Self-driving development is a Twilight Zone we can’t seem to get out of…
Define ‘Twilight Zone’ — it’s a situation or conceptual area, that’s characterized by being undefined, intermediate, or mysterious. Sounds familiar? To visualize the ‘situation’ VA engineers and authorities like the NHTSA have landed themselves in: pursuing VA has turned into forcing a square peg into a round hole — question mark?
In the feverish quest for self-driving vehicles, automakers and tech funds have already lost billions trying to make self-driving work. Have they been overlooking the obvious: as going from A to B is primarily a physical matter — vehicle size, footprint and shape are of importance. Is hubris involved, namely that a vehicle’s dimensions should not make a difference? Several companies have already backed away from plans to put self-driving cars, by many considered a multi-billion dollar market, into use in the near future, due to complications in dealing with the unpredictability of traffic that keeps baffling autonomous vehicle developers. UBER even gave up on its dream of robo-taxis. The ride-hail giant reportedly invested more than $1 billion in self-driving cars it always considered quintessential to its business model of price- competitive ride-hailing services for a long time. It sold its unit to self-driving tech firm Aurora. Last week Daimler (Mercedes) and Bosch decided to call it a day. Below: “Please change your Hardware for the Application to run properly”?
Billions of brain cells multiplied by tens of thousands of synapses in each individual brain make for more instant connections than there are stars in 20 to 40 thousand galaxies. Housed in a roundish ‘cockpit’ capable of swiveling (the human head), equipped with two amazingly effective optic and ditto hearing sensors (eyes, ears) and a hard-drive full of constantly updatable learning material, topped off by the human intuition, they enable us to split-sec reference what we see, hear, feel. Hard to beat those, if ever.
For self-driving we also need to look for the right type of vehicle to take advantage of the best VA tech available at a certain point. New technology tends to reformat products. Best example is the smartphone. If you look at the SUVs VA developers like Zoox and Argo AI are using, with contraptions to scan and image around corners, you know those are far from optimal “to take your eyes off the road”. My prediction is that it will take decades for a failsafe VA system to reach maturity. 2nd best option is to have electronic outer markers (like you have in aviation); the moment you pass those when entering the built environment, the AV switches to manual mode. On your way in the desert between LA and Vegas: sit back, relax, enjoy the scenery.
This article forms part of a controversial paper I prepared for Fisita, titled: ‘Use Energy Transition to Advance from Car to Auto-Mobile’ — subtitled: 1. Next-Gen Mobility Beyond Zero-Emission — A New Ecosystem 2. How the industry may benefit from a more proactive stance.
A Next-Gen EV will have to ‘shape up’ in order to smarten up. Basically, the same process personal communication went through. It goes both ways. The urge to ‘green’ personal mobility may or should run parallel to the quest for automation in car travel, and vice versa, driverless is brought closer by deploying sleek-footprint vehicles. Going from A to B is a Matter of Mass — Energy — Space — Time. As long as we don’t sin against this ‘equation’, we are not only left with options but can also create new opportunities.
Personal communication went from bulky, cumbersome and fixed to sleek, flexible, efficient and mobile. So could/should personal mobility. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a huge void between the car that has grown obese (SUV trend) and micro-mobility. ‘Greening’ how we displace ourselves and new found Fahrvergnügen including the comfort of (L4) autonomous use and modular UAM deployment, make for an extremely marketable combination and may spinoff whole new possibilities (ecosystem). More: new-iSetta.com.
Ralph Panhuyzen, sevehicle@gmail.com
