Uber and TomTom

Uber and TomTom just inked a partnership.

Think of this as Uber diversifying it’s risks on the margin of mapping. Now Uber partners with Alphabet/Google, Apple, and TomTom.

It also highlights the complicated relationships at the automobile-technology intersection, particularly when it comes to giant companies like Alphabet and Apple.

A few weeks ago, I published a Friends and Enemies matrix, laying out the landscape for autonomous vehicles.

In that Matrix, I marked Uber as friends with Apple and Alphabet/Google.

Maybe that isn’t quite right.

I was thinking largely of Apple and Google as potential autonomous technology suppliers to Uber’s car network.

However, both Apple and Google touch Uber at a several different points, which complicates the relationships between the companies. It’s certainly conceivable that Uber could have a positive relationship with one division of Apple or Google, and an acrimonious and competitive relationship with another division.

Autonomous Driving: All three companies are developing self-driving technology, but for different reasons. Uber is motivated to lower the costs and increase the scalability of its transportation network. Apple is looking to sell vehicles. Google would like to become the operating system of all vehicles.

Mapping: Uber utilizes mapping technology provided by Apple and Google, and now by TomTom, as well. There are also reports of Uber starting its own mapping effort.

Mobile OS: Uber relies exclusively on Apple’s iOS and Alphabet’s Android for Uber customers to hail rides. Ditto for Uber driver apps, which are also where the mapping comes in (at least for now).

There are probably a few other margins along which Google, and maybe Apple, touch Uber. I wouldn’t be surprised if Uber uses Apple Macbooks to do work powered by Google Apps for Business. It makes for very complex relationships.

Also, and like my note about NVIDIA yesterday, it’s a little hard to figure out when to use “Alphabet” and when to use “Google”. Maybe that will clarify over time.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 12, 2015.

NVIDIA Jetson TX1

NVIDIA recently announced the new Jetson TX1 unit.

They bill it as “a supercomputer on a module that’s the size of a credit card”.

NVIDIA is targeting the unit principally at autonomous vehicles, and also medical imaging, which presumably tackles a lot of similar computer vision issues.

The last few years have seen a deceleration in the mobile phone market, as phone manufacturers and app developers have had a harder time figuring out how to improve the smartphone.

I think we will see the converse in the autonomous vehicle market, and the Jetson TX1 is an example of that. In the robotics market, there is a lot more room for improvement, and a greater number of currently-binding technological constraints that can be relaxed.

As a side note, I always waffle on how to spell in NVIDIA, which can appear in the press as “NVIDIA”, “Nvidia”, “nVidia”, or “nVIDIA”. Since NVIDIA’s own website seems to be leaning toward the “NVIDIA” styling, I’ll go with that.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 11, 2015.

Cute Cars

Google’s self-driving cars are getting paint jobs from local artists.

Happy Hump Day.

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Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 11, 2015.

Human-Machine Interaction

In Wired, Alex Davies compares the self-driving approaches of Google and Ford, and finds them philosophically similar.

Davies compares the two companies’ approaches in light of the NHTSA definition of autonomous driving. The NHTSA definition is lengthy, but Wikipedia has a concise summary:

In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed a formal classification system:[9]

Level 0: The driver completely controls the vehicle at all times. Level 1: Individual vehicle controls are automated, such as electronic stability control or automatic braking. Level 2: At least two controls can be automated in unison, such as adaptive cruise control in combination with lane keeping. Level 3: The driver can fully cede control of all safety-critical functions in certain conditions. The car senses when conditions require the driver to retake control and provides a “sufficiently comfortable transition time” for the driver to do so. Level 4: The vehicle performs all safety-critical functions for the entire trip, with the driver not expected to control the vehicle at any time. As this vehicle would control all functions from start to stop, including all parking functions, it could include unoccupied cars.

According to Davies, Level 3 presents significant challenges not present at any other level. Those challenges relate to on-the-fly communication between the driver and the car. Plausibly enough, if the car reaches its limits and needs to pass control to the driver in an emergency, that can be pretty dicey.

