
enburg and the U.K.,” says Volvo’s Jenny
Bjorsne. “In 2012 we will be starting as-
sessment, where we are seeking to assess
the actual benefits to platoon users. These
will be carried out by [private test circuit
owners] Idiada on a test track in Spain and
hopefully will include a demonstration of
the system operating on a public highway
in Spain.
“The project will continue evaluation of
technologies and identify problems to
solve,” she says. “In fact, a big part of the
project is to find and identify disadvan-
tages. One of them might be that very long
road trains can block exits to slipways for
other vehicles, and we recognize this and
are seeking to identify an appropriate
length of platoon.” n
Magnus Bennett is a journalist currently workingwiththeBBCintheUnitedkingdom.
Erik Coelingh, Volvo Cars, project leader for Sartre road train project.
The project leaders say
Sartre-developed technology
could “most likely” go into
production in a few years’
time. But … it could take
substantially longer to win
public acceptance…
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 39
Pop Culture Corner
kITT,keepyourscannerspeeled!Of all Hollywood’s driverless car concepts,
none was more tricked out than KITT,
the car with a mind of its own on the
1980s series “Knight Rider,” starring David
Hasselhoff, who tired of having to wear
so many clothes and went on to star in
“Baywatch.”
In real life a $100,000 souped-up Pontiac
TransAm, KITT — or Knight Industries
Two Thousand — could interact with
humans with technologies like a voice
synthesizer to speak, an anamorphic equal-
izer that used fiber optics to let it see and
even sensors that allowed the car to smell
its environment.
KITT was controlled by an artificial intel-
ligence system, Alpha Circuit, that acted
as a communication link between the
car’s CPU and controls. Microscanners let
KITT detect what was around it — essen-
tially an all-directions lidar. The thing was
even equipped with flame throwers. One
technology on KITT that likely will never
make it to the streets — its onboard fax
machine.
NBC tried again with “Knight Rider” in
2008, with KITT voiced by Val Kilmer,
but the TV show was short-lived.
The only non-German car the country is jealous of — David Hasselhoff with KITT from a “Knight Rider” screenshot.
Engineers aren’t always behind new technologies we see. Hollywood generates plenty of new gadgets and ideas on its own, some of which eventually work their way into the hands of the public.
While not all good ideas, here are some of the concepts from the big and small screen of how life will look with intelligent vehicles.
‘MinorityReport’“Minority Report’s” vision of 2054 Wash-
ington, D.C., is truly a thing of science fic-
tion: no traffic.
No accidents either — in the future,
according to this Steven Spielberg film
based on a Philip K. Dick short story, cars,
called Meg-Levs, will run on a magnetic
three-axis grid. Suspended in place by
magnets, the cars are able to drive in urban
areas at speeds up to 100 mph on roads
and up and down the sides of buildings.
The cars and pods
featured in the
film were the
work of Harald
Belker, creator of
the 1997 version of the Bat-
mobile, who was tasked
by Spielberg to make
a series of futuristic
Lexus car and per-
sonal transit pod
concepts.
“A lot of thought went into the Mag-Lev
vehicle, and we were designing the whole
system parallel with it,” Belker said in an
interview with Car Design News. “The goal
was to design an individual mass-trans-
portation system using a custom capsule
that would transport you anywhere within
the system.”
Belker isn’t only a movie car concept mak-
er. He previously worked at Mercedes-
Benz on its Smart car project, now in pro-
duction.
40 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
PopCultureCorner— continued from page 39
Carswithmindsoftheirown?Thehorror!Not every depiction of autonomous
vehicles is in an awesome futuristic world.
Many portrayals are of creepy, spooky
or outright horrifying automobiles that
torment their owners.
Stephen King has actually written two
novels about terror-reigning cars. In his
1983 novel “Christine,” a 1958 Plymouth
Fury with a history of being at the scene
of horrific crimes and incidents comes
under a new owner, who then starts expe-
riencing his own slew of terrors. Christine
eventually drives herself around town,
committing murders and repairing herself
so her owner doesn’t suspect a thing.
In 2002, King revisited the topic in
“From a Buick 8,” about a mysterious car
that can heal itself and possibly serves as
The cus-
tomized
1971 Lin-
coln Con-
t i n e n t a l
Mark III,
designed
by origi-
nal Bat-
m o b i l e r
George Baris,is just flat-out
murderous, hunting down
people in a desert town. The
film has an 18 percent rating
on Rotten Tomatoes.
