Driverless Vehicles Make Inroads in Military - Velodyne Lidar

VOLUME 3 NO.2 • May 2013 • AUVSI • 2700 South Quincy Street, Suite 400, Arlington, VA 22206, USA
Driverless
Vehicles Make
Inroads in Military
Inside this issue:
Companies Ready Commercial Driverless Cars
The Price of Technology Changes
Insurance Remains a Hurdle

Driverless Car
sUMMiT
11-12 June 2013
Sound Board at MotorCity Hotel • Detroit
Driverless Cars in 2022…
Making the Vision a Reality
RegisteR Now!
auvsi.org/dcs
2 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

CONTENTS
VOLUME 3 NO.2 • May 2013
On the Cover
8 Driverless Convoys
and Carrying Cargo
Robotics Lighten the Load
4 Essential Components
The Latest News in Driverless Cars
6 State of the Art
Where the Driverless Car
Action is Around the Globe
12 Uncanny Valley
Rules of the Road:
States Vie for Driverless Cars
13 Technology Gap
Driving Down the Cost of Change
On the Cover:
Oshkosh Defense’s TerraMax
technology can convert military
trucks to self-driving vehicles, one
of several kits on the market that
allow increased automation to
military customers. Photo courtesy
Oshkosh Defense. Page 8.
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 1

14 Q & A
Tom Bamonte,
North Texas Tollway Authority
16 Timeline
Federal Programs
Go Driverless
18 Driving the Market
Auto Companies Vie for
Unmanned Dominance
22 Testing, Testing
SAIC and the Michigan
DOT Test Bed Gear Up
27 End Users
Insurance: Is Your Driverless
Car in Good Hands
Advertiser Index
25 Spotlight
Information on the Fleet
Automation Forum
Airborne Law Enforcement Association.....11
www.alea.org
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2 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Editorial
Vice President of Communications
and Publications, Editor
Brett Davis
davis@auvsi.org
Managing Editor
Danielle Lucey
lucey@auvsi.org
Contributing Writers
Paul Godsmark
Gabriel Sniman
David A. McNamara
Mohammad Poorsartep
Advertising
Senior Advertising
and Marketing Manager
Lisa Fick
fick@auvsi.org
+1 571 255 7779
A publication of
President and CEO
Michael Toscano
Executive Vice President
Gretchen West
AUVSI Headquarters
2700 South Quincy Street, Suite 400
Arlington, VA 22206 USA
+1 703 845 9671
info@auvsi.org
www.auvsi.org
Driverless Cars
Gaining Traction
Self-driving cars is a special topic
for Mission Critical magazine.
Now in its third year of covering
commercial robotics topics, Mission
Critical’s very first issue tackled the
emerging field of driverless vehicles.
Now, more than two years after that,
the industry has seen a slew of commercial
automobile manufacturers pledge
driverless cars in the next 10 years.
This magazine takes a look at where
we are now with driverless vehicles.
Editor Brett Davis dives into the military
world, where the technology got
its start on unmanned ground vehicles.
Many of these technologies have come
a long way since their infancy. To read
more on that, see Page 8.
On the opposite end of the spectrum,
Paul Godsmark and Gabriel Sniman
from DriverlessCarHQ.com surveyed
the commercial landscape of self-driving
vehicles. Automotive companies
are revving their engines, gearing up
to be the first with an autonomous
vehicle on the road. See that story on
Page 18.
In preparation for AUVSI’s Detroitbased
Driverless Car Summit in June,
this issue discusses two Michigan-centric
projects aimed at furthering selfdriving
cars.
The first is Michigan’s Connected Vehicle
Test Bed, where companies like
SAIC are performing a large-scale field
test of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicleto-infrastructure
technology so they
may one day be nationally adopted.
The second is the newly formed Fleet
Automation Forum. This group, originally
conceptualized within the U.S.
Army, is assessing how driverless vehicles
will affect commercial trucking.
AUVSI and the University of Michigan
are supporting this effort that aims
to accelerate technology commercialization.
Editor's Message
Danielle Lucey
Just how will legislators, regulators and
private insurers keep up with this increased
energy in the self-driving car
market Mission Critical addresses those
issues throughout its departments.
Uncanny Valley, on Page 12, reviews
the many laws and legislative approaches
states are taking to ensure
they have a future closely tied to driverless
technology.
On Page 13, we take a look at Southwest
Research Institute, a company that
is focusing on low-cost technology to
enable consumers to one day purchase
driverless vehicles. The company is taking
lessons it learned from a Navy program
with a similar focus and translating
that to the commercial market.
Our Q&A on Page 14 is with Tom
Bamonte, general counsel for the
North Texas Tollway Authority. He
has a unique legal perspective on how
cities can prepare for self-driving cars,
including simple changes to basic infrastructure
and how to properly manage
data from these vehicles.
Guy Fraker, a technology consultant
and former insurance agent, discusses
the difficulties of insuring driverless
cars. How will an industry used to having
lots of crash data set prices for cars
intent on not crashing He explains
challenges like this one on Page 27.
I hope you enjoy reading all the new
information in this issue. Perhaps the
next time we visit the topic of driverless
cars, there will be a few being
tested on a roadway near you.
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 3

Essential Components
Oxford Builds GPS-Free RobotCar
The University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering
Science is rolling out a new self-driving car concept,
called RobotCar UK that uses an iPad as its user interface.
The project uses a Nissan Leaf with an off-the-shelf
computer in the trunk that is connected to cameras and
lasers. The project, which started in September 2012,
doesn’t use GPS or 3-D sensors, however, instead relying
on mathematic probability and machine learning techniques
for navigation.
“Even when GPS is available, it does not offer the accuracy
required for robots to make decisions about how
and when to move safely,” says the RobotCar UK website.
“Even if it did, it would say nothing about what
is around the robot, and that has a massive impact on
autonomous decision making.”
Driverless Cars by 2015 2020 2040
When driverless cars will actually hit the streets is anyone’s
guess, but researchers and auto manufacturers
themselves are projecting many possibilities as to when
they will hit the commercial market.
The car company with the most aggressive claim to date
is Audi, which projected at this year’s Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas that it will have a fully driverless
vehicle on the road by 2015.
BMW says highly automated vehicles will hit European roadways in 2020.
Photo courtesy BMW Group.
The University of Oxford’s RobotCar UK concept doesn’t use 3-D sensors or GPS for navigation.
Photo courtesy the Oxford Mobile Robotics Group.
The Oxford Mobile Robotics Group, a team of 22 researchers
lead by two professors, has built its own navigation
system for 5,000 pounds. The team performs the
navigation, planning and control algorithms on its own
but gains technical support and hardware from Nissan,
which is their sponsor. The project is also backed by
the U.K.’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council, Guidance Navigation Ltd. and the Motor Industry
Research Association.
Click this QR code to see a video of RobotCar UK’s
autonomous start through its iPad interface.
“Piloted drive could accompany us from 2015,” said Dr.
Wolfgang Durheimer, from Audi’s management board
on technical development. “We have the system under
control.”
Meanwhile, a February press release by BMW and Continental
states they will have highly automated vehicles
by 2020 on European roads. The two have teamed up for
a 2013 through 2014 project to prototype these kinds of
vehicles, with the ultimate goal of accident-free mobility.
The companies will perform tests on German and European
roads with these vehicles until the end of 2014.
The tests will monitor performance at intersections, toll
stations, construction and around national borders.
However, research group IDC put a damper on those
estimates with its March 2013 document “Connected
Vehicle Ecosystems: Drivers (and Barriers) of Adoption.”
Author Sheila Brennan says driverless cars will likely be
adopted by the public closer to 2040 because of multiple
barriers.
“I think there are a lot of regulators and a lot of privacy
and security issues that need to be overcome prior to
that, a lot of interoperability issues that need to be overcome,”
Brennan says. “And the automotive industry in
general moves very slowly in many senses.”
4 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Essential
Components
Someday, Will Driverless
Car Tech Kill Traffic Lights
A University of Missouri-Kansas City professor believes
that one day, software that automates vehicle movement
at intersections could do away with traffic lights.
“The idea is not a driverless car. Driverless cars take away
the fun of driving. The main objective is to improve traffic
flow inside the city and do away with the traffic lights,
because they are expensive to maintain,” Vijay Kumar
told the University News, UM-CK’s independent student
newspaper.
Currently, Kumar is studying the “ambiguity effect”
where drivers make decisions despite a lack of information.
Ambiguous and delayed decisions can result in an
accident. However, a number of newer model cars use
software to enable better driver decision making through
technologies like lane keeping.
Kumar is zeroing in on eliminating traffic lights from
intersections or making them more effective. To do this,
cars will have to communicate with each other and the
traffic lights so they can intelligently direct traffic.
Kumar predicts with limited funding it would take two
years for such a system to be on the market.
UK Drivers Skittish on Driverless Cars
U.K.-based insurance firm Be Wiser Insurance found
in a poll that more than two-thirds of British motorists
are uncomfortable with the notion of sharing the road
with driverless cars.
Sixty-eight percent of poll takers reported being uncomfortable
while 32 percent favored it, citing human
judgment flaws that lead to accidents.
“Reducing the potential for human error could make
for a safer driving experience — especially when it
comes to those little bumps and scrapes which occur
when momentary distraction is to blame. A computer
rarely loses concentration,” says Mark Bower-Dyke,
chairman of Be Wiser Insurance.
Concerns among those that said they were uncomfortable
driving near self-driving vehicles included who
would be responsible in an accident and whether driverless
cars could be trusted more than a standard computer.
“Automated parking is already being hailed as a boon
to both drivers and insurers as it reduces the number
of parking related claims,” Bower-Dyke says. “We hope
that driverless cars will be the logical end of safer driving,
especially for those who don’t like or enjoy driving
at all.”
Many respondents to the poll also keyed in on one gray
area that would exist with driverless car passengers —
the ability to drink alcohol before getting in the car.
“Driverless cars could provide real safety advantages
when there are enough of them on the road,” says
Bower-Dyke. “It’s not all about having a robot chauffeur
to drive you back from the pub.”
Advanced Navigation Releases
Triple-Tech Spatial Fog
Australia’s Advanced Navigation has released Spatial
Fog, a spoof-proof enhanced GPS system that can also
operate in areas where GPS is weak or nonexistent.
Spatial Fog combines a GPS receiver with KVH Industries’
1750 inertial measurement unit, allowing
the system to fall back on inertial navigation if GPS
isn’t available. However, the system also uses receiver
autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) to prevent
spoofing, which could be a problem if someone tries to
electronically hijack a self-driving car.
“RAIM works by analyzing
multiple satellite
signals and developing
a statistical model
of the observed versus
expected signals,” the
company says. “From
this model it is able to
determine if there is a
fault with the signals it
is receiving.”
Combing all three systems
makes the system
good for safety-conscious
autonomous vehicles,
the company says.
Advanced Navigation’s Spatial Fog.
Photo courtesy the company.
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 5

