Chart of the Day – 180,000 self-driving cars will be shipped globally by 2020

December 23, 2014 at 6:48 pm

There is so much confusion and variation in the estimates/predictions when you hear the industry experts and forecasters talk about automated vehicles. Despite the challenges, there has been significant progress in the recent years and it is only getting more intense as the auto OEMs as well the tech geeks in Silicon Valley ramp up their investments and the research in the race to reach the holy grail.. Amidst all this chaos, comes this bold prediction.. 180,000 self-driving cars will be shipped globally by 2020.

Based on Frost & Sullivan estimates charted for us by BI Intelligence, there will be about 180,000 self-driving cars shipped globally by 2020. The market research firm adds that “you are likely to commute in autonomous cars” by 2025, which is a pretty bold statement considering that’s only a decade from now. 

And of course the source article doesn’t clearly articulate whether it is all Level 4 autonomy (no human input needed for operation)?  Do you agree with this prediction? Click here to read the article

Image Courtesy: Business Insider

 

In the Campaign for Net Neutrality, Google’s Buses Suffer The Slow Lane Treatment, Literally

December 16, 2014 at 3:07 pm

Google gets a taste of what it is like to ride the slow lane, literally. Volunteers from the group SumOfUs put Google buses in the slow lane to demand Google support Net Neutrality, and say no to Internet slow lanes around the world! It was a gentle nudge to the internet giant to come out in support of the Net Neutrality issue. Clever campaign indeed. The group’s website says SumOfUs is a global movement of consumers, investors, and workers all around the world, standing together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable and just path for our global economy.  Check out their call to action here: www.callongoogle.net

Infograph: Amazing Ways the Self-Driving Technology will Change the World

August 12, 2014 at 5:05 pm

via Visual.ly

Infographs are always a nice way to tell a story visually and this one below gets adopts that visual story telling to explain the complex societal impacts that are in the offing as the auto & tech heavy-weights like Google are vying to bring their self-driving technology to the mass market.. Imagine a world with no crashes, no traffic lights and no parking?  Mind boggling stuff for today’s drivers but that future doesn’t seem too distant anymore.. Though I think  Level 4 automation (i.e.,  completely autonomous) is at least a decade away, anyone would get excited about the prospect of not waiting for a light to turn green (or for that matter to not drivearound in circles looking for parking)…

The Amazing Ways The Google Car Will Change the World

The Amazing Ways The Google Car Will Change the World

Horse before the carriage? Auto Makers Seek Approval for Driverless Cars in States as Regulators, Insurers Weigh Liability (video)

August 7, 2014 at 5:01 pm

via WSJ

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece that covers the various efforts underway in the world of autonomous vehicles (aka driverless cars i lay people speak) and how manufacturers are working with legislators to introduce their products to the tech-hungry driving public at least in a few states across the  country.. here is a video that accompanies that article.

What caught me by surprise is the sheer volume of activity and how certain people are that they will see autonomous vehicles on the roads in just a few short years.. As much as I would like to believe, full automation (Level 4) is still a decade away and we still have a lot of hurdles on the technology, policy and infrastructure side.  As one of the interviewed researchers points out, there are many concerns that dog this challenge incl. the high cost of laser vision, the risk that radar and camera sensors won’t see properly in bad weather, and complex legal issues raised by giving control to a robot. Let’s hope we overcome these hurdles soon because we, as a society, are paying a heavy price in terms of human lives and hard earned treasure as we continue to drive with manual control (~33K people killed on American roads during 2012).

Click here to read the entire article.

Britain steers towards a “driverless” future – UK to allow driverless cars on public roads in January 2015

July 30, 2014 at 5:30 pm

via BBC

Today the British government has announced that testing of automated cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year. The tests are then intended to run for between 18 to 36 months. What more innovative is the approach they have taken to doing this.  The government has invited cities to compete to host one of three trials, which would start at the same time.  Cities interested in hosting the trials have until early October to declare their interest and the Department for Transport has created a £10m fund to cover their costs (BBC says the sum to be divided between the three winners but not sure what the criteria would be for this split). Quite novel! Good to see the British government pushing the envelope on its road safety agenda using the driverless cars. Hope this nudges other EU countries (and the rest of the world) to get their act together and pave way for the automated vehicles.


Infographic: Eyes of a Car – How LiDAR enables vehicles to detect and avoid obstacles on the road

July 22, 2014 at 6:04 pm

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.

