Neil Kennett - Cars of the Future

Self-driving headline news from CES 2023

CES 2023: Self-driving advances overshadowed by Terminator hero

As has become customary at this time of year, here’s our Cars of the Future review of notable self-driving developments at CES, “the most influential tech event in the world”.

First, it would be remiss not to point out that self-driving impressively made headlines by not stealing the show! For instance, Cleantechnica ran with the headline: “CES 2023 Shies Away From Autonomous Driving Technology”.

Self-driving premiere

That’s maybe a bit harsh. For starters, ZF gave a world premiere to its next generation Level 4 autonomous shuttle, and announced an important new partnership with Beep.

ZF self-driving shuttle announced at CES 2023

Integrated into ZF’s autonomous driving system is the Virtual Driver software stack, developed in partnership with Oxfordshire-based Oxbotica. It consists of two major parts, the performance path and the safety path. The safety path monitors situations and defines ‘virtual guardrails’, while the performance path enables smooth driving.

“ZF delivers innovative technologies that contribute to sustainable mobility and help decarbonize the world,” said Dr. Holger Klein, CEO of ZF Group. “Today, we have everything to support our customers with holistic vehicle systems based on advanced high-performance controllers, intelligent sensors, smart actuators, connectivity and cloud solutions, and cutting-edge software and functions.”

The agreement with Beep includes plans for “several thousand” Level 4 shuttles in the US. Joe Moye, CEO of Beep, added: “This vehicle will help expand use cases and meet growing customer demand as we continue to pursue our vision of extending mobility equity and reducing carbon emissions with safe, efficient shared autonomous transportation.”

Self-driving AI

Then there was Korean company AIMMO’s announcement of “the world’s first AI-powered Autonomous Driving Data-as-a-Service” – ADaaS – designed “to overcome the industry-wide problem of excessive data collection that has constrained the progression and commercialisation of AV technologies”.

AIMMO AI-powered Autonomous Driving Data-as-a-Service (ADaaS) for self-driving

“Over the years, we have seen a huge amount of anticipation around when we will see autonomous vehicles commercialised, but with standards and regulations ever-changing across the world, it is an extremely complex market to navigate,” said AIMMO CEO SeungTaek Oh. ”We believe that the arrival of AIMMO ADaaS is a game-changer for many companies operating in this space.”

There was the small matter of Honda and Sony teaming up to launch a whole new brand, Afeela. It promises “the car of tomorrow”, with first deliveries scheduled for 2026.

Self-driving tech

Plastic Omnium announced the creation of a new division, OP’n Soft, focused on “mobility solutions that are more electric, more connected, more autonomous and more shared”. There’s probably an acronym for that.

“OP’n Soft will enable Plastic Omnium to offer its customers a unique range of integrated solutions and services, such as merging radar data processing software with lighting technologies,” said CEO Laurent Favre.

Plastic O also showcased a new “smart bumper” featuring embedded antennas to deliver “unequaled sensing faculties”, and announced a partnership with startup Greenerwave “to transform body panels into 4D imaging radar to give autonomous cars supervision”.

Another startup, Exwayz, unveiled SLAM – new generation software offering self-localization accurate to 2cm “to simplify and accelerate 3D LiDAR integration into autonomous systems”.

Exwayz SLAM self-localization for self-driving announced at CES 2023

“We are proud to introduce Exwayz SLAM, aimed at saving years in hard software development to autonomous system manufacturers,” said CEO Hassan Bouchiba. “The reality is that autonomy can only happen with robust, accurate, reliable and truly real-time algorithms, which are the critical lacking elements in currently available solutions.”

Terminator star

Perhaps understandably, these advances were somewhat overshadowed by Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger joining BMW CEO Oliver Zipse on-stage to unveil the eye-catching BMW i Vision Dee colour-changing car.

The Dee Movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger on Youtube

When can we expect autonomous vehicles – AVs – in the capital?

Will London be the first UK AV city?