Worldwide
R O A D T R I P
Testing, legislating and implementing driverless cars has
been increasingly high profile in places all around the
world. Here’s a look at a few of the locations that have
gained notoriety in the self-driving car and vehicle sector as
of late.
ANN ARBOR, MICH.
The University of
Michigan is hosting a
Department of Transportation
pilot program to test vehicleto-vehicle
and vehicle-to-infrastructure
integration in preparation for
a possible national decision on
the technology.
California is the latest
state to adopt a bill about
driverless cars, though many
more states are waiting in the
wings to do so. The law was enacted
in a public signing ceremony by
Gov. Jerry Brown and was
attended by Google’s Sergey
Brin, who also spoke at the
event in September 2012.
SACRAMENTO, CALIF.
Google continues
to dominate driverless car
discussions, with more than
400,000 miles driven to date.
DriverlessCarHQ.com predicts
the company will top the
1 million mile mark this year.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.
WARREN, MICH.
In February, the U.S.
Army’s Tank Automotive
Research, Development and
Engineering Center and Lockheed
Martin demonstrated a satellitecontrolled
Squad Mission Support
System platform in a unique take
on how autonomous vehicles
could be operated.
Nevada became the
first state to pass driverless
car legislation in 2011.
The milestone gave companies the
green light to test the technology
in the state. So far, Google,
Continental and Audi have
received licenses.
CARSON CITY, NEV.
Florida became the
second state to regulate
driverless cars. The law
requires that humans be ready
to intervene if necessary, and
testers must have $5 million
in insurance coverage.
TALLAHASSEE, FLA.
6 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

STATE OF THE ART
OXFORD, U.K.
University of Oxford
is working on a driverless
Nissan Leaf that wouldn’t use
GPS or 3-D sensors to function.
The car uses an Oxford-created
computer system to drive and
has an iPad interface
for the driver.
After
a series of road
train tests, the Safe Road
Trains for the Environment test
by Ricardo UK on Volvo vehicles
was declared a success. The program
demonstrated a road-training
concept, where cars follow a
leader vehicle, and it displayed
how the method cuts down
on emissions.
HÄLLERED, SWEDEN
Researchers from the
University of Parma took
part in a 2010 project to drive
autonomously from Italy to China.
Speaking at a recent conference,
Dr. Alberto Broggi said the vehicle
sensed using lidar but had no
integrated maps.
PARMA, ITALY
Mining company Rio
Tinto is using autonomous
vehicles to work iron ore mines
as part of the company’s Mine
of the Future concept.
The company also uses
autonomous trains.
PILBARA, AUSTRALIA
ECUBLENS, SWITZERLAND
Ecole Polytechnique
of Lausanne is testing
autonomous shuttles that will be
used on campus to transport up to
eight people at a time. The vehicles,
which are made by French
company Induct, can travel up
to 20 kpm.
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 7

Driverless Convoys
and Carrying Cargo:
Robotics Lighten the Load
By Brett Davis
Automated technology in the military arena is proceeding
along a variety of fronts, as several companies
around the world are seeking to lighten the
loads of soldiers or keep them out of logistics convoys.
Lockheed Martin is working on both fronts. With the
AutoMate Convoy Module, a bolt-on system of hardware
and software that can convert military trucks into
remote-controlled or self-driving vehicles, it is seeking to
minimize the number of soldiers who need to be present
in convoys.
That’s feeding into the U.S. Army’s AMAS program,
which stands for Autonomous Mobility Applique System,
a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration effort that’s
intended to become a program of record.
Driving convoys in warzones is necessary to resupply soldiers
in the field, but it’s a hazardous duty, and convoys
are a favorite victim of the signature weapon of the Iraq
and Afghanistan wars, the roadside bomb, or improvised
explosive device.
“You could conceivably have a very small number of soldiers
devoted to driving,” says Joe Zinecker, Lockheed
Martin’s director of combat maneuver systems at the Missiles
and Fire Control division. “The system has the capability
to get that down to zero. The lead vehicle could be
unmanned. You could, in theory, have no soldiers driving
it whatsoever,” although he admits that’s a little way off.
The appliqué system that will make up AMAS grew out of
CAST, the Convoy Active Safety Technology system effort
started in 2005 by the Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise
and the Army’s Tank Automotive Research and Development
Engineering Center.
That in turn grew out of the Autonomous Land Vehicle,
or ALV, a hulking, 10-foot-tall self-driving vehicle developed
in 1985 by DARPA and what was then Martin
Marietta (in fact, some of the ALV engineers work on the
AutoMate Module program today).
By the time CAST wrapped up in 2011, it had driven
more than 16,000 miles autonomously with no mishaps
with convoys of as many as five vehicles.
However, the CAST software was “written by engineers
for engineers,” Zinecker says, and anything headed into
the field needs to be easier to fit on various types of vehicles
and be “much more maintainable.”
That’s the goal of the appliqué kit for AMAS, which is still
in the laboratory at the moment. The first field tests are
scheduled for this summer. The company plans to set up
convoy tests, where vehicles must not only avoid obstacles
but other vehicles attempting to interfere with them, just
as they would in the field.
8 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Self-driving trucks take to the road
as part of the CAST demonstration.
Photo courtesy Lockheed Martin.
AMAS is intended to be “an autonomy kit coupled with
a by-wire kit that can be fitted to almost any vehicle,” Zinecker
says.
It consists of TV cameras, scanners, radars, lidars and a
laser scanner, along with actuators that can operate the
brakes, steering column and active safety kit.
“So, basically with the AMAS system, you have an option
of turning on the active safety kit that gives warnings to
the driver … [and it] ranges all the way up to full autonomy,”
Zinecker says.
Competition on the Road
Lockheed Martin is far from alone in the appliqué robotic
kit space, although it may have been in it longer
than many competitors.
TORC Robotics, based in Virginia, markets three levels
of drive-by-wire kits that allow vehicle functions to be
monitored and controlled remotely or even allow the
vehicles to drive autonomously.
Utah-based Kairos Autonomi markets the Pronto4 appliqué
kit that converts vehicles into optionally manned
ones. It recently wrapped up the first phase of contract
work installing kits to create unmanned target vehicles
for National Guard Bureau test sites across the country.
Switzerland’s Ruag Defence showed a new concept for
robotic vehicle control, VERO, at the IDEX international
defense exhibition in Abu Dhabi in February (for
more on that show, see the April issue of Unmanned
Systems). The company has developed the appliqué kit
for the Swiss army Eagle IV military vehicle, allowing
it to be driven by a human or operated remotely, but it
can be retrofitted to existing vehicles.
The company is planning VERO in three phases: remote
control via radio link by the end of 2013; semiautonomous
control in 2014, meaning preplanned
courses could be programmed into the system; and autonomous
operation after that.
Oshkosh Defense also has its TerraMax kit, which can
convert military vehicles into unmanned systems. Like
AutoMate, it’s a system of software and sensors that
can connect to the drive-by-wire systems of military
trucks. The company has wrapped up a demonstration
conducted with the Robotics Technology Consortium
and is now upgrading the system with new computing
smarts.
It’s also a bit of a celebrity, having made an appearance
on a recent episode of the BBC’s car-nut show “Top
Gear,” where it took part in a cross-country race against
show host James May.
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 9