Image: Eyes of a Car via Wall Street Journal.

Heads Up! Google’s latest patent filing shows integration of gesture-based car controls

October 8, 2013 at 10:50 pm

via Autoblog

Google has filed a patent that would see drivers use gestures to control a vehicle, according to a report from Engadget. The system, if it ever arrives in the automobile, would use a depth camera mounted on the roof of the car and a laser scanner. Looks like automotive technology will be taking a giant leap in the days ahead when Google gets it in their driverless cars. One thing that is not noted in the Autoblog article is Google’s recent acquisition of Flutter, a startup that makes a desktop app of the same name that allows users to control other applications using hand gestures.  Information Week offers a few more details: Flutter works by capturing the user’s hand gesture on a computer’s webcam and then translating the gesture, using image processing techniques, into a specific command in supported applications. It can be used, for example, to play and pause songs playing in iTunes on a Mac or Windows computer with just a wave of the hand.

Click here to read more here.

Image courtesy: United States Patent and Trademark Office via Autoblog

 

Google Celebrates 79th Anniversary Of The First Drive-In Movie Theater With A Doodle

June 6, 2012 at 5:43 pm

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV7ppqSzfuY&hd=1′]

It all started 79 years ago on June 6.  A bloke named Richard Hollingshead debuted movies in an outdoor setting. As cited in WebProNews  “Hollingshead’s drive-in opened in New Jersey, June 6, 1933, on Admiral Wilson Boulevard at the Airport Circle in Pennsauken, a short distance from Cooper River Park.”  And today Google has unveiled an awesome doodle on its home page to celebrate this milestone that brought together movie watching & transportation together for the first time.  Of course, some people are upset that Google decided to put aside the other historic milestone on this nation’s calendar – D Day, which also happened on the very same day! But hey, I’m quite okay with this this one!

Google’s Self-Driving Car Demo With Legally Blind Driver Shows a World of Possibilities

April 3, 2012 at 5:54 pm

(Source: Google)

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE&hd=1′]

Google hits a home-run with this real-life demonstration of  its autonomous vehicle by putting a vision-impaired person behind the driving wheel in the regular streets.  Steve Mahan, the man behind the wheel, is legally blind (95% gone) and he goes about what most of us drivers do in a normal day – runs errands, stops by a drive-through window for a burrito, picks up his dry cleaning, etc – all this without touching the steering wheel.   For people like him this self-driving car should feel like a god-sent and the level of autonomy it offers should be priceless.

Human in the Loop? or NOT? – Slate Magazine Says Google’s Self-Driving Car Makes Sense

October 12, 2010 at 6:52 pm

Slate’s Farhad Manjoo says Google’s approach to dealing with distracted driving is a sensible one. We all know texting while driving is dangerous. The solution: self-driving cars.

Amplify’d from www.slate.com

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Google is building a car that can drive itself. The search company’s small fleet of self-driving cars—guided by roof-mounted sensors and a battalion of cloud-connected servers—has driven more than 140,000 miles with minimal human intervention. The cars can obey traffic signs, merge on to the freeway, and avoid pedestrians and bicyclists. I was stunned by the news; two years ago, I interviewed several auto-safety engineers about the potential for self-driving cars, and they all told me that the technology was decades away. Google told the Times that its cars are still an experiment, and the company hasn’t decided to turn the tech into a commercial product. The tech still has kinks—Google’s cars don’t know how to obey traffic cops’ hand signals, for instance. Still, self-driving automobiles appear to be on the way to revolutionizing modern transportation. Google’s technology could make cars safer, more efficient, and a lot more pleasant.

Indeed, it’s fascinating to think about how automated driving will change how we spend our time in the car. Americans squander nearly an hour each workday commuting. That’s exactly why legislating concentration seems like a futile approach. Working from the road has become a hallmark of the American economy—we’re all being pressed to be more productive, and the many hours each week we’re trapped in our cars seem like the perfect time to get something done. Many industries (like freight companies and plumbing outfits) require workers to be tied in to the central office using onboard computers, and even office workers feel the push to stay connected while on the road. What’s more, research suggests that while both teenagers and adults (PDF) know the dangers of texting while driving, we’re all overconfident about our own abilities to multitask on the road—you think it’s dangerous for me to look at my phone while I’m driving, but you’re pretty sure you can handle it. (And texting laws are so spottily enforced that you’re pretty sure that you can get away with it, too.)

Read more at www.slate.com