California designates special lanes for High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV) to promote car-pooling and thereby achieve less congestion on the highway. Certain hybrid and electric vehicles have been allowed to use these lanes even if they have a single occupant to reduce their climate impact. One can expect that these lanes will be re-purposed or expanded to "Autonomous Vehicles Only" (AVO) lanes. For a vehicle traveling in such lanes, what kind of rules may apply? This blog post extends my previous post on "Rules for autonomous cars."
I think we can draw an analogy from aircraft travel - where passengers are allowed to move around once the airplane reaches cruising altitude. While current highway rules mandate that the front passengers must wear seatbelts at all times, one can expect that rules around vehicles in autonomous mode in dedicated lanes may be different. For instance, on a long distance inter-city journey, one may expect to stay in an AVO lane for hours at a stretch and during that time vehicle occupants can be allowed to stretch their legs safely by moving around the vehicle.
The notification to enter and exit "cruise" mode could be automated through DSRC with appropriate margins to ensure that occupants can return to their seats and wear seatbelts well before the vehicle exits the AVO lane.
The USDoT's Intelligent Transport System's office is already considering speed limited "Eco" lanes to reduce emissions and AVO lanes may already be under consideration.
That's all for today.
Kuntal.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015
ADAS in pop culture
Last night's episode of The Good Wife (S7, E7) appears to be the first depiction of autonomous cars in popular culture. The episode touched upon many of the subjects currently being discussed in the automobile industry - liability, security and machine learning. It turned out that the key to assign liability in the case was how the hard-disk that maintained the running log of the vehicle got erased.
This brings us to the next rule for autonomous vehicles, that essentially mirrors the proverbial "black box" inside airplanes. The "black box" is supposed to keep a running log of all that's happening in the cockpit, including aircraft performance metrics and cockpit conversations and radio communications.
Autonomous vehicles must be required to log a standard set of material events up to the point of an untoward event. The types of the data/events that must be stored are:
1. Sensor inputs
2. Drivetrain commands
3. Radio communications
4. CAN bus / Ethernet traffic
5. Central Processing Unit - memory, scheduling and execution logs
Once an event occurs, that memory needs to become non-overwritable until it is uploaded to a server which stores the information for the lifetime of the vehicle.
That's all for the day.
Kuntal.
This brings us to the next rule for autonomous vehicles, that essentially mirrors the proverbial "black box" inside airplanes. The "black box" is supposed to keep a running log of all that's happening in the cockpit, including aircraft performance metrics and cockpit conversations and radio communications.
Autonomous vehicles must be required to log a standard set of material events up to the point of an untoward event. The types of the data/events that must be stored are:
1. Sensor inputs
2. Drivetrain commands
3. Radio communications
4. CAN bus / Ethernet traffic
5. Central Processing Unit - memory, scheduling and execution logs
Once an event occurs, that memory needs to become non-overwritable until it is uploaded to a server which stores the information for the lifetime of the vehicle.
That's all for the day.
Kuntal.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Rules for autonomous cars
While policy develops and researchers put ethical decision making in software, continuing my last week's post on how life might change with autonomous cars, here is one rule to start with:
- An adult must accompany a minor in an autonomous car.
- Biometric / driver's license based unlock of the car's navigation system.
- Visual monitoring for the presence of the adult in the vehicle
Friday, October 16, 2015
School drop offs with autonomous cars
After I read the announcement by Tesla earlier this week about new auto pilot features being made available via a software upgrade to the Model S, I thought how our daily routines might change when fully autonomous cars become the norm.
On the way to drop my kids off to school, I asked my middle-school son: "If this car were fully autonomous, would you still need me to drop you to school?" He thought for a moment and then he said that no - then he'd be fine with taking the car by himself.
Clearly, when things go fine there's no need to have an adult chaperone along. But if the car were to get into an accident then I wouldn't want my child to be all by himself. Since he does take the bus on the way back home, it made me realize that the comfort factor of letting him take the school bus home actually arises from there being a trusted human driver of the bus. Now as he gets older, I may feel OK with him taking an autonomous car by himself, probably before he comes of driving age. But for my younger one, who still has a few years to go before she gets to middle school, I'm sure I'd be her chaperone.
In conclusion, even with fully autonomous cars, I'd still be dropping my kids off to school. No change expected to that daily routine.