A convoy of TerraMax vehicles.
Photo courtesy Oshkosh Defense.
Robotic Porters
Military self-driving systems aren’t limited to large
trucks. Soldiers and Marines also need smaller systems
to carry their gear on patrol, and several companies are
working on systems that can be remotely operated or
drive themselves.
Lockheed Martin has the Squad Mission Support System
(SMSS), an off-the-shelf, all-terrain vehicle converted
into a sophisticated robot. The system can be
driven by radio control or in autonomous mode.
Four units were tested in Afghanistan last year by the
U.S. Army. The soldiers were reluctant to give them
back, Zinecker says. “They really did not want the vehicles
to come home.”
One new wrinkle for the SMSS is satellite connectivity,
which the company demonstrated on the vehicle.
That allows it to be controlled almost anywhere in the
world with only half a second of latency, adequate for
the generally slow speeds at which the vehicle operates.
Soldiers can use the satellite link to control the system
remotely to conduct a mission. Then when it’s done,
they can just switch it back to autonomous mode and
have it come home.
The company is now developing different variants of
the system with an eye toward a program of record in
2015. The company is also exploring cooperation with
The Squad Mission Support System, an off-road vehicle turned into a robot and capable of very
long distance control via satellite. Photo courtesy Lockheed Martin.
Click this QR code to see a preview of Oshkosh Defense’s TerraMax on “Top Gear.”
10 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Orlando2013_Rotor_ad_LISA_REV_Layout 6 4/3/13 10:49 AM Page 1
the unmanned K-Max cargo helicopter program, which
tackles the unmanned logistics problem from the air.
“We are planning on doing some cooperative work
with the K-Max guys this summer,” says Adrian Michalicek,
program development manager for autonomous
systems at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire
Control. “If you’ve got an SMSS vehicle and you want
to run a reconnaissance mission, you don’t necessarily
want to drive it there.”
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TORC Robotics’ GUSS, shown here at the 2012 Robotics Rodeo. AUVSI photo.
As with the larger systems, they aren’t alone in developing
this capability.
TORC Robotics has been working with the Marine
Corps Warfighting Laboratory and other agencies on
the Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate, or GUSS,
also a commercial off-road vehicle converted to robotics
use. GUSS can carry about 1,800 pounds of cargo,
a bit more than SMSS, and can also be driven via teleoperation
or drive autonomously.
GUSS recently took part in the 2012 Robotics Rodeo
at Fort Benning, Ga., sponsored by TARDEC and the
Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization,
where it took first place in the mounted endurance
challenge. The company ran GUSS in autonomous
mode in that competition, which tested the speed, reliability
and endurance of machines over rough terrain.
Israel Aerospace Industries is developing Rex, a fourwheeled
robotic porter for infantry. It’s smaller than
GUSS or SMSS, carrying up to 551 pounds of gear.
As all of these programs continue, and others join
them, it seems clear that that future of battlefield transportation
will be increasingly unmanned.
Brett Davis is editor of Unmanned Systems.
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MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 11

Uncanny valley
Rules $ of the Road
States Line Up for Driverless Car Dollars
Legislation on driverless cars has the distinction of
being both a right of passage for a state interested
in allowing self-driving vehicles on its roads, while
also — as many states have admitted — being somewhat
unnecessary.
Currently only Nevada, Florida and California have legislation
allowing the testing of driverless cars on their
roads. But, with a large push from Google, many other
states are coming to the fore to stay ahead of the pledge
by many auto manufacturers to have commercial selfdriving
cars on the road by around 2020.
Other states that have proposed legislation include Colorado,
Michigan, Wisconsin and Oregon, along with
the District of Columbia, to name a few.
California, which passed driverless car legislation in Senate
Bill 1298 in September 2012, acknowledged in its
bill language that driverless cars were not explicitly prohibited
in any laws already on the books. In fact, Google
did the lion’s share of its more than 400,000 self-driven
miles in the company’s home state prior to the bill’s passage.
The same is true for pending legislation state Michigan.
As of June 2012, speaking at AUVSI’s Driverless Car
Summit 2012 in Michigan, the state’s Director of the
Department of Transportation Kirk Steudle believed
that despite a lack of legislation, testing self-driving cars
was still legal.
“We don’t think there’s a prohibition right now.”
But, regardless, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder took up the
issue in his State of the State address in January 2013,
and State Sen. Mike Kowall introduced legislation on
the issue on 7 Feb.
So if legality is not holding driverless cars back, what’s
with all these states clamoring over being the next to
have driverless car bills A simple answer is money, particularly
for Michigan, which prides itself as the United
States’ hub of motor vehicles and relies on auto manufacturer
dollars to stay in the state.
Kowall explained to The Car Connection that automotive
supplier Continental expressed desire to relocate to
Nevada after that state, the first to pass legislation, came
up with a licensing process for self-driving vehicles.
Though there’s no timeline for Michigan to pass legislation,
nearby states are ramping up efforts to get a slice of
what is traditionally the Wolverine State’s pie.
State Sen. Fred Risser’s proposed driverless car bill would
mean nearby Wisconsin, not Michigan, could be the
first Midwestern state that allows driverless car testing.
His bill was proposed in February of this year.
States that don’t have a direct financial tie to the automotive
industry are pitching driverless car bills to
their constituents for alternative reasons. Oregon State
Rep. Sara Gelser, who introduced House Bill 2428 in
January, says driverless cars tie into her prior interests
of helping people with disabilities to stay empowered
through mobility. Oregon also currently has laws that
do actually prohibit driverless vehicles.
“Our legislation does require that there is [a] driver in
the car that is sitting [in] the driver’s seat, who is [a]
licensed driver,” said Gelser in an interview with NPR.
“The standards that we are proposing in this bill would
require that there be an override feature on the car. So if
there is a problem, that licensed driver that is required to
be in the driver’s seat could take control of the vehicle.”
Another major factor in passing legislation is technology
giant Google. Oregon would give the company three
connected and massive states in which to take their vehicles
on a road trip. And it seems when it comes to state
legislation that whatever Google says goes.
The one anomaly in all the passed, proposed and pending
legislation comes from Colorado, which shelved its
driverless car bill, sponsored by State Sen. Greg Brophy.
According to a statement by Brophy in the Denver Post,
the bill got stuck because of objections by Google. Brophy
said the company had “reservations,” but wouldn’t
comment on further questioning by the paper.
12 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Technology Gap
Driving Down
the Cost of Change
At last year’s Driverless Car Summit in Detroit,
Google’s Chris Urmson said the company’s selfdriving
cars have $150,000 of equipment on
board, including a $70,000 lidar. And while that price
for a prototype driverless car system created by a company
with nearly $11 billion in profits last year isn’t
worth a second glance, it would amount to sticker shock
for the average consumer already dropping a lot of cash
on a new car.
“Right now a lot of these systems are in the prototype
phase, and so the hardware that’s being purchased is either
a one- or two-off, low-volume [production] price,
so that adds up as you go through any vehicle outfit with
the required sensing technology, computing technology
and things like that,” says Ryan Lamm, manager of research
and development for intelligent vehicle systems
at Southwest Research Institute.
Southwest has first-hand experience in how to bring
down the cost of sensor technology. The research firm
is the prime contractor in the Navy’s Small Unit Mobility
Enhancement Technologies program, which aims
to make unmanned ground vehicle technology capable
yet also affordable. While Southwest Research Institute
doesn’t produce sensor hardware, it worked to develop
low-cost camera algorithms for vehicles that don’t rely
on GPS data. And though this program has a military
focus, Lamm says the concept translates to the driverless
car community.
“It actually translates quite well. ... A lot of the expertise
and a lot of the secret sauce really is the software. And so
the way we’ve developed a lot of the systems is to pretty
much be agnostic of sensors, to not be dependent on
specific types of platforms, to not be dependent on any
specific type of hardware.”
Like any other product, mass production will likely
shrink the cost of driverless car sensors, since it will
change how they are manufactured and also increase
competition, which also drives down cost. However,
Lamm says there are keys that will also enable software
prices to remain low, like keeping nonrecurring costs
down through use of an extensible software framework.
“Our philosophy is always that the software should be
very modular, scalable and extensible so that you don’t
The SUMET EV-1 vehicle, which can
navigate autonomously in harsh terrain.
Photo courtesy Southwest Research Institute.
have to redo a lot of software when you want to add
additional levels of autonomy or make changes to your
hardware,” he says.
Through this approach to making autonomy software,
the cost of updates is “essentially free” after you’ve developed
the initial framework, says Lamm.
However, Southwest Research Institute isn’t a for-profit
corporation trying to sell shrink-wrapped autonomy
software. Many companies do license their software for
royalties, just like how personal computer users pay for
adding software to their systems. A model like this could
mean that the overall cost of going driverless would be
higher.
Modular, scalable software development also allows
companies to keep up with Moore’s Law — the concept
that the rate of computing power change over short time
intervals is exponential.
“One of the key goals of all the work that we’ve done at
[Southwest Research Institute], including some of the
internally funded work that we’ve done, is to look at
what’s possible to eliminate dependence on expensive,
vendor-proprietary solutions,” says Lamm. “We don’t
build our systems around specific types of vehicles and
what have you. By being extensible, what that does is it
effectively takes the software cost factor, for slight modification
or enhancements, out of the equation. So really
then what you’re dependent upon in the end is the cost
of the hardware.”
The ultimate driver of price, however, is still the consumer.
“What we’ve seen in the auto market is safety is a
difficult sell,” says Lamm. “If you’re going to buy a new
car, if you have the option for an entertainment package
versus a special additional safety system, it’s likely that
the end consumer will choose the entertainment package
over the safety system. … This is a feature that’s going
to cost several thousand dollars, possibly, and is the
public willing to pay that the next time they go out and
buy their next car Or is the convenience, the mobility
aspect of being able to be distracted while you’re sitting
in your vehicle, is that worth that cost to you It’ll be
interesting to see how the market evolves.”
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 13

