An Engineer in the Field of Autonomous Cars

I misread the instructions. Please treat this as Blog 3 and vice versa.

Ernst Dickmanns is revered as the pioneer of the 3-dimensional vision and tracking technology in future autonomous cars.

He was born in 1936 to a life in World War II Germany. He studied aerospace/aeronautics at RWTH Aachen University from 1956-1961, and proceeded with study of control engineering at Princeton University in the United States from 1964-1965. He worked with The German Aerospace Research Establishment for 14 years from 1961-1975 where he began researching the fields of machine vision and vehicle guidance, which now form a backbone of most modern vehicular vision and tracking technology. After that, in 1975 he founded Institut fuer Flugmechanik und Systemdynamik (Institute of Flight Mechanics and System Dynamics) where he stayed until 2001 to research vision and tracking technology for autonomous cars.

His research began with the Mercedes-Benz, where the car would be able to be controlled by evaluating images and executing the correct actions on the gas pedal and steering wheel. The reseach was successful and resulted in an autonomous car that could drive itself as early as 1987. The autonomous car at this point couldn't drive on streets with other cars, but was a huge leap for the technology, and was way ahead of its time.

Eventually, as technology progressed revolutionary technologies moved from 3-dimensions to 4-dimensions to account for time and movement of perceived "objects" on the road. The next big leap taken by Dickmanns and his research team came in 1992 where the autonomous cars became able to function with traffic acting as dynamic obstacles, demonstrating that autonomous cars could truly handle real-time vision and calculation on the road.

The first test in Dickmanns' genius in real-world traffic was in 1995, where it was tested on a highway near Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris, where it drove over a thousand kilometers successfully, without incident.

In the second test, Dickmanns pushed the capabilities of the technology, testing the autonomous car at speeds of over 110 mph on the German autobahn. It, again, performed successfully with no accidents.

Since then the technology has revolutionized, becoming smarter and smarter. The technology has become able to drive on different types of roads in different types of areas with different types of vehicles. Autonomous vision technology is becoming more and more accurate in real world applications and as autonomous cars begin to takeover the roads, Ernst Dickmanns will be remembered as the father of autonomous cars.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Dickmanns
http://www.springer.com/engineering/mechanical+engineering/book/978-1-84628-637-7

The Cost of Autonomous Vehicles - More than Just Money

The impact of autonomous vehicles can have a great impact on our wallets (in good ways and in bad ways), a great impact on our time (and how we spend it), and a great impact on daily life.

An article by Fast Company, a leader in business journalism, calculates the costs of production of a car can be up to $320,000, far more than what the average American can afford for a new car (around $20,000). Though in the same article it cites a study by IHS automotives which predicts that autonomous functionalities can add anywhere between $7,000 to $10,000 to a car's ticket price in 2020, and less than $3,000 in 2035 when the technology becomes easier to produce and more mass-produced, easily affordable for the average American, and easily affordable for companies to buy massive fleets of cars to replace workers.

What affect will this have on the global economy? According to experts at The Hollywood Reporter, it could at a whopping $1.3 TRILLION to the United States' economy due to the reduction of shipping and transportation costs.

But the impacts aren't just in our wallets; the impact can be to the environment. With more cars on the road, you may think that it would heighten CO2 emissions. Wrong, with vehicles able to travel 24 hours a day, rush hours in the morning will become partially dispersed, and highways will be equally busy at night, decreasing the overall business of highways. This coupled with vehicles programmed to travel at peak fuel efficiency will continue to lower CO2 emissions to the environment (as well as providing a better fuel economy for every vehicle equipped with autonomous driving). Clean Technica, a magazine on eco-friendly technology, predicts that CO2 emissions can be lowered by up to 95%!

The impact can also be on our daily lives. Various services will can be replaced by autonomous cars to the benefit of the business owners. Pizza delivery drivers can be replaced with cars modified to accept money and deliver pizza. Mail and package delivery can replaced with cars or trucks modified to distribute mail into mail boxes or onto a driveway. City transportation services will be able to run 24 hours a day, due to lower costs of transportation, allowing workers to work 24 hours a day with no problem of transportation. And all of these services, from not having to employ (or tip) a pizza delivery driver to not having to have part of our taxpayer money go to mailmen, will be easier on our wallet.