Regards,
Kuntal.
On the way to drop my kids off to school, I asked my middle-school son: "If this car were fully autonomous, would you still need me to drop you to school?" He thought for a moment and then he said that no - then he'd be fine with taking the car by himself.
Clearly, when things go fine there's no need to have an adult chaperone along. But if the car were to get into an accident then I wouldn't want my child to be all by himself. Since he does take the bus on the way back home, it made me realize that the comfort factor of letting him take the school bus home actually arises from there being a trusted human driver of the bus. Now as he gets older, I may feel OK with him taking an autonomous car by himself, probably before he comes of driving age. But for my younger one, who still has a few years to go before she gets to middle school, I'm sure I'd be her chaperone.
In conclusion, even with fully autonomous cars, I'd still be dropping my kids off to school. No change expected to that daily routine.
Regards,
Kuntal.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Defeat Device and Open Source
As the story about Volkswagen's emission test failure evolves and "defeat device" enters into everyday parlance, I believe I have some insight to provide on software testing.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says that "Researchers Could Have Uncovered Volkswagen’s Emissions Cheat" if they had access to the source code. As a professional software developer, I feel that this may be a hard argument to make.
The process of building of high quality software is no different from that involved in building something more physical such as say Gorilla Glass or even a new pharmaceutical drug. Simply making it available for others to copy would eventually de-incentivize the development of Intellectual Property that I believe is the foundation of the higher living standards in the United States. Instead I propose what I consider a reasonable middle ground
Open Interfaces
Instead of making the source open, companies making products that affect public safety must be asked to:
1. Modularize their code (this is a necessary step to identify #2)
2. Publish the interface to each module
3. Provide simulation based test platforms and test cases, where the vehicle is simulated but the ECU software is identical to the software on the vehicle.
VW's emission controller software would monitor the steering wheel position, how long the engine was at a steady speed, etc. and deduce that the vehicle was in test mode and accordingly reduce emissions. When the vehicle was driven in regular conditions, the emissions would fall back to a much higher level.
If VW had published the interface to their emissions ECU, then that itself would have raised questions - clearly, why would an emissions ECU need to know about the steering wheel position? By providing additional information required in #3 above, regulators and/or researchers could have further deduced that something was amiss.
Apart from keeping proprietary code secret, the Open Interfaces method has the following advantages:
1. A review of the test cases is easier than the review of every line of code
2. The system becomes testable and the tests can be used across manufacturers. If test case input and output data formats were standardized then the EPA/CARB could test the simulated behavior of the vehicle. This incidentally can be used to "fuzz" input data and enhance security too.
I'm already 15 minutes past lunch-time, so that's all for this time.
Kuntal.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says that "Researchers Could Have Uncovered Volkswagen’s Emissions Cheat" if they had access to the source code. As a professional software developer, I feel that this may be a hard argument to make.
The process of building of high quality software is no different from that involved in building something more physical such as say Gorilla Glass or even a new pharmaceutical drug. Simply making it available for others to copy would eventually de-incentivize the development of Intellectual Property that I believe is the foundation of the higher living standards in the United States. Instead I propose what I consider a reasonable middle ground
Open Interfaces
Instead of making the source open, companies making products that affect public safety must be asked to:
1. Modularize their code (this is a necessary step to identify #2)
2. Publish the interface to each module
3. Provide simulation based test platforms and test cases, where the vehicle is simulated but the ECU software is identical to the software on the vehicle.
VW's emission controller software would monitor the steering wheel position, how long the engine was at a steady speed, etc. and deduce that the vehicle was in test mode and accordingly reduce emissions. When the vehicle was driven in regular conditions, the emissions would fall back to a much higher level.
If VW had published the interface to their emissions ECU, then that itself would have raised questions - clearly, why would an emissions ECU need to know about the steering wheel position? By providing additional information required in #3 above, regulators and/or researchers could have further deduced that something was amiss.
Apart from keeping proprietary code secret, the Open Interfaces method has the following advantages:
1. A review of the test cases is easier than the review of every line of code
2. The system becomes testable and the tests can be used across manufacturers. If test case input and output data formats were standardized then the EPA/CARB could test the simulated behavior of the vehicle. This incidentally can be used to "fuzz" input data and enhance security too.
I'm already 15 minutes past lunch-time, so that's all for this time.
Kuntal.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)