Q&A: Tom Bamonte
Tom Bamonte serves as the general counsel for the North Texas Tollway Authority. Over
the past five years he’s written articles and made presentations to legal and transportation
industry groups on driverless and driver-assisted technology. He maintains a Twitter site
devoted to the technology (@TomBamonte) and is a contributor to Driverless Car HQ.
Q: What are the major legal hurdles you see
on the horizon for self-driving car technology
A: I’m actually an optimist in this area and am confident
that the legal system will be capable of handling liability
issues arising from this technology, just has it with all
sorts of new technologies over the past century.
There is a risk of overregulation where folks, primarily
the federal government, may prematurely come in and
attempt to occupy the field and slow the rapid pace of
innovation in this area. But overall, I’m optimistic that
our legal system can handle this technology without any
significant reconfiguration or major changes.
Q: How do you think the issue of privacy will
come to play in connected vehicle and connected
infrastructure debates
A: We in the toll industry have a lot of experience dealing
with highway users and privacy. What we’ve learned
is this: Users are very concerned about having data about
their individual travel patterns shared. We don’t get a lot
of resistance, however, to us harvesting data from travel
patterns as a whole to improve safety, traffic management,
etc. As long as connected vehicle technology is
used for general data harvesting, as opposed to tracking
individual drivers, we’ve set a good example in the toll
industry of how to find an acceptable balance.
Q: In what ways do you imagine cities changing
once driverless cars become a ubiquitous
technology
A: There’s been some work in this area suggesting that
driverless vehicle technology will promote sprawl. I think
the opposite may be true. More efficient use of existing
highway space, which is what this technology offers, allows
cities to have more density around their existing
highway networks. What that means is that if you could
double, triple, even quadruple the carrying capacity of existing
streets, and especially expressways, you could have
denser retail and residential development around our existing
highway system. So I see this technology as a way to
densify urban development, as opposed to it being something
that will further promote sprawl.
Q: Many states, with varying transportation
needs and population densities, are looking
into passing driverless car legislation. Do you
have an opinion on how different regions with
different densities should take these types of
factors into account when writing driverless
car legislation
A: I don’t think the law needs to reflect the different levels
of density and urban development in our states. We’re
early enough in the development curve that just getting
vehicles out there to be tested, and have the highway
authorities and cities and states working in this area, is
what we need. We’re all going to figure it out together.
At this point I think it’d be premature to have a different
driverless vehicle law for, say, Montana or Wyoming
versus Connecticut or another densely populated state.
Q: What immediate benefits do you foresee
in creating the proper infrastructure for selfdriving
or connected vehicles
A: There are opportunities to facilitate the deployment
of driverless and connected vehicle technologies by selected
infrastructure improvements. On expressways,
for example, could the road communicate useful information
to vehicles in such a way that we could have
driverless vehicle lanes that provide guaranteed travel
times from point to point
On the safety side, there may be ways for the infrastructure
to talk to vehicles to disable cars that are going in
a wrong-way direction. Wrong-way vehicles cause a lot
of damage, a lot of accidents, and there could be a way
14 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Q & A
for the infrastructure to communicate to the wrongway
vehicles and pull them to the shoulder until law
enforcement can arrive. We could save hundreds of
lives each year.
Q: Infrastructure changes are often costly. Do
you see the cost benefit as worthwhile versus
implementing changes only to a vehicle’s onboard
technology
A: I think it’s premature to willy-nilly invest in driverless
vehicle technology infrastructure. Frankly, most of
it hasn’t been invented yet. The challenge that we face as
highway authorities is, at some point, as the driverless vehicle
technology gets more sophisticated, we’re going to
need to have some pretty fundamental
discussions about
whether we want to increase
roadway capacity through investing
in electronic platforms
versus pouring more concrete
and expanding our physical
facilities.
I think that what makes sense
from a cost-benefit analysis
now is for cities and highway
authorities to partner up with
the auto manufacturers; other
innovators, such as Google in
this area; and local research
institutions to figure out exactly
what does a highway
of the future look like. That
future highway is probably
based on wireless communications and involves a fiberoptic
backbone, both of which we have already in some
form. There’s probably a generation of sensors that allow
communications between vehicles and infrastructure.
Again, a lot of it remains to be invented, so what we
need to do now is invest in that research and work together
on some visioning and hopefully some solutions.
Q: What are examples of simple infrastructure
solutions cities could implement that better
enable driverless cars
A: Here’s something that we’re already thinking about:
Do you paint your roadways differently so that sensor-equipped
vehicles can read the roadway more effectively
Existing vehicles now are coming equipped
with lane-changing technologies, where the vehicle
alerts you if you’re steering out of your lane. Could
‘We’re in the equivalent of the early
1900s. They didn’t wait back then
for the interstate highway system to
deploy the Model T. They put the
Model T out there on the dirt roads,
and when it rained the horse did
better. Yet, it was the release of new
vehicular technology that prompted
the development of paved roads
and ultimately the interstates. A similar
process is happening now.’
we enhance that technology just through better striping
Are there ways to make vehicles, guardrails and
other highway features visually more resonant to lidar,
infrared and photo sensors One of the things we can
and should be doing right now is considering how do
we remake the look of our roadways using existing elements
so that driverless and connected vehicles can
operate more effectively and safely.
Beyond that, we’re all waiting on the federal government
to move on the 5.9-gigahertz wireless spectrum.
If we finally get that as an established standard, we can
talk about developing sensors that broadcast road condition
information and upcoming traffic information and
stoplight technology that alerts vehicles to another vehicle
that’s going to run a light.
Those kind investments could
be good ones in the relative
near term.
Q: How can cities better
prepare themselves for
driverless cars that could
soon be coming to their
roads
A: At this point what’s needed
is for folks to identify the
upsides and downsides of
the technology and use local,
regional, state and federal
resources to try to figure out
ways to facilitate the deployment
of autonomous and
connected vehicle technology.
We’re in the equivalent of the early 1900s. They didn’t
wait back then for the interstate highway system to deploy
the Model T. They put the Model T out there on
the dirt roads, and when it rained the horse did better.
Yet, it was the release of new vehicular technology that
prompted the development of paved roads and ultimately
the interstates. A similar process is happening
now. Google and other innovators are going to be putting
the driverless vehicles out there on “dumb” 20th
century infrastructure. It’s going to take a while for the
infrastructure to catch up with “smart” cars, just as it
took a while for the interstate highway system to catch
up with the descendents of the Model T. That’s where I
see us going. The key question is what’s the infrastructure
platform that will make the onboard driverless/
connected vehicle technology work more effectively
and more safely
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 15