The 1974 TV movie “Killdoz-
er” featured a bulldozer that
develops a mind of its own.
Like King’s nightmares on
wheels, Killdozer isn’t autonomous due to
technology. In this case, the vehicle is pos-
sessed by an alien entity. The movie was
based on a story by legendary writer Theo-
dore Sturgeon, who probably left it off his
resume. n
an entrance between
worlds.
In an episode of
“The Twilight Zone”
called “You Drive,”
a man is involved in
a hit-and-run acci-
dent. After fleeing the
scene, he learns the
boy has died. After the in-
cident, his vehicle takes on
a mind of its own, driving
him to the location of the
accident when he doesn’t
intend to head there. On
a rainy night, the car runs
down the man, who has
taken to walking every-
where. Before it hits him,
it slows and opens the door. The
man, riddled with guilt, drives to the
police station and confesses to the mur-
der.
In 1977 film “The Car,” James Brolin
possesses a car with supernatural powers.
Herbie,fullyhumanBoth a TV show and a seemingly end-
less series of movies from Disney, Herbie
is still so popular that there are meet-up
groups for Volkswagen Beetle owners that
have designed their car to look just like the
original.
The anthropomorphic vehicle has been
seen onscreen since the late 1960s with
everyone from Buddy Hackett to Lindsay
Lohan.
Originally portrayed in “Herbie the Love
Bug,” Herbie’s owner — a racecar driver
with a failing career — realizes the car has
a mind of its own and a need for speed.
While not as technologically thought-
out as KITT, Herbie was distinct for it’s
human characteristics — producers say
they picked the Beetle because it was the
only car they wanted to pet. The high-
est grossing film of 1969, Herbie’s lifelike
quality earned it the first ever car credit in
=a film.
The latest incarnation, “Herbie: Fully
Loaded” grossed more than $144 million.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 41
technology Gap
In a sense, a move to intelligent transpor-
tation is a return to the horse.
“The Westerns that showed the cowboy
calling to his horse to pick him up, and
then falling onto it and being taken where
he needed to go even while asleep in the
saddle, present a powerful idea that was
lost when the automobile took over,” au-
thors William J. Mitchell, Christopher
E. Borroni-Bird and Lawrence D. Burns
write in their 2010 book, “Reinventing the
Automobile.”
Much of the work being done to realize an
intelligent transportation system is aimed
at regaining that capability — we’d have
vehicles we can talk to and that can com-
municate with each other and which can
perform some tasks autonomously. And
they probably won’t smell quite as much.
But what still needs to be done to accom-
plish this? While much of the technology
is present in some form, it needs to be bet-
ter, cheaper and applied in some standard-
ized way.
Power systems: Critical, obviously. Au-
thors Mitchell, Borroni-Bird and Burns
say electric-drive vehicles are required to
make this whole idea work. They call for
remaking “automotive DNA,” starting
with vehicles powered by batteries or fuel
cells. “With this new DNA, our vehicles
will be electric drive, fueled by electricity
and hydrogen, electronically controlled,
and will function as nodes in a connected
transportation network,” they write.
Needed are better batteries, or, more likely,
fuel cells. “Only the hydrogen fuel cell op-
tion promises to combine the range and
refueling-time convenience of conven-
tional family-sized vehicles with the en-
ergy and environmental benefits of pure
battery-powered vehicles,” they write.
Sensors: They’re pretty good but not very
affordable.
The U.S. Army’s Convoy Active Safety
Technology (CAST) program has created
bolt-on kits that can allow vehicles to fol-
low a leader vehicle, brake in synchronic-
ity and detect and avoid obstacles, but they
cost around $30,000 per vehicle and “even
that’s too expensive,” James Overholt, di-
rector of the Joint Center for Robotics at
U.S. Army Research and Development
Command (RDECOM)-Tank Automotive
Research Development and Engineering
Center (TARDEC), tells Mission Critical.
“But I can say with a good deal of confi-
Back to the future? Horses were the original intelligent transportation systems. Future cars and trucks may be more like them.
NotaseasyasitsoundsBacktothehorse?
42 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
TechnologyGap— continued from page 41
dence that we’re pretty good at operating
in benign environments without a lot of
people around on unstructured roadways.
We can do that.” Adding in moving people
and objects gets more difficult. However,
the private sector is doing some amazing
things with sensors these days, he says.
