Modelling Control Systems - OTTO’s Self Driving Truck

Case Study on Control SystemsModelling the Worlds First Autonomous Commercial Delivery

1. Introduction One of the main topics discussed in the ENGR110 course was the use of control systems in the world we live in today and how they effect each human personally and how they effect the human race as a whole. Control systems are one of the most influential discoveries of the modern era as they allow a device that would normally need to be controlled or maintained by a human to be fully automated and can sometimes run continuously in a loop with no human interaction. The control system discussed in ENGR110 was a SCARA arm that was to be controlled by a software model created by the students, this system is moderately basic compared to some of the control systems in the current world today but is also a lot more advanced than some other more simple systems. The SCARA arm is however no where near as complicated and advanced as the system being discussed in this report; ‘OTTO, a self-driving vehicle designed exclusively for material transport.’ OTTO is an Uber-owned startup company that focuses on self driving vehicles and have just completed the first ever autonomous commercial delivery of none other than 2,000 cases of chilled Budweiser beer over a 200 kilometre distance. Although OTTO currently specialises in moving products around the manufacturing floor, this project has given the public an insight into the company’s future in self driving trucks. This paper is organised as follows: Section 2 discusses the history and current state of self driving vehicles, section 3 explains the strengths and weaknesses of OTTO’s self driving truck for modelling, section 4 examines the topic in detail and how it was possible to drive over 200 km in a truck with a vacant driver’s seat, section 5 will deal with the Engineering Design Cycle and how it is supported by OTTO’s self driving truck and section 6 will conclude the paper with my opinion of the product and the moral/ethical implications involved impacting the real world.

2. History and Current state of Control Systems in Self Driving Vehicles Self driving vehicles are nothing new, in fact last semester in the class of ENGR101, each student had to make their own version of a self navigating robot. There are examples of self navigating robots all over the tech world and even on our roads, Tesla, Google, Mercedes Benz and Audi are all car companies that are on the cutting edge of their own self driving vehicles. For each of these companies it is a race to find the perfect control system that cuts the risk of human error while driving, OTTO was successful and had a trouble free delivery but others have not been so fortunate. As more and more self driving cars are being released, there are more reports of these cars colliding on the roads, sometimes causing injuries and even death. A long way to go for the self driving car but this is definitely a historic milestone.

3. Strengths/Weaknesses of OTTO’s Product for Modelling As with most control systems, the self driving truck started off as a software model that is constantly changed and debugged in a virtual reality then deployed on hardware to see how the hardware will react to the software. Keeping it in a virtual existence while the product was designed, modelled and tested will save saved serious amounts of time, resources and money. The repercussions from trialling the product in a real life environment could have been fatal and would almost certainly cause some serious damage to not only the truck but to the surroundings in the environment the truck is in. Not until the software model Tom Brown - Victoria University of Wellington ! of !1 3

Modelling Control Systems - OTTO’s Self Driving Truck

in was working to a standard that the engineers were happy with could the model be moved into a real life run. Most control systems are created to run on a piece of hardware and will need to be tested on the hardware used so that the engineer can now how well their software is working, another way of doing this is creating a virtual simulation where there is no risk of damaging hardware or people. It is a very cheap but usually a time consuming alternative. The advantages of using a software simulation is that there is no risk of any loss or injury when the testing fails, the user can always restart and keep working on the code instead of having to fix the product. The main disadvantage is that when transitioning the simulation over to a real life environment, there can be some difficulties and it may take some time to configure how the artificial and genuine realities blend.

4. How? Control systems are very confusing and it is hard to wrap your head around how some lines of code can let a truck navigate itself through traffic while keeping safe distances from cars in front and behind and also changing lanes when necessary without any human interaction. The key is feedback loops, (shown in fig 2.1) feedback loops or control loops are made of a number of sensors, control algorithms and actuators that are all configured and linked so that the control system can visualise the ‘error signal’ that is calculated and use algorithms and set reactions to correct the error and put the system back on track again.

OTTO’s self driving truck uses this idea and has a set up of many sensors and cameras atop each truck giving the control system a perfect view of the road and surroundings of the truck, the picture is then put through certain algorithms that can sense what each piece of the picture represent and give the system a real time, picture perfect, virtual representation of the truck’s environment. From this, the system can calculate the truck’s next move and send an output signal to, in this case, the steering wheel, accelerator or breaks.

5. Engineering Design Cycle The Engineering Design Cycle (EDC, shown in fig 3.1) is a processed that is followed by engineers globally, it was created to allow engineers to follow each step aiming to create some sort of product or design that will meet a certain criteria, accomplish a task or be a solution to a problem. The cycle is designed so that the outcome of the process will be to the highest quality and solve all issues put forward by the situation. All control systems will need most, if not all, sections of the EDC to be created, usually the most important sections needed to create a control system would be Researching, Implementing and Measuring. Tom Brown - Victoria University of Wellington ! of !2 3

Fig 2.1 A very simple feedback loop that will take a certain input from a sensor, put it through the loop where the controllers will react accordingly and create an output for the output devices.- ‘A’ represents the systems and the

controllers on the forward path.- ‘B’ represents the feedback

processing elements of the system.

Modelling Control Systems - OTTO’s Self Driving Truck

Modelling and Communicating are also very important but every control system will need to be researched extensively so the engineer can understand the situation and solution before they start, the system will then need to be implemented and measured over and over again until it is perfected. The system will need to be modelled by deploying the control system onto the hardware or in a simulation and run a certain check list of tasks that the device will have to pass and if all tests are successful then the engineer can move onto the next phase.

6. Why a Control System? For the real world example used in this paper, OTTO’s autonomous truck, a control system is the most feasible solution as the truck will need some kind of driver that can react to real time activity on the roads in a safe and efficient manner. The only other system that could replace a control system is a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can sit in the drivers seat and drive the car in place of a human driver which at the current state of technology is simply impractical. There are infinite factors that would not allow engineers to develop a system like this as the time, cost and resources involved all exceed the amount available. Personally I would have used a control system the evidence backs my claim as the truck’s journey was successful.

7. Conclusion Control systems are extremely advanced and will forever have a major impact on the world of technology, without them the world we live in today would be unimaginably different. They cut out any chance of human error and can be replicated infinite amounts of times on other pieces of hardware which makes the cost of hardware the only cost for making another system after it has been created. OTTO’s self driving truck will shock and scare a lot of people, humans aren't used to seeing trucks driving themselves on roads at speeds exceeding 80km/h. The long term effects of having trucks and cars that drive themselves on our roads are unquestionably beneficial to everyone, even truck drivers. Now the dangerous part of every commercial delivery is cut out as now no truck drivers will fall asleep at the wheel or lose concentration and cross the centre line. Truck drivers will still need to be employed as the self driving truck can not yet drive in residential areas, park or unload/load.

8. References

[1] Otto Home Website. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from https://ot.to/

[2] Deamer, K. (2016, October 27). Robo Beer Run: Self-Driving Truck Delivers Budweiser. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/56660-self-driving-truck-delivers-beer.html

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Fig 3.1The engineering design cycle diagram. With 5 major steps, Researching, Modelling, Implementation, Measuring and Communicating. These are the major steps that are followed by most professional engineers.