The last 30 years of driverless car advances have often
been propelled by federal projects that advanced
the state of the art. Here’s a look at the stages of
projects both in the United States and abroad that have
focused on self-driving technology.
1994 – The Prometheus Project
gained ground when two robotic
vehicles drove at speeds up to 130
kph for more than 1,000 kilometers
in Paris on a highway.
1996 – European CHAUFFEUR project
begins, focused on “electronic towbar”
operations to enable platooning of trucks.
1987 – Pan-European research and
development organization EUREKA
introduced the Prometheus Project in
1987, a large-scale driverless car
development program.
1996 – Japan’s Ministry
of Land, Infrastructure,
Transport and Tourism
demonstrates fully automated
vehicles on public
roads.
2004 – The first DARPA
Grand Challenge is held
in the Mojave Desert. No
team finished the event.
2003 – California DOT funds
UC-Berkeley PATH program
to develop and assess truck
platooning technologies.
1994 – The National Automated
Highway System Consortium is
set up to carry out the automated
highway demonstration called for in
the 1991 ISTEA bill.
1997 –The NAHSC hosts the Automated
Highway Systems demonstration in San Diego,
where thousands of participants were given
rides in automated cars, trucks and buses.
16 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

TIMELINE
2005 – DARPA reconvened for a new
Grand Challenge, carrying over the
prize money from the original event.
This time all but one competitor completed
the race.
2009 – German KONVOI project, begun in
2005, completes testing of truck platoons on
public roads.
2009 – The SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for
the Environment) project had the dual goals
of enabling driverless road training and also
cutting down on environmental effluence from
automobiles through reduced congestion.
2013 – Japanese
Energy ITS project
holds major capability
demonstration.
2008 – Japan’s Ministry
of Economy, Trade,
and Industry begins the
Energy ITS project to
reduce emissions via
truck platooning.
2012 – The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration began the largest ever test of
connected vehicle technology.
2007 – DARPA’s Urban Challenge followed its
more rural counterparts with a more suburban
scenario track at George Air Force Base. Six
teams successfully completed the mission.
2012 – After completing public
road tests earlier in the year,
SARTRE successfully wrapped
up in mid-November.
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 17

DRIVING THE MARKET
Auto Companies Vie for
Unmanned Dominance
By Paul Godsmark and Gabriel Sniman
Driverless Car HQ projects that Google will hit the million-mile
mark with its driverless cars this year. Photo courtesy Google.
Editor’s note: The following report on the commercial driverless
car industry was contributed by the writers of Driverless
Car HQ, an Australia-based website dedicated to driverless
car news coverage. All opinions expressed belong to
Driverless Car HQ.
Just a couple of years ago, if you were to tell someone
that fully autonomous cars could be on the
road by 2020, you would have been laughed at.
A few years back companies like GM, BMW and Mercedes
were clearly on a slow but steady course toward the
ultimate goal of unmanned driving. Ford released selfparking
technology for the masses and other improvements
steadily found their way into the ecosystem, but
no one was even talking openly about autonomous technology
as a thing for the immediate future. Universities
and Google seemed to be simply getting on with their
development programs, with the indication being that
consumers would still need to wait decades to see this
technology become road-bound. Only GM had dared to
suggest, with deliberately vague terminology, that consumers
might see this technology in the 2020s.
Fast forward a couple of years and the latest competition
seems to be about who will be first with fully autonomous
systems. The race is hot and growing hotter still.
In 2012, GM, Volvo, Lexus, Nissan and BMW/Continental
indicated that by around 2020 they will have autonomous
technology in their vehicles. Mercedes-Benz
has emphatically stated that it will be first and has plans
to release a semiautonomous vehicle in the latter part of
2013. Volvo plans to do it by 2014. Google has stated
openly and repeatedly that its technology could be in
public hands as soon as 2017. Do planners and politicians,
businesses and the public have any idea quite what
this means and how to use the next four years to prepare
The Current State of Play
Three companies have now been licensed by Nevada,
the first state to introduce regulations. Google received
the first infinity license plate “001” from Nevada, with
Continental following with “007.” Following this, Audi
became the first automaker to gain an infinity plate.
The race certainly seems to be heating up. Michigan has
made it very clear that it now wants autonomous vehicle
laws, thus following Nevada, Florida, California and impending
legislation in Texas.
The North American automakers have traditionally seen
Michigan as the center for automotive development.
Yet, times are changing. Nissan has challenged the status
quo by moving its autonomous research center to Silicon
Valley in California, because that is where the artificial
intelligence expertise key to this technology located.
If Google truly is ahead because of its AI expertise, then
this makes sense. Improving cars is increasingly becoming
a software problem, rather than hardware. Where
else but Silicon Valley
But, despite all this, the automakers still seem intent on
following their 130-year-old, tried-and-true business
18 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

model of incremental improvements, currently
moving to semiautonomous technology with
plans to, at some point, offer full autonomy if
people really want it. Many automakers still insist
that the goal is not unmanned driving, but
assisted driving that relieves the pressure from
humans when they need it. But, with statistics
showing that young people are gaining their licenses
at an increasingly older age and less and
less are choosing to own a car, it seems that driving
has become an irritating distraction for many.
For some, it takes away
valuable time from social
media and Internet
browsing in general —
the growing addiction of
this second decade of the
21st century.
Google Domination
So, is Google ahead of
the automakers Through
Driverless Car HQ’s own
research, mostly assisted
by Google’s own search
engine, we have counted
28 California-plated
self-driving cars, including
eight Toyota Prius
vehicles and 22 Lexus
RX450hs, in addition to several in Nevada. So
common are they that many commuters around
the Bay Area have informed Driverless Car HQ
reporters that they see the Google driverless cars
on a weekly basis.
In August Google announced on its official
blog that its vehicles had completed more than
300,000 miles on public roads. In September
Google had completed more than 50,000
miles consecutively without any safety critical
human intervention. Now, with 30 vehicles on
the road and a fleet that is rapidly expanding,
the quantity of miles driven is set to balloon.
Driverless Car HQ expects Google to reach the
magic million-mile figure at some point around
mid 2013. This number is significant, given the
claim of Stanford’s Bryant Walker Smith that
Google would need 727,000 miles without human
intervention to demonstrate that there is
99 percent confidence that their vehicle will be
Automakers have yet to publicly demonstrate the level of autonomy shown in DARPA’s 2007
Urban Challenge. Photo courtesy DARPA.
safer than a human being. None of the automakers
have released figures on miles tested on
public roads, although Audi and Continental
needed to achieve at least 10,000 miles to satisfy
Nevada’s licensing requirements.
Bridging Technology Gaps
Lidar seems to be Google’s silver bullet in achieving
these advances so quickly. Many observers see
lidar as the gold-standard technology if you want
to achieve as close as possible
to 100 percent confidence
of object recognition.
Of the automakers,
Driverless Car HQ has
seen Velodyne’s spinning
lidar on GM and Toyota
vehicles (for more information,
see Page 16 of
the winter 2012 Mission
Critical: Sensors issue).
Audi and Continental are
likely using German company
Ibeo’s much smaller
lidar units or similar sensors.
There have been some impressive
results with the
vision-based systems from
Mercedes and BMW, but
it is clear that the technical gap to fully autonomous
driving cannot currently be bridged using
vision alone. There may well be breakthroughs in
this area in the next few years, but at the moment
anyone that is serious about fully autonomous
functionality has to be using a lidar-based system.
In many ways the public progress announced by
the automakers has been impressive, with selfparking
Audis and Toyotas fitted with intelligent
transportation system technology traveling
autonomously around the company’s test track.
Mercedes, Volvo and BMW are all on the cusp of
releasing semiautonomous technology which will
handle a high proportion of the driving workload
in certain prescribed driving environments,
either at low speed when congested or at high
speed on freeways.
But, and it is a big but, the automakers have not
demonstrated anything publicly that approaches
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 19

