NHTSA Says Computers are “Drivers”

The Obama administration, and US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, in particular, are huge fans of autonomous vehicles.

So it was nice to see the news that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration views Google’s self-driving cars as legal and safe, even without a human driver.

On a practical level, this seems like a big deal, but I can’t actually pinpoint how this will affect legal and regulatory disputes. My understanding is that most motor vehicle regulation in the US is done at the state level. So when a federal regulator (the NHTSA) and a state regulator (the California DMV) disagree on whether a self-driving car needs a human driver, does the state win?

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 12, 2016.

Google Self-Driving Trucks

Google just received a patent for lockers in self-driving trucks.

Although this is only a patent, it’s not hard to see from here to a place where Google is directly competing with Uber. And maybe FedEx and Amazon, for that matter.

On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that entering this type of business would be a direct departure from Google’s Android strategy. In that business, Google has been content to own the software and let other companies manage the hardware and services that come on top of it.

A third, more trivial, thought, is — do we really need a patent for this? Putting lockers inside of trucks is a neat idea, but it hardly seems like the type of thing that merits a patent. I would hate to see some small startup get squashed because it doesn’t own the patent for putting lockers in a truck.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 12, 2016.

Tesla Updates Its Summon Feature

I once read a magazine article that relayed the First Law of Ice Cream Truck Driving: “Backing up kills kids.”

I don’t know how specific that law is to ice cream trucks, but it is true that thousands of kids die each year from “backovers”.

Which is why it’s great that Tesla’s Summon feature, which retrieves the car from its parking space, might help make backing up safer.

Unfortunately, Consumer Reports noticed several flaws with the feature, which could have put kids lives in danger.

But never fear, Tesla has already fixed them.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 12, 2016.

Could Self-Driving Cars Prevent 95% of All Accidents?

The UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers makes the claim that self-driving cars could prevent 95% of all accidents.

That report seems to be based on the fact that 95% of all accidents are caused by driver error.

Claiming that self-driving cars could prevent all of these accidents seems like a stretch, and certainly the computer drivers will create accidents of their own making.

And it’s possible that self-driving car accidents could be more rare but also more brutal, particularly if autonomous vehicles are able to routinely travel at higher speeds than human drivers.

But even withstanding all of that, it’s clear why auto insurers are nervous.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 12, 2016.

Self-Driving Truck Convoys

The United States Army is experimenting with self-driving trucks, and in a kind of cool way.

They are testing out whether trucks in a convoy can follow a human driver. The Army owns hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and sends big convoys to transport munitions and materials across the country and the world.

The interesting part of this is that maybe the Army can simplify the autonomous vehicle problem by simply having the trucks in the convoy follow a lead human driver.

Chewing on this in my mind, it’s not obvious to me whether this simplifies the autonomous vehicle problem or just morphs it. After all, there are going to be weird corner cases where trucks in the middle of the convoy shouldn’t really follow the truck ahead of them. Does designing for those corner cases simply amount to building a real self-driving car?

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 8, 2016.

Wireless Car Charging

Google recently contracted with Hevo Power and Momentum Dynamics to install wireless car charging pads on its campus, according to engadget.

It sounds like pretty early stages, but apparently the pads are shaped kind of like manhole covers, and they use a technology called resonant magnetic induction to power cars hovering nearby.

It seems pretty early yet, but imagine if this works and entire highways get covered by these types of pads. It might work a little like cellular data — charging just happens in the background, without car owners ever having to think about it.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 8, 2016.

Nannytech

Doug Newcomb at PCMag gushes about “nannytech” — autonomous driver assistance systems that help prevent vehicle accidents without taking over the car completely.

I don’t love the term “nannytech”, but Newcomb’s enthusiasm makes me think he’s on to something:

“But the best thing about the [Audi] Q7’s large collection of driver-assist technologies is the remarkable amount of control the driver has over the systems’ warnings.”

It’s not clear from Newcomb’s piece if the driver control aspect is great because it’s such an improvement of previous systems (think of the incessant seatbelt-warning bells), or because it’s so much better than the fear of turning over the whole car to a computerized driver.

But it’s something to chew on, and it would be interesting to see some stats on just how much safer various “nannytech” technologies make human drivers.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 5, 2016.

Google Cars Heading to Washington

Washington state, that is. For “bad weather” driving experience. As anyone who has been to Seattle knows, they get a lot of rain there.

This seems like a smaller and more natural leap that snow driving. My guess is that snow is relatively rare as a fraction of total miles driven, although certainly not negligible. Rain is common everywhere.

Western Washington state also has mountains with snow a relatively short drive from the Seattle area, so that’s not out of the question, either.

Notably, Washington governor Jay Inslee is welcoming the move, in contrast to California DMV officials who have been notably more cautious about self-driving cars. Federalism in action.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 4, 2016.

Tesla and the Price of Gas

CNN reports that Wall Street is worried about how Tesla will weather record-low gas prices. CNN calls it “Tesla’s worst nightmare”.

Color me unconvinced.

Tesla, even with the Model 3, is not competing on price. They’ve succeeded in building a car that competes on quality and technology and brand.

At the margin they’ll certainly lose a few customers due to a higher total cost of ownership, but I hardly see this as Tesla’s worst nightmare. I think gas could go to $0 and Tesla would still sell a ton of cars.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 4, 2016.

Andrew Ng on Self-Driving Cars

Andrew Ng is a computer science professor at Google, the Chief Scientist at Baidu Research, and, most importantly, he re-taught me Machine Learning recently.

Last Friday, on Quora, he answered the question, “When will self-driving cars be on roads?”

Here’s an excerpt from his response:

I hope we’ll have a large number of vehicles on roads within 3 years, and be mass producing them in 5.

But:

Machine learning is good at getting your performance from 90% accuracy to maybe 99.9%, but it’s never been good at getting us from 99.9% to 99.9999%. I think it is more promising to start with a different goal: A shuttle/bus that can only drive one bus route or just in a small region. If we can make sure that route’s road surface and lane markings are well maintained, that there’s no construction, etc. then we’re within striking distance of making that truly safe. This then lets us slowly add routes and gradually grow the regions in which we can drive safety. This is the approach we’re taking at Baidu; I hope other groups will also adopt this approach.

Read the whole thing. It’s very short, but anything from Andrew Ng is insightful.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on February 3, 2016.