driverless cars

GM Adds More Driverless and Hands-Free Vehicle Options to Country’s Growing List

February 17, 2021 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Driverless cars and hands-free driving technology are coming to the forefront of the transportation industry, and one major manufacturer is now at play.

In San Francisco, driverless cars are being deployed by General Motors’ self-driving car company, which is working toward creating an automated, robotic ride-hailing service–one that would compete with the likes of Uber and Lyft.

Announced December 9th, Cruise will be deploying self-driving cars without the safety of any human behind the wheel. The vehicles will still be closely monitored, however, by employees at remote locations.

This announcement comes two months after GM’s beginning to operate driverless cars–with a person behind the wheel in case of emergency–on California public streets, a state in which many other technology companies have been testing their AV capabilities.

“We believe self-driving has the potential to upend transportation,” said Dan Ammann, CEO of Cruise.

Still, Cruise has yet to deploy ride-hailing service vehicles to pick up passengers on their own, although California regulators have already approved rules to do so.

However, Cruise will be dispatching up to five driverless cars throughout San Francisco, with passengers consisting solely of Cruise employees, initially. When the vehicles were being tested with someone behind the wheel, the only passengers at that time were other employees, as well.

Although there is no clear launch date for Cruise’s driverless ride-hailing service, Ammann assures that Cruise is progressing toward “a commercial product that everyone can use.”

Although Cruise has been working on this driverless technology throughout the last decade, Waymo, of Google, has yet to announce when it would deploy any driverless cars, although it has a permit to do so and has been progressing steadily. Waymo launched its service initially in the Phoenix area in 2018.

Cruise has tested its technology throughout over 2 million miles of self-driving over the last five years to get to where it is today.

Also on the list of recent tech innovations is the GMC Sierra’s hands-free driver assistance feature, Super Cruise. The Sierra pickup is now the highest-volume GM product to be equipped with the award-winning technology, and is now one of many semi-autonomous trucks hitting the market soon, joining the ranks of the Tesla Cybertruck, Ford F-150, and Rivian R1T.

“We’re putting Super Cruise on a Sierra. [It’s] the world’s first true, hands-free, driver-assistance tech available pretty much across the United States,” said Phil Brook, marketing executive for GMC. It won’t “just be in the big cities, [but] in every state because…it’s such a popular vehicle.”

Similar to Super Cruise is Ford’s Active Drive Assist, a hands-free option made available for GMorder on the 2021 Ford F-150, which is scheduled to enter dealer lots in 2021’s third quarter. Super Cruise will be released first on Sierra’s premium Denali trim and can function while towing.

Right now, the market’s leading semi-autonomous systems are those of both Super Cruise and the hands-free Autopilot of Tesla. Super Cruise can only function on divided highways because GM deems that the safest way to utilize it properly.

Super Cruise and Ford’s Active Drive Assist both use infrared lights along with a camera system to make sure a driver is paying adequate attention to the road, and can allow a vehicle to be operated hands-free on divided highways, thanks to its radar sensors and GPS mapping capabilities.

Super Cruise will only intervene and offer consistent alerts if it finds a driver’s eyes are not paying attention to the road ahead.

The Super Cruise option will be also available on higher-trim Cadillac models in 2021, costing around $2,500 on the Cadillac but less on the Sierra. Ford’s system will cost around $1,600 on the F-150 and Mach E. All brands typically charge monthly subscription rates in addition to initial costs.

According to industry analysts, the take-rate of Super Cruise on the Cadillac CT6 was around 30%, and if that number remains consistent with the technology on the Sierra, nearly 70,000 vehicles with hands-free Super Cruise should be present on the road by 2022.

DOT Updates Driverless Car Guidelines

January 31, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

More self-driving cars and trucks will be taking to American highways throughout 2020 and beyond–and it looks like the U.S. Department of Transportation is working to ensure this momentum continues.

Elaine Chao, U.S. Secretary of Transportation announced the guidelines of U.S. DOT’s newly released AV 4.0, an updated policy regarding autonomous vehicle technology, on January 8th at CES 2020 in Las Vegas.

The guidelines are titled “Ensuring American Leadership in Automated Vehicle Technologies,” and Chao explained that AV tech can include everything from automated brakes to lane-departure warning systems to adaptive cruise control.

The department’s goal is to continue development of these innovations while still focusing on safety. AV 4.0 has three underlying principles–prioritizing safety, promoting innovation, and ensuring consistent regulation.

“Safety is always Number One at the U.S. Department of Transportation,” Chao said. However, a Department of Transportation commitment is “remaining technology-neutral” as well as “protecting American innovation and creativity.”

AV 4.0 will consist of a set of regulations and principles throughout 38 different federal departments, agencies, and offices around the country. It will aim to specify particular steps which state and local government agencies and technology experts can take to further the development and implementation of driverless vehicles.

“The federal government is all in for safer, better, and more inclusive transportation aided by automated driving systems,” according to Chao.

This is one of the first big pushes for country-wide guidelines, as annual guidelines since 2016 have been called for regulation along the lines of “voluntary guidance.” Although the federal government does set the safety standards for AVs, states control their own licensing. For example, the Department of Motor Vehicles in California has its had its own regulations regarding insurance as well as how safety officials should be informed of driverless vehicles deployed in the area.

Now, Automated Vehicles 4.0 will be the first system of federal oversight.

Its guidelines also align with the Trump administration’s support of AV tech and possibilities for collaboration–like research resources and federal AV sector investments.