Mercedes-Benz vehicle-to-vehicle LED collision warning system. Many
commercial car companies have been debuting driver-assist technology in
a ramp up to eventual driverless cars. Photo courtesy Mercedes-Benz.
the level of autonomy shown by the entrants to the
DARPA Urban Challenge of 2007. All successful entrants
to the DARPA challenges used lidar-based systems,
and many of those engineers have moved onto
working with Google and the automakers. It could be
that the automakers are significantly more advanced
than they have publicly declared, but if that is the case
then why let Google undercut the date at which they
can provide full autonomy
Google has been talking about retrofitting driverless car
technology onto existing vehicles. A draft of the proposed
autonomous vehicle bill for the District of Columbia
refers to retrofitting vehicles manufactured in
2009 or later.
Motivating the Consumer
The driverless car community has heard the discussions
about major, show-stopping obstacles, such as liability,
legal, union resistance, unwillingness to hand over control
to a robot, cybersecurity, etc. But perhaps the tipping
point will be when an average person can save a
significant portion of their salary by not owning a car.
Furthermore, the main motivator for self-driving cars
will be the millions of lives saved by this technology.
Human error is a factor in 93 percent of the approximate
1.2 million road fatalities that occur worldwide
every year.
There are massive downsides too — taxi drivers and
freight truckers may soon be out of a job. However,
with every great industrial and technological revolution,
there is turmoil and employment displacement. Driverless
Car HQ anticipates, however, that many of the people
who are displaced will move into the new industries
created by this technology. For example, someone will
need to build, maintain and manage all those driverless
delivery bots. And although this may be a disruptive
technology, millions of lives will be saved and countless
more injuries and accidents avoided. For us at Driverless
Car HQ, it can’t come soon enough.
Paul Godsmark is a highway safety expert who now consults
on self-driving car issues for regional governments. He
and Gabriel Sniman are both part of the writing team at
DriverlessCarHQ. To visit the website, go to www.driverlesscarhq.com
or contact Editor Matt Newton at contact@
driverlesscarhq.com.
20 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT
OF UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS INTEGRATION IN THE UNITED STATES
The Federal Aviation Administration currently has
heavy restrictions on unmanned aircraft flying in the
nation’s airspace. In a recently released economic report,
AUVSI explores the economic implications to
the United States once these restrictions are lifted.
Congress has set a 2015 September 30 deadline for
this integration.
Bottom line, a multibillion commercial market will
quickly emerge in the United States with applications
ranging from precision agriculture to precision taco
delivery, creating more than 100,000 jobs by 2025
just in manufacturing for these new products.
WHY UAS
In the most basic sense, UAS allow for similar capabilities
of manned aircraft except without the added
weight and size of the pilot and related pilot protection
equipment. In the report, AUVSI focused on markets
that have existing data (agriculture and public safety)
and made projections. However, when it comes to new
applications, soon the sky will no longer be the limit.
LEGISLATIVE BARRIERS
Though the FAA will find safe, effective ways to integrate
UAS in the nation’s airspace, lifting what is the
only current hurdle to mass commercial adoption, new
legislation is under development that will may hinder
commercial adoption of UAS. Michael Toscano, president
and CEO of AUVSI, recently spoke to US Congress
on the matter. Looking purely at the economic
implications, states or municipalities that limit UAS
use will miss out on the benefits of such systems and
will likely quickly change their ways after other states
prove out the potential of UAS and alleviate current
concerns. However, it may be too late for states that
adapt slowly, as companies will likely already be established
in states without excess restrictions.
TO READ THE FULL REPORT ONLINE, SCAN THIS QR CODE
OR VISIT http://www.auvsi.org/econreport
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 23

The national test beds available to developers today.
Image courtesy U.S. Department of Transportation.
Michigan’s
Connected Vehicle Test Bed
V2V AND V2I TECHNOLOGY A KEY ENABLER
By David A. McNamara
Automated driving — the ability of the car to
drive itself — has captured the imagination.
J.D. Power and Associates, the premier automotive
market researcher, recently conducted a consumer
study indicating that one out of five consumers
would purchase an automated vehicle. The connected
automated car using vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-toinfrastructure
wireless creates new possibilities and is
the future of transportation.
Scientific Application International Corp., under contract
by the U.S. Department of Transportation, operates
the Connected Vehicle Test Bed in Novi, Mich., to
test V2I applications that enhance safety and mobility.
The CVTB and its resources were used by the developers
of the technologies used in the Safety Pilot Model
Deployment in Ann Arbor, Mich., to develop, test, and
certify hardware and software and prove the interoperability
of those devices. The SPMD is a large-scale field
operations test of 2,900 vehicles that is being used to
study the effectiveness of V2V safety applications.
Testing the Technology
When will the safety and mobility benefits of the driverless
car be realized Transportation industry insiders predict
that existing driver assistance systems will become
conditionally automated — that is, an automated copilot
will take control under certain conditions. Existing
radar- and camera-based systems can operate autonomously
at lower speeds, under 35 mph. Volvo plans to
put its version of this system, Traffic Assist, on the road
as early as 2014. Richard Wallace, director of Transportation
Systems Analysis at the Center for Automotive
Research, follows these developments closely with an eye
toward assessing readiness.
“Vehicle automation at lower speeds is ready today,” he
says. “Our study of the driverless car landscape tells us
that these early systems will build on current, state-ofthe-art
radar and electro-optical [camera] technologies.
We have the opportunity to provide drivers with both
added comfort and improved traffic throughput in congested
corridors.”
22 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Testing Testing
The industry can address many technical questions
once it characterizes complex driving environments
and provides real-life test environments. One key question
unique to automated driving is the handoff from
driver to the automated copilot and vice versa. Other
technical questions include testing to interoperability
standards and system and component robustness under
real-life road conditions. This experience and feedback
from developers underscores the importance of a test environment
that emulates real-world road conditions —
weather, radio reception, road type, urban intersections
and geography — and gives developers the freedom to
configure tests.
Methodology in Michigan
The Connected Vehicle Test Bed is where new V2I applications
can be created, tested and deployed on a large
scale. A compelling application the project is considering
is “green wave” — the ability of cars, and especially
commercial trucks, to avoid unnecessary braking and to
maximize fuel efficiency. Cars and trucks communicate
with intersections and precisely interpret traffic signal
timing to control speeds at a safe and optimum speed.
Developers can come to Michigan’s Telegraph Road portion
of the Connected Vehicle Test Bed to experience
these new applications. The Michigan Connected Vehicle
Test Bed is comprised of more than 75 centerline
miles of roadway. Roadside Equipment (RSE) can also
broadcast Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) and Geometric
Intersection Description along Telegraph Road.
The Michigan test bed is representative of several others
throughout the U.S. that are open to developers. Assets
include RSEs meeting national standards located on
various roads and intersections; SPaT broadcasts; test vehicles
dedicated for research and development; portable
SPaT listeners, along with dedicated short-range communications
(DSRC) sniffer capabilities; and custom,
portable, solar-powered trailers for deploying RSEs in
targeted locations.
Leveraging Wireless Technology
Wireless technology is a key enabler of the automated
car, because it enhances safety and mobility, but what
wireless technologies should be used Many safety applications
require low-latency (e.g., an air bag deployment
decision is in the low millisecond range) and deterministic
communications. The U.S. DOT’s National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration has chosen
DSRC, a Wi-Fi based technology, for new V2V and V2I
applications that require low-latency and short-range
communications. Cellular is capable of a longer range
of communication, while DSRC is so short range that
it could warn drivers of incidents immediately ahead.
How should these wireless technologies be integrated for
safety and mobility
The Role of Connected Car Technology
New V2V wireless technology allows cars to communicate
to other cars, sharing important information and
taking automotive safety to the next level. Consumers
expect the automated vehicle to employ the latest safety
technology, and, therefore, existing driver assistance systems
will be enhanced by the capabilities of V2V technology.
With the addition of wireless, driver assistance
systems become cooperative systems.
According to the DOT website, “Connected vehicle
safety applications are designed to increase situational
awareness and reduce or eliminate crashes through vehicle-to-vehicle
and vehicle-to-infrastructure data transmission
that supports driver advisories, driver warnings
and vehicle and/or infrastructure controls. These technologies
may potentially address up to 82 percent of
crash scenarios with unimpaired drivers, preventing tens
of thousands of automobile crashes every year.“
The Michigan safety pilot has the goal of characterizing
and quantifying the safety benefits. (For more information
on the field operation, see the February 2013 edition
of Unmanned Systems.)
Volvo has demonstrated conditional automated driving,
or “platooning,” in the European Safe Road Trains for
the Environment Project, or SARTRE. Platooning employs
radar, cameras and wireless for communication between
vehicles. The military has recognized the benefits
and will be the first adopter.
Vehicle manufacturers, such as Toyota, think that fully
automated driving is not the first focus for original
equipment manufacturers. Chuck Gulash, director of
the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center in Ann
Arbor, shares this viewpoint, as he expressed at the SAE
International Government/Industry meeting held in
February in Washington, D.C.
“While key components of automated vehicle research
efforts could lead to a fully automated car in the future,
the vision is not necessarily a car that drives itself,” he
said. “In our pursuit of developing more advanced automated
technologies, we believe the driver must be fully
engaged. Our vision is a car equipped with an intelligent,
always-attentive copilot whose skills contribute to
safer driving.
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 23