Automated vehicles (AVs) are the emerging superstars of 21st century mobility, from uber-luxurious driverless cars, to more ubiquitous robotaxis and delivery vans.

Self-driving tourism company, Autoura, provides a handy AV rollout tracker, with China having by far the most entries. In the US, robotaxis are already charging for rides in San Francisco and Phoenix.

The UK also pushed on this year. Oxbotica conducted a successful on-road test of its skateboard-like zero-occupancy EV, while CAVForth ran a single-decker autonomous bus in a landmark trial in Scotland. Both made global headlines.

MPs on AVs

As David Wong, senior technology and innovation manager at The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), told The Transport Select Committee in October: “The next step is to remove the safety driver altogether, whether the safety driver is inside the vehicle or remote.”

We face unique challenges, as Inma Martinez, author of The Future of the Automotive Industry, noted: “In the UK you have a lot of 60mph rural roads where you can barely see what’s coming. Then you have London, which is like no other city. It is a costly challenge to test smart road infrastructure without creating congestion.”

Quite so, but existing systems are astronomically expensive. Transport for London (TfL) came close to being bankrupt earlier this year, rescued by last-minute government funding. Paris subsidises its system to the tune of around €8bn a year.

At Autonomy’s recent London City Summit, the stat of the day was the TfL target that, by 2041, 80% of journeys in the capital should be either by public transport or active travel.

A panel moderated by Professor Nick Reed, chief road safety adviser at National Highways, discussed the potential role of AVs, with Jakob Kammerer, senior product manager at Bosch, commenting: “Our trials show that people are curious about self-driving. Transparency always helps. We explain what we are doing and why – to make improved mobility for everyone. Once they see that a product is good and solves a problem, they will adopt it very quickly.”

Margarethe Theseira, of Bath-based engineering consultancy, Buro Happold, predicted that “the real benefits will come when everything is fully automated”, but worried that “it will be a rich person’s toy”.

Designer Marco Mazzotta, of Heatherwick Studio, mused on how cities might evolve architecturally with widespread AV adoption. He pointed to the huge amount of parking space that could be freed up, asking: “What will we use the space for? Is it going to be public or private?”

Other AVs

A later panel looked at the rapid rise of e-scooter hire and, eventually, these could also be self-driving. Years ago, Paul Priestman, famous for designing Virgin’s Pendolino train, described an e-scooter with a “take me home button”.

Yet there’s growing recognition that, when it comes to cars, the S in SEA (shared, electric and autonomous) is the most problematic.

Who wouldn’t want to own the incredible Audi Grandsphere concept car, advertised on telly during the World Cup? It has a “hands-off” mode, with a steering wheel which folds away, and aims to “redefine high class travelling”. It’s unapologetically exclusive.

Conversely, another Priestman-linked project, Dromos, offers a different mass transit solution, using small AVs running on-demand on dedicated routes.

“Users want a ride quality comparable to that of a taxi, but at the price of a bus ticket,” said co-founder Dr Martin Dürr. “Privacy is an important topic, along with convenience and cleanliness.

“Pilots have shown that passengers have very little, if any, desire to share a driverless vehicle with a stranger. Actually, people are willing to pay a premium not to share. We provide capacity at a much better cost per mile.

“Following excellent discussions with the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), we have moved a lot of our attention and value chain to the UK.

“We have proposed a solution for the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority and are in discussion with Manchester, The Ministry for Transport in Scotland and others.”

Please note: a version of this article was first published by the Institute of the Motor Industry’s MotorPro magazine.

Self-driving event report: APC Future of Technology, 7 December 2022

Great self-driving debate despite Waymo no show

Self-driving advocates and sceptics gathered at 30 Euston Square in London last week for the Advanced Propulsion Centre’s Future of Technology event, supported by Zenzic, but someone was missing.

Keynote speaker Trent Victor, director of safety research and best practices at Waymo (formerly Google’s self-driving car project), remoted-in from Stockholm around midday and cheerily logged off immediately after his polished presentation.