“We quickly realized that the autonomous vehicle question is not one that is housed solely at the Department of Transportation,” said Michael Kratsios, U.S. Chief Technology Officer. “You have a federal government which has come together and said, ‘We want the U.S. to lead in this domain.’”

Although AV technology has been progressing more slowly than expected, the innovation is still moving forward. Google’s driverless car offshoot, Waymo, currently operates in Phoenix as a commercial robotaxi service and also offers driverless rides on Silicon Valley public roads (to employees and guests only).

Additionally, Florida tech companies Beep and Voyage are testing driverless shuttles in retirement communities, and Ford is currently experimenting with a robotaxi service in Miami. In Arizona and Florida, Waymo, TuSimple, and Starsky Robotics are operating automated driving trucks on public highways.

Chao believes AV 4.0 is an inevitable step in traffic safety’s future. She explained that driverless vehicles will be able to improve overall road safety while also reducing traffic congestion and giving more options of mobility for those currently facing transportation setbacks.

“Transportation today is synonymous with innovation,” she said, “and transportation is going to be as instrumental in America’s future as it has been since our nation’s founding. We are preparing for the transportation of the nation’s future.”

However, there are reasons for AV development delays–multiple driverless vehicle-related accidents, such as the incident involving a pedestrian on a highway who was hit and killed by an automated Uber car in 2018. Still, AV manufacturers say they are working to be as responsible and efficient as possible.

These guidelines will focus solely on the development of driverless cars, not on vehicles with some automated capabilities that still require a human driver’s presence and attention, such as ‘Level 2’ automation which includes driver-assist options, like Tesla’s Autopilot and Cadillac’s SuperCruise.

PAVE, a driverless vehicle industry and consumer coalition, was formed in 2019 in order to educate both policymakers and the public on this technology as well as to address any safety concerns.

“Realizing the vast potential of AVs will require collaboration and information sharing, among all institutions involved, said Chao.

The prospects of illegal driving in a driverless world

March 24, 2016 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

How long before we lose the privilege of driving altogether?

Last week, Mark Goldfeder, a senior lecturer at Emory Law School, speculated that our grandchildren will conceivably live in a world where driving is not only obsolete but also illegal. We’re talking about humans, that is. If you’re a robot, then by all means have at it. After all, robots are smarter than people, right?

Goldfeder’s article for CNN.com, which has since made it to the top of my “Interesting Ideas” list, revolves around a piece of news coming out of California: a minor accident involving one of Google’s self-driving cars. The Google car, attempting to avoid sand bags in the middle of its lane, veered left and bonked into the side of a bus. It’s not the first time a Google car has been involved in an accident, but it is the first time Google’s top brass was willing to accept that the Google car should bare a sliver of responsibility for the mishap. The company’s PR team released a statement saying as much. For the naysayers, this was the perfect chance to say boo. And most of them did, even if the crash was relatively minor.

The incident is an irritating setback for Google, which, despite its goal of ridding the world of crashes, still has work to do. But for the autonomous car movement, the incident is somewhat of a milestone. You see, in order for cars to be safer than people, they have to think differently. The advantage of the robot is that it can think and analyze in a fraction of a second, and it too can learn from past experience based on algorithms as opposed to emotion or intuition. When a person is driving and reasonably expects to be involved in an imminent crash, the person has limited options: crash; avoid the crash; or choose a calculated path that’s less injurious than the initial crash threat. What do we tell our robots to do? What is reasonable?

Goldfeder addresses the “reasonable driver” standard prevalent in tort law: “Simply put, if a driver can show he took as much care as a ‘reasonable driver’ should have taken, he is generally not held liable in case of an accident.

“Until now, that just meant comparison to a reasonable person. But if a ‘driver’ can now be defined both as a ‘reasonable person’ and as a computer — one that can react on the roadway 10 times faster than the average human being — then what does it mean to say ‘reasonable driver’ anymore?”

In essence, Goldfeder argues that the future of “reasonable” driving is far more sophisticated than what we’re currently working with. Machines are smarter, faster and, based on the early statistics, much less prone to error than humans. So if a machine is effectively 10 times the safer driver, where does that leave officials who are tasked with defining what the term “reasonable” means in the future?

Goldfeder cites several numbers that prove, up to this point, that humans are responsible for thousands of preventable crashes every day. Judging by the many miles traveled by Google’s cars over the past few years, a single crash is way better than the norm (though there has been at least one time when the Google car was ticketed for driving to slow).

We’ve come to a point where it’s no longer far-fetched to consider the day when federal regulators deem human-based driving illegal altogether. Because humans, in comparison, are unsafe. Goldfeder isn’t suggesting that competent drivers are inherently dangerous, but he is suggesting that even the safest drivers are less safe than autonomous vehicles. Think of it this way: if a drunk driver is 100 times more likely to be involved in a crash than a sober driver, who’s to say the same logic shouldn’t apply to a car that can, theoretically, operate 100 times safer than a man or woman?

I’ve followed the development of driverless cars to make a few educated observations, and one of them is that “smart cars” are becoming more sophisticated, and they’re poised to assume a large role in the future of transportation. Did you hear about Dominos’ autonomous pizza delivery vehicle? Even Amazon’s rumored shipping drone could transform into an AV plan. The bigger question for us living and breathing folks isn’t if our driving skills will become obsolete, but how long before we’re ready to hand over the keys.