A vision of cooperative wireless, showing how various wireless technologies work seamlessly to provide services.
Image courtesy SAIC.
Affiliated Test Beds
A national test bed framework allows developers to try
new ideas, to capture real-life road conditions and to use
interoperable equipment built to the latest standards.
Developers and certifiers, public and private, need this
capability.
According to the U.S. DOT connected vehicle research
website, “The vision for the test beds is to establish multiple
locations as part of a one connected system that can
support continued research, testing and demonstration
of connected vehicle concepts, standards, applications
and innovative products. Test environments will also
serve as precursors or foundations for state and local deployments
using connected vehicles technologies.”
Greg D. Krueger, Connected Vehicle Program manager
at SAIC, says, “We need to harness and grow the abilities
of existing installations and engage the research community
to move towards full deployment. First, we need
to create the test assets, and then make them available
to all. These test beds will provide interoperable equipment
that meets national standards while at the same
time meet the challenge of being constantly upgraded.”
According to SAIC, which has a key role in making test
environments available to developers, this affiliated test
bed effort will require an organizational structure built on
collaboration, a common technical platform, sharing lessons
learned for development and deployment, common
tools and resources across all facilities, and recognition as
creating models for future large-scale deployments.
The existing test beds, of which Michigan’s is the largest,
include Anthem, Ariz., Palo Alto, Calif., McLean,
Va., Orlando and Manhattan. Others are developing in
various locations in Minnesota and Virginia. They are
starting points for organizing a national set of affiliated
test beds. There is nothing more important than testing
vehicle safety systems under real-life conditions. These
test beds have emerged as important assets, a must for
driverless car development.
David A. McNamara is president of MTS LLC, an automotive
electronics consultant. Greg D. Krueger and Ayeshah
J. Abuelhiga of the Transportation Solutions Division
of the Scientific Application International Corp. contributed
to this article.
24 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

Spotlight
Fleet Automation Forum
Working Group Tackles Commercialization Barriers
By Mohammad Poorsartep
The introduction of automated vehicle technologies
into commercial trucking is expected to have a significant
impact on fleet safety and the bottom line.
Moreover, the economic and social benefits that could
be realized through fleets of automated vehicles include
more efficient, less stressful traffic flow and better fuel
economy, to name a few.
Automated vehicle technologies have matured significantly
in the last decade. As multiple technical approaches
get introduced, state governments are weighing
in with a patchwork of regulations devised at promoting
the new technology while minimizing risk. At least 15
U.S. states have pending or passed legislation regarding
the use and operation of automated vehicles as of press
time.
Automated vehicle systems can address many problems.
However, they face complex problems in the areas of
technical integration, user acceptance, regulation, reliability
and business-case development. The Fleet Automation
Forum provides the venue to discuss barriers
impeding commercialization and to develop plans to
overcome them.
What is FAF
The Fleet Automation Forum has already generated
great interest from government and industry. Designed
as a user-centric collaborative forum, FAF actively engages
important stakeholders from across multiple sectors
to shape the automated fleet technologies market.
The FAF will provide an organizational framework to
coordinate and direct activities necessary to define and
accelerate technology commercialization.
The FAF concept was generated by the U.S. Tank Automotive
Research, Development and Engineering Center
and is now spearheaded collaboratively by the University
of Michigan and AUVSI with the goal of engaging
stakeholders from across multiple sectors to shape the
automated fleet technologies market through working
groups and open dialogue.
Collaboration between users, fleet owners, technologists,
rule makers, and others interacting in working
groups and demonstration pilots will be critical to FAF.
Operator input and performance data collected through
the FAF process will enable data-based decisions regarding
ongoing technical development, rule and policy decisions,
and market data for private investment.
These will be achieved through three primary mechanisms:
specialized working groups, pilot programs and
an annual conference.
Working groups will be formed around areas of common
interest or concern. Initial suggested working
groups would be formed from users and other key stakeholders
concerned with long-haul (freight), mass transit
and regulatory/insurance issues. Other working groups,
such as ones on passenger cars, will be organized over
time as users identify new applications. Working groups
will report at the annual conference but continue to
meet throughout the year.
Pilot programs will be conducted where users will integrate
automated systems into their fleets and provide
reports to working groups and other FAF members.
The cost of integrating components into systems may
be subsidized, and special consideration during vehicle
operations may be offered to incentivize adoption of
technologies.
The annual conference will provide a regular setting to
increase awareness of technologies and their capabilities
through demonstrations and colloquia and to generally
educate the attendees about the capabilities of automated
vehicle technologies. The annual conference
will also provide a regular venue for working groups to
present issues and recommendations to a wide audience
of interested stakeholders. Users and fleet operators will
have opportunities to provide input to technology developers
and government organizations.
Reasons for Automation
Automated vehicle technology can address a number
of problems that the fleet/trucking industry is facing.
Some of the problems include safety, fuel consumption
and a driver shortage.
Accidents in the trucking industry result in $19 billion in
damage, lost goods, lost driver time, etc. These accidents
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 25