He had been expected to open, and to participate in a debate on ethics and security. It was disappointing, and only strengthened the hand of transport commentator Christian Wolmar, that arch critic of driverless, who was in attendance.

Self-driving debate

Let’s focus on the positives. Host Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, seamlessly rejigged the agenda, and the other speakers – Peter Davies, technical director of Thales, Jessica Uguccioni, lead lawyer on the Law Commission’s Automated Vehicles Review, and Professor Nick Reed of Reed Mobility – delivered great presentations and high-quality debate on the question: Are self-driving vehicles still a fantasy?

APC self-driving event, Dec 2022, empty chair — APC self-driving event L-R: Gooding, Uguccioni, Davies and Reed

Cryptography expert Davies urged the audience to “get real about cyberattacks”, and to consider “which bits of the system will be made brittle” by facilitating connectivity. He referenced the worldwide grounding of Boeing 737 MAX planes as an example of the commercial danger.

Uguccioni equated the minimum safety level for self-driving cars with the need to pass a driving test, asking: “How hard should it be? What should be in it?”. She posited that human performance should be “a floor, not a ceiling” and pointed out that the risks will be different. Self-driving cars might be better at handling everyday driving tasks, but their sensors could be confused by something as seemingly innocuous as leaf fall. She then addressed the “value judgement” of whether self-driving cars should ever be allowed to break the rules, for example, to mount a pavement in order to avoid a collision.

Professor Reed addressed precisely this question in a 2021 paper emphasising the importance of a role for the public. He referenced his Rees Jeffreys Road Fund supported research into societal engagement, and his work with BSi on using digital commentary to analyse safety performance. Notably, he also called for “an industry standard on data collection”.

The panel praised the work of the CCAV in encouraging discussion, explored “the blurring of the line between ADAS and self-driving” at UN level (for example, in cases when a driver becomes incapacitated), and covered recent changes to the Highway Code.

Davies raised the possibility that a system failure could result in all self-driving vehicles coming to a stop. Imagine the disruption, the impact on essential logistics.

Self-driving presentation

Finally, our man in Sweden appeared on the big screen, and proceeded to give a very slick talk. He nailed the core question of whether self-driving is still fantasy. It isn’t. It’s happening now. Waymo robotaxis are already operating in San Francisco and Phoenix. He signposted Waymo’s online library of documents delivering “transparency on safety”, reported that most collisions to date had been “very minor”, and showed an animation of a real-world crash in which the human was replaced by the Waymo Driver.

APC self-driving event, Dec 2022: Trent Victor of Waymo

Self-driving Q&A

This raised many questions but, alas, Victor was gone, and the excellent discussion resumed without him. Reed and Uguccioni agreed on the need for a minimum data set to be shared by vehicle manufacturers (VMs), including incident location data, but Davies saw many obstacles to global standards.

The curveballs, of course, came from the audience, including from John Emanuel, of Urban MASS, and the aforementioned Wolmar. He cuttingly compared what he’d heard with the promises made by self-driving “evangelists” a few years ago – namely that “we’d all be in shared driverless cars by 2025”. Issues such as safely negotiating Holborn at 6pm were “insuperable”, he said, with two driverless cars meeting on a country lane likely to be “stuck there indefinitely”.

Reed admitted that self-driving had been over-hyped but reiterated that “this technology has the potential to shift the plateau” for road safety. He also highlighted the work of Eloy in tackling the country lane scenario.

Uguccioni applauded the self-driving industry’s “ambition to strive for reduced fatalities”, and that was a suitably realistic note on which to break for lunch.

For further info on the Advanced Propulsion Centre’s mission to accelerate the transition to a net-zero automotive industry, visit apcuk.co.uk

December 2022 video of SF Standard reporter taking a Cruise self-driving cab ride

Self-driving video: SF Standard reporter on cool Cruise robotaxi

In early December 2022, The San Francisco Standard posted this great video of reporter Kevin Truong’s experience of using a Cruise self-driving cab:

December 2022 video of SF Standard reporter taking a Cruise self-driving cab ride

The Californian city is in the vanguard of global driverless rollout, as we’ve covered extensively, from the legendary attempt by a SF police officer to stop a robotaxi – “Ain’t nobody in it!” – to, most recently, complaints about them causing traffic jams.