Greg Kruger, intelligent transportation
systems manager for the state of Michigan
Department of Transportation, agrees on
the cost issue for hardware. “This cannot
be expensive,” he said at a 2009 gathering
of intelligent vehicle experts. “This cannot
significantly affect the cost of a vehicle.”
Mercedes-Benz tech officials Luca Delgros-
si and Christina Coplen also site sensors as
a key area. “You can do a lot with sensors.
… The art of it really is getting down to a
sensor fusion and a software set that can
fit on a very small package that you can
put into multiple vehicles,” Coplen said
at the AUVSI Great Lakes Chapter’s 2010
Autonomous Drive, Connected Vehicle
and Robotics Workshop.
Networkstandards: Vehicles that can talk
aren’t much good if they can’t commu-
nicate with each other regardless of what
company built them. The U.S. Department
of Transportation is working with a variety
of industry partners on vehicle-to-vehicle
(V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I)
communications, which must function for
both a sleek new car and an old but retro-
fitted truck. “Interoperability is critical to
the effectiveness of V2V safety systems,”
the DOT says.
It can’t just be the signals, either. The “Re-
inventing the Automobile” authors note
that interoperability standards are also re-
quired for “connection to charging infra-
structure and electric grids and hardware
interfaces among crucial components and
subsystems.” Plug and play: not just for
your computer anymore.
Publicdesire: You can lead people to a bet-
ter horse, but you can’t make them ride.
Michigan DOT’s Kruger says public aware-
ness will be one key enabler for intelligent
transportation. Good design — actually
having cool new cars — is one way to get
there, say the “Reinventing the Automo-
bile” authors. “To succeed on a large scale,
future vehicles must have the look and feel
of a new and desirable kind of product.
Nobody thinks of an iPod as a shrunken
home stereo system, and nobody should
be left with the impression that an intel-
ligent electric-drive vehicle is a dull but
worthy ‘econobox.’” n
To read “Reinventing the Automobile,” scan this barcode with yoursmartphone.
To see a video of MIT’s proposed City Car, scan this barcode with yoursmartphone.
It will take a lot of work to reach the day when conveyances such as this experimental vehicle, developed by Segway, General Motors and SAIC, frequent the roadways. Photo courtesy Segway.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 43
Uncanny Valley
The commercial starts ominously, with a
car approaching through a tunnel.
“Hands-free driving,” says a deep male
voice. “Cars that park themselves. An auto-
mated car driven by a search-engine com-
pany. We’ve seen that movie. It ends with
robots harvesting our bodies for energy.”
The car speeds up and the announcer
informs us it’s the 2011 Dodge Charger,
“leader of the human resistance.” The
Charger then speeds out of the tunnel
toward presumably non-automated free-
dom. So this vehicle is some kind of tech-
nology-free throwback? Not exactly.
The Charger comes equipped with Ucon-
nect, a screen-based system that controls
all entertainment and vehicle settings. One
option is Sirius satellite radio travel link,
which includes weather, fuel prices, sports
and movie listings along the way “to make
every trip more efficient.” All of that is
controlled by the driver, of course, and so
doesn’t invalidate the car’s seeming fear of
electronics.
But the Charger also comes equipped
with an electronic stability control system,
which detects when a vehicle is starting to
spin and “attempts to correct the vehicle’s
course by automatically controlling the
throttle and applying the brakes on in-
dividual wheels,” according to Dodge. It
does that by working with the car’s anti-
lock brake system, another safety devices
that enhances driver control by taking
some of it away. That system is standard
on all models of the Charger. One option
is the adaptive cruise control, which gives a
warning when another car gets too close.
So the Charger, far from being an elec-
tronics-free stripper model, has many up-
to-date driver-assist features that people
expect of a modern car (though it does not
seem to park itself).
“Americans … love driving their cars; I
don’t think you’ll get away from that, but
I think we’ll be able to provide much safer
cars,” says James Overholt, the director of
the Joint Center for Robotics at U.S. Army
Research and Development Command
(RDECOM)-Tank Automotive Research
Development and Engineering Center
(TARDEC). “The technology is there that
now will take some of the so-to-speak driv-
ing functions out of the hands of the users,
potentially in emergency situations.”
Overholt says safety, and demonstrating
that safety, is key to integrating this tech-
nology into civilian and military vehicles,
but it makes sense economically, too. He
asks a question: What percentage of a gal-
lon of gas goes to moving a 3,000-pound
car carrying a 150-pound human?