And the most important impact on our lives, will be our lives. With the accidents from autonomous vehicles now swarming the highways, accidental vehicular death will be greatly reduced. Drunk driving will no longer be an issue as long as a potential drunk driver owns an autonomous car, and autonomous cars will more easily avoid accidents with drunk drivers than would a human driver. The previous article cites that introducing autonomous vehicles can reduce accidents by ten times their current occurrence.

All of these benefits are on the horizon, and the rewards outweigh the costs.

Cars can do Anything You Can Do Better.

(Kind of)

The concept of replacing people with machines is always met with skepticism as to whether or not it is feasible. And with any change comes resistance to that change. There are many "What if's?" when it comes to autonomous cars, and this blog will explore the what if the "what if's" are warranted.

There are many things that modern AI can do better than people, and many things that they cannot.

What if it breaks down?

Just wanted to make sure I got this out of the way first. The answer is the same thing you would do if a human-driven vehicle breaks down. You'd call AAA to come fix it or to get it towed. Cars that don't have a passenger that are remotely controlled will likely have sensors for gas and engine problems, or at least a GPS tracking system to determine whether or not it is moving.

What if autonomous cars cause more accidents that people?

To put it shortly- they won't. They have already been tested and they causes substantially lesser accidents than people, and studies show that virtually all accidents are from some form of error in the driver's judgement.

What if an autonomous car crashes into another human-driven car? What if an anonymous car crashes into another autonomous car?

There's currently legislation on this. A driver is determined who is "at fault" by testimony of driver and by the angle of the accident and the location/degree of damages where a driver at fault can't be determined. And with the autonomous car's rate of being accident-free so far, it will likely be the fault of the human driver almost always.

Despite in the insurmountable adds that an autonomous car would crash into another autonomous car, the above can still be used to determine which car had a fault in its algorithm and made the mistake of hitting another car.

The worst case scenario is that manufacturers will be blamed for what went wrong, according to an article from The Insurance Information institute, a high authority on the subject.

What if it's wet or icy? Would they be able to compensate for that?

No. There are limitations on autonomous cars. Though they are little in number, they may be big in size. Driving on wet or icy envirionments is not the capability of any current autonomous car being developed. The conditions are too random and hard to account for for engineers to make good-enough artificial intelligence to combat.

There is hope, however, as there are "smart tires" being made that can analyze the exact content (iciness or wetness) of the road and send that information to an autonomous driver.

What if it's an unmarked road, or a dirt road?

An autonomous car relies on GPS for navigation, so an unmarked road will be innavigable. A dirt road, since also unmarked by the GPS will be unnavigable.

What if there's a pedestrian in the road, or other obstacle not designated by a map?

They are programmed SPECIFICALLY to avoid pedestrians and road hazards. The 360 degree camera locator and lightning-fast response (I could only find an article on the Mercedes from The Energy Collective on this source, but you can see from any autonomous car they have a 360 degree sensor on the top) time allows them to avoid road hazards and pedestrians, being able to locate them on camera, and even designate them as a "vehicle", "pedestrian", etc. to anticipate their movements.

What if there's a car in its blind spot?

There are no blind spots! The 360 degree camera allows them to see all around them at the same time, as opposed to humans who can only see about 150 degrees in front of us. Their GPS and ability to recognize street signs can allow them (to a certain extent) see around corners as well.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/RadarEyes2-1405948712599.jpg

This picture doesn't really do it justice, but you can see that there are

 two identical cameras at the front and rear of the car, showing that the

vision cones in front of the car can do the same thing behind the car,

What if there's an anonymous car interacting with another anonymous car?

They can work together! There's currently engineers working on having fleets of autonomous cars navigate traffic and to communicate with each other to avoid each other and travel at a constant speed (rather than to stop and start over and over again in gridlock traffic), which Government Technology has predicted can reduce traffic by over 80%!.

What if it gets stopped by police?

With the ability to recognize speed limit signs and avoid accidents, they will not need to be stopped by police (and there would be no one's license to take and no one to arrest). But in the case that they are, autonomous vehicles with a passenger can be commanded to stop and pull over, and they already have programming to pull over for such vehicles as ambulances, as to not get in their way.

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All of these "What if"s have answers, and while there are some shortcomings, the answers to the "what if"s are much more comforting than the unknown.