Audi says its tests show it takes an average of 3 to 7 seconds, and as long as 10, for a driver to snap to attention and take control, even with flashing lights and verbal warnings.

A lot can happen in that time — a car traveling 60 mph covers 88 feet per second — and automakers have different ideas for solving this problem. Audi has an elegant, logical human machine interface. Volvo is creating its own HMI, and says it will accept full liability for its cars while in autonomous mode.

Google’s opting out of this dilemma. So is Ford.

Perhaps the incrementalist approach is not a winner, after all.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 10, 2015.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Ed Zitron takes to TechCrunch declares self-driving cars “a bloody good idea” that will save many lives.

But:

People like to drive. People crave control. People love banal tasks done for them, but the transfer to a computer of a task that can threaten lives with one wrong turn will take a long time.

I’m even cynical that we’re five years from seeing millions of totally autonomous vehicles legally swamping our cities. It’s an exciting idea, a realistic idea — but the scariest idea in the world to rush.

This reminds me of the debate over whether people like to buy vs. rent music. We had that debate a lot when I was in business school. Some people (notably Steve Jobs) insisted that the failure of Rhapsody proved that consumers want to own their music.

I always thought that debate missed the point.

People like to listen to music. They’re agnostic about buying vs. renting. They choose to buy or rent purely as a mechanism to get the benefit of listening.

And now that renting offers more benefit than buying, sure enough people are renting.

I see the same thing with cars.

People don’t crave control. Nobody I know refuses to fly planes because they can’t sit in the cockpit.

People crave getting to where they want to go. Once self-driving cars can do that as well or better than people-driven cars, the switch will come faster than most of us expect.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 9, 2015.

Will Autonomous Vehicles Kill Digital Radio?

One of the prime locations for listening to radio is the car, which accounts for something like 1/3 to 1/2 of all radio listening hours.

Traditional AM/FM radio is on the decline, but digital radio and podcasts are growing.

The beauty of audio-only formats is that they do not demand full attention — in particular they do not demand any visual attention, which allows us to listen to audio while doing things like drive, clean the dishes, and vacuum the house.

As cars go fully-autonomous (i.e. the driver no longer even needs to pay attention to the road), will people stop listening to digital audio?

The dishes will always be there, but once vehicular transportation no longer demand our visual attention, I suspect people will opt for YouTube over Pandora.

For what it’s worth, I am a big fan of the Slate podcasts.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 6, 2015.

Friend and Enemies

When I was in business school, we did a case on XenSource in which we created a matrix listing the startup’s friends and enemies.

In emerging markets, this is an informative and non-obvious exercise.

In that vein, Forbes announces today that Elon Musk is maybe thinking about launching an Uber-competitor:

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk hinted Tuesday the carmaker may launch its own network of shared autonomous cars for users to borrow on demand, but he cautioned the company is not ready to make a formal announcement.

So let’s work out a preliminary matrix.

Apologies for the poor cut and paste job.

A few things jump out here.

Niche suppliers like MobilEye are friends with everyone.

Startups like Cruise have complicated relationships with everyone, because they are competitors to the same companies that might eventually acquire them.

The relationships status for Uber and Tesla just changed to, “it’s complicated”.

Apple and Tesla have a lot of enemies.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 4, 2015.

More Trolleyology

The Wikipedia entry for the Trolley Problem poses a further interesting question for autonomous vehicles:

there is a single person on the tracks who can be easily saved at the cost of inconveniencing your passengers, and the question is no longer “would you stop”, but “how many people need to be on the trolley for their inconvenience to trump someone else’s life”

Imagine that a vehicle has a choice between mowing down a pedestrian, or swerving and causing a tremendous traffic jam.

My sense is that while these are interesting ethical dilemmas, we can solve a lot of this by falling back on the laws governing human behavior.

Thanks to my brother Adam for an interesting discussion on this topic.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 3, 2015.

Machine Learning

Tesla’s self-driving car is already getting smarter, according to Quartz.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 2, 2015.

Google Is Careful Around Kids

Some heartwarming news from Engadget — Google cars are extra-careful around kids.

Originally published at www.davidincalifornia.com on November 1, 2015.