via WSJ Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article that explores the roadblock posed by sky-high prices of the LiDAR units, which offer the vehicles’ “seeing” and “navigating” capabilities , in the widespread adoption automated vehicles.  That pesky little roof mounted LiDAR unit  atop the Google’s prototype vehicle apparently cost between $75,000 and $85,000, which explains why it will be a problem for mass market. Click here to read the entire article.  What caught me is this simple infographic that accompanied the article. It nicely explains how the LiDAR works.

Image: Eyes of a Car via Wall Street Journal.

TRB 2015 Annual Meeting – Vehicle-Highway Automation Projects and Programs

Call for Abstracts – Special Poster Session 

Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation (AHB30)

Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems (AHB15)

Joint Subcommittee on Challenges and Opportunities of Road Vehicle Automation

Vehicle-Highway automation has generated strong interest within the past year, leading to the initiation of a wide variety of new projects and programs.  Because of the novelty of this field, many of the new activities have not yet advanced to the stage that they can present sufficiently definitive results that would pass the normal peer review criteria for a technical paper.  Nevertheless, the plans and focus areas of these projects and programs are likely to be of significant interest to the TRB Annual Meeting participants. This poster session provides exposure to a wide range of topics and activities in the field of vehicle-highway automation.

Abstracts are invited now. The following topic areas related to vehicle-highway automation are suitable for the poster session:

•  introductions to research centers or programs
•  research agendas
• prospective studies and work in progress
• qualitative research studies

Please note that abstracts will be peer reviewed.  A limited number of posters will be selected for presentation based on the following criteria:

• technical quality
• originality
• direct relevance to the field of vehicle-highway automation
•  appropriateness of the methodology
•  non-commercial nature of the content.

Abstracts are due by September 15, 2014.  Peer review decisions will be announced by October 15, 2014.

• Please submit your abstract by emailing to TRBposter.automation@gmail.com
• Abstracts should be limited to 300 words.
• Abstracts should include:
  • Name, affiliation, and contact information for all authors
  • A descriptive title
  • A short description (300 words) of the proposed poster content

via Bloomberg TV

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk discusses autonomous driving and how it will be available in cars in only a few years. He is confident that Tesla has the best collection of experts and would be the first company to launch a vehicle with significant ‘auto pilot” capabilities. As far as proliferation goes, Mr. Musk says we may be about 10 years away from widespread adoption of autonomous vehicle technology. Do you agree? Listen to his interview with Bloomberg Television.

(Source: Bloomberg)

Intel Futurist Steve Brown discusses the future of driverless cars and cities on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” Transportation and City planners better start thinking already because we know your long-range plans drafted a decade or so ago is rendered useless by the fast paced evolution of computing and automobile technology (agree with Steve that the technology is coming but it may be more than a decade away). It is time to think different and act fast!

via WTSP.com

The city of Tampa (Florida) gains a Federally-approved test bed for autonomous vehicles.. Local TV station News 10 offers the following scoop:

The Selmon Expressway just got a big approval from the federal government. It’s now one of only ten roads in America set up to test “connected cars,” leading to totally driverless cars. The Selmon’s elevated express lanes to Brandon are a car designer’s dream. During traffic downtimes, engineers can block off all of the entrances and have the whole highway as a ten-mile-long laboratory. The expressway authority that runs the Selmon will team up with a USF group, the Center for Urban Transportation Research, to find companies that want to come here to test their technology. Click here to learn more