“One percent. One percent of a gallon
of gas goes toward actually moving the
human being. Seventy-five percent is lost
in heat, so you’re left with 25 percent and
now you’ve got to distribute that and
when you do the math it comes down
to 1 percent. As engineers, we should be
ashamed of that. Even 2 to 3 percent, the
savings would be enormous,” he says. “If
you can start getting into vehicles that are
intelligent, you can start avoiding acci-
dents; much of the vehicle weight is given
up in providing protection for the soft,
squishy things in the frame … so if you
can start avoiding accidents you can start
taking weight out, and if you can start tak-
ing weight out you can start taking parts
out. So there’s this whole cascading effect
that happens once you start implementing
intelligent technology.”
The two most powerful obstacles to the
greater use of unmanned systems and ro-
botics are “safety and public acceptance,”
says Michael Toscano, president and CEO
of AUVSI.
With cars, however, the world has shown
it is willing to accept risk when the reward
is so obvious. In the years since Henry
Ford introduced the Model T, tens of
thousands have died each year, and now
“there are six million accidents a year, just
in the U.S., and those six million acci-
dents cost us over $230 billion in medical
costs,” Toscano says. If you asked a person
in 1908 — the year the Model T was first
produced — if they would be willing to
accept technology that would revolution-
ize the world and increase human mobility
to an unprecedented scale but along with
it would come tens of thousands of deaths
each year and billions in medical costs, the
answer might well be no.
But because cars proved themselves over
time, the answer now is yes. But it should
have anti-lock brakes and traction control.
And, if it could park itself, that would be
nice. n
Who’s afraid of hands-free driving?
To watch the DodgeCharger commercial, scan this barcode with your smartphone.
44 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
timeline
AutomatedSystemsinMercedesBenzMercedes-Benz is one of the few carmakers in the world whose roots extend to the dawn of the automobile era. Its early efforts were very much of the “horseless carriage” variety of transportation, but the world’s oldest automaker has steadily introduced or advanced many of the safety technologies that are bringing us to the era when cars not only move their passengers, they protect them. Here’s a timeline of where Mercedes-Benz — and the rest of the automobile industry — has been regarding safety innovations.
1886: Gottleib Dalmer, one of the founders
of Mercedes-Benz, invents a horseless carriage. That same year, Daimler, Benz and Maybach independently develop
the internal combustion engine.
1894: Carl Benz creates his first production car, the Benz
Velo, which raced in the first recorded Paris-Rouen race.
1924: Mercedes-Benz cars are the first to have brakes on all four
wheels.
1950s: Mercedes-Benz opens U.S. dealerships and forms Mercedes-Benz
USA.
1954: Mercedes Benz introduces the
300SL car to the market. It was the fastest car of its time, and the first car to use gasoline direct injection
for power.
1951: The company introduces the safety
cage concept, which includes “crumple zones” to minimize
harm to passengers in accidents.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 45
All photos courtesy Mercedes-Benz.
1980s: A team from Bundeswehr
University of Munich equips a Mercedes van with sensors to create VaMoRs, a self-driving
robotic van.
1987: Mercedes-Benz introduces its traction control system, which keeps cars from skidding by taking over
some vehicle braking and acceleration control.
1995: A retooled Mercedes-
Benz S-Class car drives from Munich to
Copenhagen and back, at times reaching
109 mph.
2002: Mercedes-Benz launches Pre-SAFE systems in cars. Pre-SAFE detects potential accident scenarios in
advance and triggers preventive measures to the vehicle and driver
for a potential impact.
2005: Mercedes-Benz introduces DISTRONIC PLUS and brake-assist plus technologies to its S-Class vehicles. DISTRONIC PLUS keeps the car a set distance behind the
vehicle in front, applies the brakes as required and can even bring the car to a complete halt, depending on the traffic situation. If the gap to the vehicle in front narrows too quickly, the system gives the driver an audible warning and, as soon as this first warning signal sounds, automatically calculates
the brake pressure required to prevent a collision in this situation.
2006: Mercedes-Benz puts
DISTRONIC PLUS and brake-assist plus in its
CL-Class vehicles.
2008: Mercedes-Benz introduces Attention Assist technology, which detects when drivers become drowsy and alerts
them to take a break.
