Despite a strong start, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has declared that the permissions which prevail in Nevada, Florida, and California for automated vehicles will only be applied for testing purposes and none other, until proven completely safe. For the same reason, European legislation – and the various disparate versions in each member state – has thus far not taken a call on what sort of automated vehicles can be permitted on public roads for personal use.
Although the purpose of the automated driving initiative is aligned with taking road safety to the next level, the biggest nightmare for all stakeholders involved – OEMs, suppliers and legislators alike – is the accident liability in the event of an automated vehicle colliding with a pedestrian or another vehicle.This could be caused by various factors: glitches in various ECUs, false-negatives (missed warning), hacking and related cyber-security threats, wrong override by driver, and failure to recognise a corrective override command from a driver are just a few such examples. As a matter of fact, these convolutions have already delayed OEMs from launching automated vehicles. Some, including Mercedes-Benz and Audi, have developed production-ready driverless cars, but have chosen to disable the functionality due to the legislative and real-world imperatives.
Consumer appetite for vehicle automation can be classified in terms of what extent of vehicle automation they may digest. When offered freebies worth a few thousand dollars, some consumers opt for infotainment features, some for safety, others for extended warranty, while another set of consumers prefer a mix of all of these. In the most general case, it is only logical to state that a large fraction of people will still like to drive their cars, letting it drive itself only under certain conditions – and one can apportion anywhere between 10-90% of driving time to the term ’certain conditions’.
The Mercedes-Benz E- and S-Class vehicles of 2014 have proven that they can drive themselves in adverse conditions without the presence of a physical driver inside. BMW’s automated vehicle will also ensure that you are pulled over to a hard-shoulder if you faint or fall asleep while behind the wheel. Volkswagen’s Temporary Auto Pilot (TAP) expects the driver to pay complete attention to the road, even if not actively driving the vehicle, expecting the driver to take over at any point, when prompted. Audi’s piloted driving feature will let you get out of the vehicle, right in front of the lobby at a hotel, while you can use a smart-phone app to park and retrieve it.The same feature is extended to a piloted driving mode, when the driver hands over the driving tasks to a virtual co- pilot, i.e. the vehicle itself. Most of these innovations can be done if state-of-the-art ADAS and connectivity features areleveraged to leave no stone unturned.At the risk of sounding too generic, real-world challenges require smarter in-vehicle systems – both for ADAS and connectivity – to make the vehicle see, feel, and decide like a real driver would.A classic example of this would be speed-bumps and potholes: while speed- bumps and ramps can be recognised with a smart forward-looking camera aided by radar or ultrasonic sensors, potholes, an open manhole or any other dug-up area in the path of the vehicle may not occur to the vehicular sensing systems so very readily.
Google it
Much has been said and written about the Google Self-Driving vehicle project. Impressive, as it is, for a non-automotive participant to gain sufficient attention for a project outside of their core competence, one would wonder whether consumers would trust the likes of a Google in any manoeuvre other than navigation, app-based POI information etc…
This is an excerpt of an article first published in the Q4 issue of Megatrends magazine, to continue reading, simply download your free copy now and turn to page 60.
Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan, is Team Leader – Chassis, Safety & Driver Assistance Systems, Automotive & Transportation, at Frost & Sullivan.