Mundane self-driving

Here, we have a much more mundane journey, as Truong successfully takes a trip to Richmond Safeway.

Ok, so there were a few moments along the way. It didn’t stop in quite the right place for pick-up, then waited a while to overtake a stopped delivery truck, but that was about the extent of the drama.

As he says: “It’s very student driver, a bit slower than most people would go. Initial impressions: I got here in one piece! To see this technology at work, it’s hard to say there’s anything cooler than that.”

Audi’s 2022 Christmas advert shows Santa getting a new sleigh… a self-driving concept car

Santa’s self-driving Audi is not a flying toy

Audi’s new Christmas advert features Santa “swapping reindeers for something a little more progressive”, the amazing self-driving Grandsphere… just make sure you read the small print:

“The vehicle shown is a concept vehicle that is not available as a production vehicle. The automated driving functions shown are technologies currently under development, are not available for production vehicles and only work within system limits. All possible uses of the technical systems and functions shown represent only a possible concept and are dependent on the respective legal regulations in the relevant country.”

Self-driving Grandsphere

Audi’s new Xmas ad features a self-driving concept car

Here at Cars of the Future we’ve had our eye on the Grandsphere for a while, highlighting its fold-away steering wheel back in September 2021. Phenomenal tech, no doubt, but we’re a bit conflicted about this advert.

On the one hand, we love that Audi is giving the public a glimpse of the near future, normalising the idea of driverless.

On the other, we have the wise words of Matthew Avery, chief strategic research officer at Thatcham Research, ringing in our ears: “With more than half of the UK public believing that autonomous driving is here today, the perception is racing ahead of the reality.

“This demonstrates just how much work needs to be done to set realistic consumer expectations of the first vehicles offering limited self-driving functionality, when they do become available.”

Audi self-driving Grandsphere advert small print 2022

It is a bit of an odd advert, isn’t it? Reminiscent of the scene in Toy Story when Buzz Lightyear watches the ad telling him he’s not a flying toy!

For a more comprehensive (and realistic) look at the car, we recommend this 5-minute mini documentary detailing how Marc Lichte, Head of Design at Audi, and his team, brought this vision of the future to life:

A more realistic look at the Grandsphere concept car

Shortlisted by Zenzic for CAM Scale-up, Streetscope’s Collision Hazard Measure can inform safe self-driving deployment.

A new measure for safer vehicles, self-driving or not

In this Cars of the Future exclusive, the co-founders of Pasadena-based Streetscope, Mark Goodstein and David Muyres, explain how their Collision Hazard Measure enables self-driving stakeholders to accelerate deployment with confidence.

DM: “The UK is a leader in automated vehicle (AV) development and we’re in discussion with an array of companies and organisations about demonstrating our capability in the UK environment. That would be a great success point for communicating our value to customers worldwide.

“Our technology evaluates the safe moving of any vehicle, human or machine driven. We treat it as a black box and evaluate how safely it moves amongst hazardous objects in the street scene, using simulation or camera data. Then we create indexes that different industries can use, for example, insurers, vehicle manufacturers, regulators and planners.

“The insurance industry is the one we’re having most conversations with. They want to understand the hazards of new technology vehicles, and now they’re realising we can help with the human-driven side as well. They can use our data to price risk more effectively.

Informing safe self-driving deployment

“Vehicle developers need to answer basic questions like: Am I to safe to deploy yet? They currently don’t have an independent way to objectively measure how safely a vehicle moves, and we can provide that.

“Regulatory is very interesting and it’s nice they’re interested in using our measure to guide future development.

“Infrastructure planning companies can hire us to evaluate a future self-driving route. We can identify high hazard locations and make recommendations to mitigate issues.”

