Autonomous Vehicles – No Human Driver
Hire An AV taxi in Phoenix Now
The following blog relates mainly to the USA where Google (Waymo), GM and Tesla are involved in different ways.
In the last 5 years, autonomous driving has gone from ‘maybe possible’ to ‘definitely possible’ to ‘inevitable’. Then to ‘now commercially available.’ While commercially available is limited to some parts of China and the US, Waymo is the only company offering a completely driverless service in a small part of Phoenix. But 60 companies have a permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California.
Every significant automaker is trying to rebuild before car ownership goes out of fashion. Companies like Lyft and Uber gain most as drivers are 75% of their cost, although they will need to own the cars. Tech giants like Amazon, Apple, IBM and Intel are looking to get involved. Countless startups are filling niches, such as laser sensors, compressed mapping data, service centers, etc..
Driverless tech could add $7 trillion to the global economy and save hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few decades. It could also devastate the auto industry, its petrol stations, drive throughs, taxis and drivers. Some will prosper, most will benefit. Many will be left behind, mainly through inaction. Eventually fewer cars , streets virtually free of parked vehicles.
How it all Started
When cars first drove on manure clogged streets, people called them horseless carriages. The name made sense: Here were vehicles that did what carriages did, minus the hooves and manure. By the time the term ‘car’ caught on, the invention was entirely new. Over a century, it reshaped how humanity moves, where and with whom it lives. This cycle has restarted, and the term ‘driverless car’ will soon fade out like the ‘horseless carriage.’ Who knows how cars without drivers will change society, but a similar shift is on the way.
Why is ‘Autonomus’ Important?
To reduce the following In the world each year:
- Deaths from vehicle accidents: 1.35M, half of them cyclists, pedestrians or motor cyclists
- Injuries: 50 M
- Accidents from human error: 94%. 2 out of 3 people are involved in alcohol related accidents in their lifetime
- 42 hours/person wasted in traffic
Latest Developments
Google’s self driving division, Waymo, announced that its autonomous taxi service is going live in the next few weeks.
Although Waymo One shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, it didn’t stop developing its technology.
The upcoming relaunch of Waymo One is going to be an open service that anyone can access. It covers an area of about 50 square miles in the Phoenix metro area. There won’t be a safety driver in the front seat. Like Uber without drivers. This will be the world’s first fully autonomous taxi service. While autonomous taxis are being used in China, they have an on call safety driver in the front seat, in case something goes wrong.
How can they go from a safety driver to no safety driver in seven months? Because Waymo has been working to ‘geofence’ the 50-square mile area behind the scenes. It has mapped out all the streets and addresses.
All the cars used in the service have the equivalent of a working memory to navigate within the geofence. Waymo will also have roaming support vans with standby safety drivers ready to assist if a Waymo One vehicle gets stuck in a situation that requires support.
And now is the perfect time to launch Waymo One without a safety driver. With COVID-19 still in the news daily, many consumers are hesitant to come into close contact with strangers. Removing the safety driver will allow for a perfectly contactless experience.
Waymo also announced that it will gradually expand the service beyond these 50 square miles in Phoenix. But rides venturing out of the geofence will require a safety driver again.
They will probably turn on a couple more cities with different layouts than Phoenix to improve its technology.
Like most Google releases, they cunningly develop the software and then will probably license it to auto companies, leaving the licencees to build the hardware. Google did this with the Android smart phone software and now command about 70% of the market. Apple has the rest.
Waymo Autonomous Driving Video
The video below covers the 11 year history of Waymo development, showing autonomous driving with rear seat seat passengers only and their Lidar control system which is different and more costly than Tesla’s Computer Vision system. (see below)
2 Main Sensing Systems
Almost every company working on self driving cars uses Lidar. Uber, Waymo, and Toyota all use it, but not Tesla who use Computer Vision.
Lidar (Acronym for ‘Light detection and ranging’) measures distance by bouncing lasers of objects and detecting how long they take to return. It’s similar to radar but uses lasers instead of radio waves. It’s extremely accurate detecting objects up to millimeters.
Computer Vision uses AI to train computers to understand the visual world. This basically reverse engineers human vision. As with all AI, it improves on the job, as it gains experience. The latest version also uses ‘pseudo lidar’, which experts say makes the Tesla system better than Lidar. It is also much cheaper. See here
Where is Tesla?
While Waymo is an autonomous system developer, Tesla is an EV manufacturer that will transition to autonomy. Elon Musk says Tesla’s upgraded beta Autopilot capability is ready now. It will be released to selected safe drivers, who must still keep their hands on or ready to grip the wheel. The billions of miles Tesla cars have now logged using their existing autopilot software and hardware, makes them confident of their ability to go driver free once authorities allow it. Watch this space for Tesla in California.
Other Contenders
An example is Cruise, owned by General Motors. It has been approved to test its driverless cars on public roads in California. The company says it plans to test vehicles without a human driver behind the wheel before the end of 2020.
Newest Prototype Cruise, for Final Stage 5 – No Manual Controls
Cruise is the fifth to receive a driverless permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, the others being Waymo, Delivery Vehicles Nuro, Amazon’s Zoox, and China’s AutoX.
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