Driverless Vehicles Make Inroads in Military - Velodyne Lidar

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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
Page 1 and 2: VOLUME 3 NO.2 • May 2013 • AUVS
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS VOLUME 3 NO.2 • May 2013
Page 5 and 6: Editorial Vice President of Communi
Page 7 and 8: Essential Components Someday, Will
Page 9 and 10: STATE OF THE ART OXFORD, U.K. Unive
Page 11 and 12: Self-driving trucks take to the roa
Page 13 and 14: Orlando2013_Rotor_ad_LISA_REV_Layou
Page 15 and 16: Technology Gap Driving Down the Cos
Page 17 and 18: Q & A for the infrastructure to com
Page 19 and 20: TIMELINE 2005 - DARPA reconvened fo
Page 21 and 22: model of incremental improvements,
Page 23 and 24: THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF UNMANNED AIR
Page 25 and 26: Testing Testing The industry can ad
Page 27 and 28: Spotlight Fleet Automation Forum Wo
Page 29: End Users Is Your Guy Fraker Driver

Driverless Vehicles Make Inroads in Military - Velodyne Lidar

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