I still believe that Driverless Cars / Autonomous Vehicles are quite certainly the biggest development since the invention of the very first car itself. We can believe in the future of Self driving vehicles or not - But we certainly cannot ignore them. 

However, the Driverless vehicle industry may be moving on, but it is certainly much slower than many predicted for this stage. It is most definitely a work in progress and the end goal, of level 5 Autonomous driving, is not yet in sight, for many. Predictions from various well known pundits from the Automotive industry, did think otherwise about earlier timescales, but that has turned out to be "slightly" inaccurate. This was either due to wishful thinking, but more likely an underestimation, of the sheer work involved to get a car to "safely" drive by itself, whilst interacting with other cars, vehicles, human beings and infrastructure. 

Sadly, the safety factor has indeed made an impact and there have been some...

Read more

In the real future, will this question seem silly to ask?

People talk about regulation being so important, but how can you regulate Artificial Intelligence, a technology that will teach itself and just like any rogue human, can then choose to ignore the regulators and regulations?

Why would it do the above?
Maybe "it" knows better? Or perhaps it will just "think" it does.

Occasionally, especially in the early days, "its" lofty thoughts may well prove to be totally wrong for its "owner" or should I say controller. So, how do we stay in control?

But this is assuming the stance point is correct that we as human beings should be in control? Because just maybe, as things evolve, AI will be more often right and make the right decisions. At that point, is it then the responsible and correct thing to do to try to regulate it? "Would you expect a chimp to try to regulate a human" is perhaps not quite the analogy, but I cannot think of anything similar to compare this...

Read more

Although Blockchain has now been around for quite a while, since 2008 in fact, for many, including myself up until quite recently, it has just been a name of some new technology, that may vaguely be of interest. The truth is, even if we are not interested, Blockchain technology is being widely used today and will massively impact all our lives, possibly more so than Artificial Intelligence, certainly in the short term. Possibly the reason why many of us are not aware of it, is due to its silent effect, whilst just getting on with the vital work of protecting our Data. Data protection has a particular focus at present, with huge measures such as GDPR being introduced, so perhaps now is a good time for us all to look more closely at this incredible technology.

Blockchain enables Data to be recorded and stored in a transparent, public ledger. Each piece of information, a “block”, in the chain, is linked to the other blocks cryptographically, making the system...

Read more

According to Elon Musk, robots will be able to do your job better than you, jobs will be lost and he is not sure what to do about that, mentioning this as being a scary problem to him.

Speaking to the National Governors Association he said, "There certainly will be job disruption. Because what's going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us. ... I mean all of us," But no job is safe, he says. "Transport will be one of the first to go fully autonomous. But when I say everything — the robots will be able to do everything, bar nothing."

But Musk goes much further than this and believes that the most worrying part of AI is not job loss. He believes that people are not as afraid of the potential of artificial intelligence and the ensuing dominance of robots as they should be, because they don't fully understand the huge impact of all this.

"I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it," he says....

Read more

I see that the founder of Cruise Automation recently announced that they are ready to mass produce a "self-driving ready" vehicle, along with their partner, GM. This will be produced along the lines of the Chevrolet Bolt platform. Apparently this will have all the ingredients that an Autonomous vehicle will need to function, travel,  brake and steer etc. Around fifty vehicles have already been built, mostly for the Fleet market and production is expected to ramp up from here.

Congratulations to them on this achievement, but ithought wishing to sound too churlish, I do feel that this announcement has something of the feeling of a race about it and is more about someone crossing the finishing line, rather than having a true production ready self-driving car.



To his credit, Doug Parks, GM’s VP of Autonomous Technology and Vehicle Execution, did say that "There's still a lot to be done yet" and there certainly is. I believe these cars will remain in a mechanically and...

Read more

Whilst the other key players seem to wear their heart on their sleeve and we see all sorts of revelations, (Uber and Waymo - Locked Horns) Apple have been what seems to be like, quietly getting on with things. Tim Cook, Apples CEO, has now finally confirmed to Bloomberg, that they are steadily on track in developing their own autonomous technologies, with what seems like a master intelligence solution, called Titan.

The end product is not 100% confirmed and no actual vehicle has been mentioned with their famous brand letter "i" in it. They have only advised that Titan represents huge activity in AI for autonomous "systems", Tim Cooks actual words being "We sort of see it as the Mother of all AI Projects", so surely transportation must be at least part of the end goal. But they also want to roll out their technology to other areas. If their venture in to AI powered products is as succesfull as that of the Smartphone, then we are all in for the "ride" of our lives, one...

Read more

AI - This innocuous two letter anacronym now seems more prevalent than any other phrase or word in the arena of hot cutting edge technological development, including “Driverless”, “Autonomous vehicles”, “SDC” (Self Driving Cars), “Smart cars” or “Connected cars”. It even has its own domain extension .ai. 

When you search on LinkedIn for example, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people involved with Artificial Intelligence (and deep learning / machine learning).

Why so many people?

The reason for the ai activity, initially at least, is surely the massive push and momentum behind Autonomous driving. The Automotive industry still seems to be where the money is. Quite simply withought ai, we will never see true autonomy, resulting in safe, effective self-driving vehicles, not in my humble opinion anyway.

Vehicles will need far more than just expensive, electronic hardware, Lidar, cameras, sensors and servo motors to drive around by themselves safely. They will need...

Read more

Image: Paul Krueger / City of Vancouver, Transportation Planning

We often talk about or hear about amazing new innovations or breakthroughs, but many of us never get to see them as they are too far away, with long development and approval times. One particular example is cancer drugs and treatments, that can often be 20 years from when we hear about them before we see them being used.

Usually it's the next generation will benefit from these and thankfully so.

Occasionally things are developed and are with us much quicker than any of us can imagine. The word is that self-driving or autonomous vehicles are no longer just for the future that someone else has to deal with. They are imminent and for us to deal with. The development is that rapid.

To illustrate the speed of growth, take Tesla Motors. This Electric vehicle manufacturer started out with nothing in 2003. Today it is Americas largest car brand, overtaking Ford who worked at leadership for 114 years compared...

Read more

     
How can this - replace this?
 

I was just looking back at a previous post, listing a number of things that will be seriously affected by the future deployment of Driverless vehicles.

This was by no means a definitive list and there will I am sure be many more things that will come out "in the wash" as things (rapidly) progress.

The one on the list that really hits me is largely due to its financial value. Money isn't everything of course, and one of the key reasons we look seriously at driverless cars and vehicles is due to the increased safety and the corresponding reduction in deaths and injuries.

But the reason I am looking again at this topic is monetary, because the value concerned is so huge. It will be seriously looked at, if not already, by the big airlines and booking agencies, because of the massive lost revenue at stake. I am talking once again about the impact of the Self driving car on the domestic airline flight market.

Official statistics now show...

Read more

Now that China has issued a long-term (but not too long!) roadmap about autonomous vehicles on sale by 2021, what message does this say to the World?

When the Worlds largest Automobile market makes a statement like this, surely that is the clearest signal to us all, that Driverless / Autonomous / Self Driving cars will happen. I admit, I am sure like many people, that every day I have, "will it" / "won't it" happen moments.

The Chinese 450 page roadmap, has been issued by the official Society of Automotive Engineers of China - The SAEC.
This document determines the development of every aspect of the Chinese automotive industry leading up to 2030.

It covers these developments in full co-operation and consensus with the Chinese Automotive industry for self driving cars. However it is clearly a Chinese country led document and will not cover their rapid development target within Europe/USA and other Asian Regions.

The SAEC report has made it very clear that they...

Read more