2010: Mercedes-Benz’s CL-class vehicles include Active Lane-Keeping Assist and Active Blind Spot Assist. These new
innovations are part of the two dozen driver-assist programs that Mercedes-Benz installs in CL-class vehicles.
46 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
testing, testing
It wasn’t a university or a traditional ro-
botics company that grabbed the nation-
al spotlight last year for its autonomous
car testing. It was that all-encompassing
Internet giant Google that paved the way,
outfitting a Toyota Prius with autonomous
car technology and taking matters into
its own hands, driving up and down the
California coast to test it.
Google outwardly admitted to what some
autonomous car geeks only whisper to
others when in good company: If you put
a guy behind the wheel of an autonomous
car, you can test away — no permits, no
sectioned off road, no fuss at all.
“Safety has been our first priority in this
project,” says Sebastian Thurn, a software
engineer at Google, on the company’s
blog. “Our cars are never unmanned. We
always have a trained safety driver behind
the wheel who can take over as easily as
one disengages cruise control. And we also
have a trained software operator in the
passenger seat to monitor the software.
“Any test begins by sending out a driver
in a conventionally driven car to map the
route and road conditions,” he continues.
“By mapping features like lane markers
and traffic signs, the software in the car be-
comes familiar with the environment and
its characteristics in advance. And we’ve
briefed local police on our work.”
AdriverlessMountainViewGooglegetsinontheautonomouscaractioninCalifornia
Google drove autonomous Toyota Priuses up and down the California coast, clocking in more than 140,000 miles behind the wheel. Photo courtesy Google.
From the Googleplex in Mountain View,
Calif., to Santa Monica, down San Fran-
cisco’s ski-able Lombard Street, across the
Golden Gate bridge, breezing down the
PCH, day tripping to Lake Tahoe, Google’s
autonomous car joyride reads like a bur-
geoning band’s first West Coast tour
itinerary. More than 140,000 miles later,
Google accomplished what the company
calls a robotics first.
Though it wasn’t a first for their engi-
neers. Google gathered some of the best
and brightest from the DARPA Challenges
and tasked them with the feat. Chris Urm-
son, technical team leader from Carnegie
Mellon in 2007; Mike Montemarlo, soft-
ware lead on the winning 2005 Stanford
Grand Challenge team; and Anthony Le-
vandowski, autonomous motorcycle and
pizza delivery expert, all worked for the
“Don’t be evil” company in securing a
place in autonomous car history.
The goal for Google: cut down on the
1.2 million lives lost in traffic accidents
every year.
“We believe our technology has the
potential to cut that number, perhaps by
as much as half,” says Thurn. “We’re also
confident that self-driving cars will trans-
form car sharing, significantly reducing
car usage, as well as help create the new
‘highway trains of tomorrow.’”
Not to mention the 52 minutes a day spent
commuting, says Thrun, citing a U.S. De-
partment of Transportation stat.
“Imagine being able to spend that time
more productively.”
Fifty-two minutes is, after all, quite a few
cat videos on the company’s YouTube. nThe guts of Google’s car. Photo courtesy Google.
Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011 47
End Users
Robert Finkelstein’s career in unmanned
systems spans more than 40 years and
includes a stint on the board of AUVSI.
But it wasn’t until a conference on robot-
ics in the 1980s that his focus moved from
unmanned systems in military operations
to civilian life.
“I got an epiphany that unmanned ve-
hicles, remotely piloted vehicles, etc. were
robots,” Finkelstein says. “I never thought
of it in that sense before and neither did
most people. They weren’t called robots
typically back then at all.”
Now, as president of Robotic Technology
Inc., he’s taking unmanned systems to the
streets, literally, with the Transportation
Technology Transfer Initiative, or T3I. The
project, co-sponsored by AUVSI, aims to
help introduce driver-optional or driver-
less cars to American roads in the next 10
to 15 years.
“I think by 2020, you should be able to
buy a hands-free or driver-optional car
for general purpose use that will be able
to recognize pedestrians, stop signs, traf-
fic signals and so on in relatively complex
environments,” Finkelstein says.
Much of the technology that will serve
as a gateway to these “smart cars” already
exists. Modern technologies such as GPS,
EZ-Pass and OnStar were in their nascent
developmental stages just 20 years ago.
Specifically, the introduction of automat-
ed cruise control to vehicles started to ease
some of the burden of driving — the driver
only has to focus on steering, while his feet
remain free. According to Finkelstein, this
technology became successful because of
a “demand pull on the technology, not
just a technology push”— the cost to man-
ufacture the technology dropped consid-
erably while the end product continued
to increase driver performance. But the
current technologies on the market repre-
sent just a small part of what car buyers
could potentially enjoy.