also result in 5,000 deaths each year. The Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) introduced in
the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) scoring
system to track the safety records of drivers. In the interest
of safety, the CSA program provides a disincentive
to hire drivers with lower scores but has the unintended
consequence of increasing costs to fleet managers and
reducing the available pool of drivers. Improved safety
could potentially allow drivers and the fleets they serve
to achieve higher CSA scores.
In 2009, United States heavy trucks consumed 44 billion
gallons of fuel (18 percent of the U.S. total) and
produced 500 million tons of carbon dioxide. To put
it another way, the average line haul trucker spends
$70,000 a year on fuel — his single largest expense.
Significant research funding has been spent developing
and evaluating semiautomated convoy technologies that
reduce both fuel consumption and carbon dioxide output.
Programs such as SARTRE and Energy ITS have
demonstrated 20 percent and 15 percent fuel economy
improvement, respectively, and are now being considered
for production abroad.
Driver Shortage
The American Trucking Association estimates that there
is a shortage of between 20,000 and 25,000 drivers. If
trends continue, this number could rise to 239,000 by
the end of the decade. Retirements in the baby boomer
generation and the impact of CSA scores have contributed
to a lack of qualified drivers, leading to the challenges
of driver retention, competitiveness of drivers’
pay and the increased cost of recruiting qualified drivers.
FAF’s Objectives
Federal rules governing commercial
driver hours of service have increasingly
become a major concern for
the trucking industry. The proposed
changes — decreasing driving and
on-duty times and extending the restart
provision — are problematic for
the industry.
Automated vehicle technologies are
expected to make drivers more productive
and safer while reducing fatigue.
They can augment the driver
in a way similar to that provided by
autopilots and auto-landing systems
in the commercial aviation industry.
The improvements could allow for
more favorable hours of service rules
as the technology is proven.
The FAF’s objectives include validating a business case,
accelerating technology adoption and informing policy
makers.
To do this, the FAF will collaboratively define, develop,
and validate the costs and benefits associated with automated
fleet technology. It will also accelerate the
adoption of fleet automation systems by offering forum
stakeholders a competitive advantage. Forum consensus
will help identify which technologies require subsidized
(public or private) funding. The FAF will capture users’
needs and help influence research and technology
investment. It will offer a single setting to identify technology
barriers and collaboratively develop solutions
that will enable accelerated technology adoption.
The FAF will support informed regulatory decisions.
Various state and federal agencies have legislation or regulations
regarding the use and operation of automated
vehicles. Without coordination, such a patchwork of
rules for automated systems will increase costs, slow
widespread application and potentially impede the development
of technical or functional component standards.
With support from government and industry, University
of Michigan-Dearborn and AUVSI have been key
players in organizing FAF.
For more information or to be engaged with this activity,
contact Mohammad Poorsartep from the University of
Michigan-Dearborn at mpoorsar@umich.edu.
26 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

End Users
Is Your
Guy Fraker
Driverless Car
in Good Hands
Insurance Remains a Hurdle for Driverless Car Technology
Driverless cars pose a host of technological and even
social acceptance challenges, but there’s another issue
that must be resolved before they truly take to
the roads — insurance.
“There is a new era of mobility. ... You’re seeing new drive
trains, new metals, new glass, autonomous functions,
shared transportation, at a hockey-stick growth rate, and
one of the only places where all of those trends come
together in a way that affects the consumer pocketbook
immediately is insurance,” says Guy Fraker, a technology
consultant and former Innovation Director from within
the insurance industry. Fraker has studied the issue of
insurance and driverless technology since 2007.
One problem for the industry in general is that it is
regulated by 51 separate state commissioner offices, so
setting insurance rates means getting approval 51 times,
with some of those processes taking years.
“If they [insurance companies] file a rate wrong, it can
take years to get a corrective filing approved, even if it’s
a discount, and may require tens of millions of dollars in
programming hours,” Fraker tells Mission Critical.
“You have 51 independent, uncoordinated state insurance
commissioners. They are typically not a regulatory
body sought out in advance of broad-scale vehicle deployment
as their role is to react to rate filings from insurers
who have taken those factors into account. If an
auto manufacturer is going to come out with something
dramatic, they will go to the DMV, but not necessarily
the department of insurance. However, now that a
‘driver’ may be an artificial intelligent operating system,
the time will come for this to change.”
Another big question facing both auto manufacturers
and insurers centers on the cost of repair. For instance,
a new design might feature radar sensors installed low
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 27

in the front grill. But if a trip down a gravel road breaks
those sensors, what cost $150 to $200 to install on the
assembly line might cost 10 times that to replace.
“The insurance industry is essentially in the business of
restoring something from an unintended loss. While
auto manufacturers are certainly mindful of repairability,
a simple design choice that is appealing to the marketing
people or the design folks may also hold an unintended
consequence of increasing the vehicle’s premium despite
a near-zero collision record,” Fraker says.
The large insurance companies are also cautious, especially
when it comes to autonomous technology, a real
revolution in the automotive world. The companies are
used to having tens of millions of vehicle miles traveled
as a data set.
For instance, crash test data is easy to get: ram two cars
together and see what happens. Driverless car technology,
however, is meant to avoid such outcomes but it’s
difficult to measure their effectiveness.
“That’s a real issue,” Fraker says. “Insurance is really good
at measuring what happens. The industry is not built on
measuring what doesn’t happen.”
The Solutions
Faced with these problems, Fraker sees a couple of possible
solutions. One, the technology will likely be embraced
by smaller, more nimble insurance companies
that can innovate faster than the industry titans.
They’ll use an Internet-based claims model and be more
willing to take chances.
“That’s the kind of company that can use self-driving
vehicles as their breakout technology,” Fraker says.
“If you have a small specialty line insurer that can move
under the radar because their business isn’t that big to
begin with, if you want to innovate and go to market,
the upside with them is pace,” he says. “If you want
one of the big brand names to endorse your technology,
you’re going to grow old.”
One change that could help bring even the large companies
along would be to replace the 51-state and district
insurance regulatory model with a single federal-level
entity, maybe aimed just at setting insurance rates for
driverless cars.
Insurance companies “could save all the operational expenses
to file and file and correct, by just dealing with one
entity,” he says. While the federal government is often criticized
over questions of pace by some, “This is one where
I believe tremendous potential gains could be achieved.”
Fraker says.
Auto companies also could pool their test data, something
they have been very reluctant to do. But doing so
could generate the millions of miles of data the insurance
industry would like to see.
“If we took, hypothetically, all the manufacturers and
all the cars they have on the road, and add Google, we
probably have 1 to 2 million miles of test data,” Fraker
says. “But who’s aggregating it, and where is that being
used”
Even if all that is done, one big challenge still remains
— pricing the insurance to reflect the quality of the
technology. Currently, rates change depending on the
experience of the driver. A newly minted teenage driver
pays much more than a 45-year-old driver, for instance.
“Here’s what’s interesting: Will the insurance premiums
reflect an inexperienced operator when the car is
doing the driving If that is the case, then there is a
profound consumer message being sent about unreliability,”
Fraker says.
Liability lawsuits in the United States also pose a problem,
he says.
“No other society in the world has litigation with the
lottery mentality as it is here,” Fraker says. “If we’re not
careful, we are only going to slow it down right here at
home. This could literally cost the U.S. a technological
leadership position. It’s happened before. And that
would be a tragedy.”
Despite these hurdles, he sees autonomous driving become
a reality, if for no other reason than the alwayswired
millennial generation wants to stay connected
even when in a vehicle.
“Driving is a distraction for them. If they can’t stay connected,
they are not going to buy a car.”
It also means freedom of mobility for the elderly and disabled
and other populations, something that hit home
for Fraker personally when his son, who is on the autism
spectrum and unable to drive, showed him a Web report
on driverless technology a few years ago.
“He saw the first videos that The New York Times broke
about self-driving cars” and asked his father what he
thought. Fraker instead asked his son what he thought
about it. “He said, ‘it means I get to own a car someday.’
That hit me. It has driven me since.”
28 MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013

12-15 August
Walter E. Washington Convention Center • Washington, D.C.
REGI
NOW
TER
Conference from 12 - 15 August
Tradeshow from 13 - 15 August
600+ Exhibiting Companies
40+ Countries Represented
8,000+ Attendees
Promoting and Supporting
Unmanned Systems
and Robotics Across the Globe
auvsishow.org
MISSION CRITICAL • May 2013 31

SAVE
the
DATE
Köln, Germany • 15-16 October 2013
Save the date for this dynamic conference packed with
a great line-up of speakers representing international
regulatory agencies, as well as civil and commercial
remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) end users.
PLANNED SESSION
TOPICS INCLUDE:
• Emerging RPAS applications in the commercial and civilian sectors
• Market Trends Talk – A discussion on potential for emerging UAS applications
• Facilitating RPAS operations in unrestricted airspace
• Standards development for RPAS in Europe
• Funding and insuring RPAS operations
• Influencing public perception on RPAS operations
• Encouraging mutual cooperation for RPAS
development between the defense and
commercial sectors
For the latest event
information, including
a detailed agenda and
speaker line-up, visit
www.auvsi.org/use