Machines Will Kill Us- And it's not that Bad

With all transportation there is a certain risk we need to take. Since transportation existed there was always a risk of falling overboard, falling off of a horse, crashing a car, crashing a train, crashing a plane, etc. So danger among travel isn't new. What's different this time around, is that this time death can happen not from human error- but from machine error.

But it's not that bad. Studies have shown that we'll be better off with machines causing death than causing our own death, albeit unfortunate all around. So far, in the hundreds of thousands of miles driven by autonomous cars, there have only been two accidents. The first being the fault of the driver behind the car, rear-ending it at a stop light, and the second being the fault of the driver of the car, manually driving the autonomous car. Why hasn't the car crashed yet when car accidents are so common? It's simply because we're too human. A vast majority, around 90%, of car accidents are attributable to human error or distraction.

First "autonomous car" accident

So overall, we'll be much better off having the roads swarming with these excellent drivers, and deaths, injury, and repair costs from auto accidents will plummet.

But, as any programmer knows- no algorithm is perfect. Eventually, sometime in the future, there will be a case where a driving algorithm miscalculates, a falling rock hits a car, a car is unable to account for hydroplaning or black ice, and someone's death will be at the wheel of the machine.

How would you feel if a love one died from such an incident? You would be angry of course- you would need closure, some type of retribution- someone to blame.

Who is to blame here? The person for taking the risk of being a passenger in an autonomous car? The manufacturer for producing the car? The programmer, for making the algorithm not perfect enough to avoid the dangers that come with travel? Or, maybe, the car itself?

The answer isn't any one of the above but the question raised is enough to cause problems. It raises several moral, legal, and ethical questions about the incorporation of autonomous vehicles into our life (and death).

The question can't be ignored, and the vehicles shouldn't be stopped from taking the road, as the safety of millions of travelers shouldn't be sacrificed for the philosophical conundrum of blaming something without free will for the death of a person. Like any new technology, it will be a hurdle that it'll have to face, and a hurdle that we'll need to cope with for the betterment of humanity.

Sources:

image: Business Insider http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4e3c15c769bedd7a5a000032/google-car-accident.jpg

Why Autonomous Vehicles Will Replace Us, and Why It is a Good Thing

Technology for autonomous vehicles-- vehicles that can drive themselves are on an uprising. Money for research is being poured into these vehicles from many automotive companies. According to this article from Fortune Magazine, Nissan, Tesla, Delphi Automotive and Bosch have already gotten permits to begin driving and testing cars on the open road. The technology is here, and with all new technology-- it will replace old technology. The previous technology being: human drivers, us.

Fully autonomous vehicles are nearby, and will be common on open roads as early as 2023 according to the above article from Fortune, or as early as 2020 according to Transport Evolved, and by 2035 making up 75% of the industry's market share; incredible.

This means that half a decade, drivers will begin to be replaced by an algorithm, and in two decades, roughly three out of four of every new vehicle will be controlled by an algorithm. This will have drastic effects on not only our means of travel from point A to point B, but for transportation services, delivery services, and emergency services.

With the consequences of an unpaid driver being cheaper than a paid human driver, these autonomous vehicles will invade the industry in the same way that autonomous machines invaded manufacturing, creating more efficient, cheaper, and safer means of transportation. Taxi drivers, delivery truck drivers, mailmen, limo drivers, bus drivers, train drivers, and pizza delivery boys will all begin to be replaced by computers navigating the open road. These millions of human workers will be replaced by machines, and with their replacement would come new ways of getting our pizza, getting our mail, and getting ourselves from place to place throughout the day.

Mail will be able to be delivered 24/7 taxis and buses will be able to run 24/7, since machines do not need to sleep. The hour-long morning commute will be a breeze, where the average Joe worker can get an hour's work done on the way to his workplace, and an hour's work done on the way back while gliding safely through traffic. Humans, both drivers themselves and passengers of autonomous vehicles will be able to traverse more safely. All of these consequences cause for a more productive and safer day for all involved.

Applications of these consequences can create further consequences. With a commute being cheaper and easier, workers will be able to commute from further away, broadening suburb outside cities and growing cities themselves. With services being able 24/7, workers will be able to work at other times in the day, from dawn to dusk where there will always be a cheap mode of transportation ready for them.

The positive outcomes are endless, and can only improve the economy and easiness of life for every average Joe like you and me.