“It’s not being heavily advertised by the
automotive manufacturers for a variety for
reasons, and it’s not clear to me what all
these reasons are,” Finkelstein says. “Some
things like the automated parking system
RobertFinkelstein
“I think by 2020, you should be able to buy a hands-
free or driver-optional car for general purpose use
that will be able to recognize pedestrians,
stop signs, traffic signals and so on in relatively
complex environments.”
48 Mission CritiCal • Spring 2011
EndUsers— continued from page 47
available in some cars was advertised here,
but for the most part the technology is rel-
atively under the radar, so to speak.”
The next step in bringing smart cars to
the streets involves a convergence of ideas
between the Department of Defense, the
Department of Transportation and the
automotive industry. The Department
of Defense has already introduced nu-
merous driverless systems to its ground
and air forces. More recently, intelligent
vehicle demonstrations like the DARPA
Grand Challenges in 2004 and 2005 and
the Urban Challenge in 2007 showcased
driverless cars and trucks competing on
cross-country terrain and urban streets,
respectively. In the Urban Challenge, un-
manned vehicles had to account for ob-
stacles in the road, including pedestrians.
The next technological step is improving
the “intelligence” of unmanned systems to
make the safe for roads.
“I would call it perception: the ability for
the robot or intelligent vehicle to perceive,
which involves sensing,” Finkelstein says.
“But beyond sensing, not just seeing ob-
jects and knowing that there is an object,
but understanding the significance of the
object and how the robot or intelligent ve-
hicle is supposed to behave in the presence
of that object.”
Finkelstein says he expects unmanned
systems to obtain this level of human-like
cognizance between 2030 and 2050. In the
meantime, General Motors predicts it will
have driverless cars on the market as early
as 2015, but Finkelstein thinks 2020 is a
more realistic goal. By 2025, Finkelstein says
driverless vehicles will have a substantial
foothold in everyday life through services
such as deliveries and interstate trucking.
Ultimately, Finkelstein believes the emer-
gence of smart cars will “virtually elimi-
nate crashes and death and destruction.”
By decreasing wreckage on roadways,
Finkelstein also predicts smart cars will
increase efficiency in road lanes, meaning
drivers can enjoy a more pleasurable and
productive commute.
“Currently people spend an enormous
amount of time while commuting …
doing texting or phoning or putting on
makeup or reading a book or all kinds of
other things, even semi-sleeping, that are
quite dangerous,” Finkelstein says. “Given
that there aren’t a lot of people who enjoy
commuting, having the ability to do other
things … would create a major demand
for the technology when people realize
these benefits, not to mention the greater
efficiency of the commute.”
From an institutional standpoint, put-
ting more efficient smart cars on the road
could mean that local governments don’t
have to spend as much money on new
road construction and road maintenance.
Furthermore, Finkelstein says tech compa-
nies like Google could use their expertise
in software development to go in to the
automotive industry. The introduction of
smart cars to the road will also force the
automotive industry to phase out driver-
controlled cars. Finkelstein says the two
could not co-exist safely on roads and this
gradual elimination of driver-controlled
cars will probably take place in one gen-
eration. After that, driver-controlled cars
won’t be allowed on highways in the same
sense that horse-drawn carriages aren’t
allowed on highways — they would simply
be too dangerous.
“This will also have an adverse effect ini-
tially on all people who make a living driv-
ing,” Finkelstein admits. “The same thing
with trucks, transportation systems and
the like. If you can have vehicles that don’t
need a human driver, then this creates a
problem for current drivers. The advent
of intelligent vehicles will also, though,
create all kinds of other jobs in develop-
ing newer and better software and censors,
instrumentation for the infrastructure and
so on. There will be many new enterprises,
many new goods and services as a conse-
quence of intelligent vehicle technology.”
As these changes progress, T3I will play a
role in examining the consequences of this
new technology, both positive and nega-
tive, for the civilian and military sectors.
“The benefits of this technology once it’s
achieved and perfected will be very com-
pelling,” Finkelstein says. n
“Given that there aren’t a lot of people who enjoy commuting, having the ability to do other things …
would create a major demand for the technology when people realize
these benefits, not to mention the greater efficiency of the commute.”
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