ECN - July/August 2018

Ron Demcko, Fellow, AVX

Each year, approximately 40,000 people die from auto-related accidents in the U.S.
A large percentage of these accidents are
due to distracted drivers and driver error. Autonomous
vehicles have great potential to dramatically reduce these
numbers, not to mention save the economy from cost of
injuries and lost work.

Despite the great promise of such advantages, several factors must be addressed before autonomous vehicles are commonplace. Among them are:

• Winning public and individual trust. All too often, people make comments like, “I would never trust technology enough to let it take over driving.” The fact is that sensors and properly configured machines can make faster, consistent, and emotion-free decisions than humans. In reality, not all accidents can be eliminated—even with autonomous cars.

• Continuous technology and standards evolution. Today’s technology will evolve into even higher performing systems. Great benefits will occur from standards dictating acceptable levels of safety performance. Well-drafted standards could very well increase the rate of development, and reduce overall system cost per vehicle.

• Streamlined government regulations. Certification performance methods and levels need to be published to identify what is expected in terms of performance requirements and how systems will be tested to reflect real-world situations.

• Hardware reliability and service certification. The same people who would never trust technology to take over driving also question system reliability.

Autonomous vehicle certification methods must be established for vehicles that are multiple years old.

This would address complaints that these vehicles are only going to work for a few years before needing an upgrade.

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to change everything from driver, passenger, and pedestrian safety, to the delivery and distribution of goods. With this much at stake, government and industry sources are working to address any and all issues currently delaying the wide-scale deployment of autonomous vehicle technology.

Walter Sullivan, Head of Innovation & Incubation, Elektrobit

It would be easier to address if there was only one challenge, but if I had to sum it up, I
would say that the challenge lies in the ability to
create a safe, self-driving vehicle that is affordable and can be
used in a fully-autonomous mode by anyone, anywhere.

We’re at an interesting point in the evolution of the autonomous vehicle—I believe we have the necessary technologies, or at least understand what we’ll use, but it will take time to put in the work to develop a vehicle that can get passengers anywhere they need to go—safely. The work is testing and simulating driving scenarios, training vehicles using machine learning and analytics, implementing security and mitigation, building the

HD maps, etc. Additionally we need at least one more generation of some perception sensors to get into a price range making a private vehicle affordable. There is a lot of work that goes into creating a capable and reliable vehicle, and OEMs, Tier 1s, hardware, and software companies are all working toward that goal over the next decade.

It won’t take a decade for many of us to begin using autonomous vehicles as part of mobility service solutions. In fact, by the time autonomous vehicles are truly ubiquitous, we all will have used them as they’ll first be used in a shuttle, tram, or ride hailing service in some limited geographic situation.

Roberto Saracco, Co-chair of the Symbiotic Autonomous Systems Initiative, IEEE-FDC, & Head of the Industrial Doctoral School, EIT Digital

Allowing an autonomous vehicle to replace a human driver at the wheel is a matter of trust, which (in the end) is a matter of perception. Because we are not used to self-driving cars, we don’t trust them, and whatever happens that reinforces doubt is accepted as proof of our distrust. For example, there have been a number of headlines where self-driving cars have been involved in accidents. Yet, in most of those instances, it was found that fault was not due to the autonomous driving system. Nevertheless, those types of news stories incite fear and reinforce peoples’ doubts.