Streetscope Collision Hazard Measure for self-driving — Streetscope Collision Hazard Measure for vehicles incl. self-driving

And you’re talking to vehicle verification bodies too?

MG: “Yes. We’re a start-up, not at scale yet, but all we need is kinematic data, the position of all objects each tick of the clock, from any traffic scene to calculate the hazard posed between the vehicle and all other objects. And we can get that from either simulations or using cameras as data sources. Then we score them based on the Collision Hazard Measure we’ve invented.

“We could use lidar and radar, but those geometric sensors are very expensive. Cameras are ubiquitous, so we’re using them and making a pretty good job of it.

“There’s a school of thought that you can use aggregated data from other drive events using cell phone based sensors, but they lack context. Why did they slam on the brakes? Why did they accelerate so aggressively? There is no correlation to risk.

“We’re trying to get these industries to recognise that the data they’re spending a lot of money on is insufficient, and they’d be better off using our Collision Hazard Measure.”

For further info, visit the Streetscope website.

Huw Merriman chairs Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles on Parliamentlive TV

Transport Select Committee 2022: UK self-driving safety, testing and timescale

The Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles is a big deal for connected and automated mobility (CAM) in the UK, providing both scrutiny and publicity.

These committees are powerful, cross-party, and can require a response from the government. What’s more, The Transport Select Committee is one of the more high profile.

Since 2020, it has been chaired by Huw Merriman, MP for Bexhill and Battle in East Sussex.

Huw Merriman MP chairs Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles

“On this Committee, we always like to look into the future of science, technology and innovation, and we’re aware that the government has plans to see self-driving vehicles operational by 2025,” he said.

Self-driving inquiry on Parliamentlive

We’ve already covered Professor Paul Newman’s contribution and, of course, we recommend watching the full session on Parliamentlive TV. Who’s got the time though? So please read-on for further highlights from the morning session on Wednesday 26 October 2022.

Here, we cover the initial remarks by Steve Gooding, chief exec of The RAC Foundation, David Wong, senior technology and innovation manager at The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), and Professor Nick Reed, founder of Reed Mobility.

Transport Select Committee inquiry into self-driving vehicles, October 2022

Responding to the question “What is a self-driving vehicle?”, Wong explained that: “A self-driving vehicle, or automated vehicle, to use industry parlance, is a vehicle that’s fitted with an automated driving system capable of performing the entire dynamic driving tasks without human intervention within an operational design domain.”

Reed outlined the updated SAE levels 1-5, noting “They work from an engineering perspective, but they don’t work very well from a communications perspective.”

He went on to highlight the Law Commission’s useful user in charge (UIC) and no user in charge (NUIC) concepts.

Karl McCartney MP then asked about the likely timescale for owning a vehicle with automated systems.

Gooding currently runs a 2007 VW and a 2021 Triumph motorcycle, neither of which have automated features. “I’ll probably be replacing those when we are more comfortable with the electric revolution,” he said.

Reed has a VW Golf with some basic automated features like adaptive cruise control (ACC). “By 2025, it will be possible to use a vehicle that can do some of the driving for you, but I suspect it will be one that I can’t afford,” he said.

Wong highlighted the Mercedes S-Class, which meets the international UN standard for Level 3 conditionally automated driving, and is already available in the German market.

He went on to explain the differences between driver assistance and the higher levels of automation, and the critical issue of people confusing the two.

Gooding chipped in: “There is another way of describing this, which I find helpful, which is to think of it as three levels: hands off, eyes off, nod off.”

Self-driving public understanding

Merriman explained that the inquiry’s name was changed from “autonomous” to “self-driving” to help public understanding.

Changing tack, Ruth Cadbury MP questioned what transport challenges self-driving addresses which other technologies do not.

Reed identified three main areas: 1) safety, with the majority of today’s crashes having human error as a contributing factor, 2) efficiency, for example, from sharing vehicles rather than individually owning them, and 3) accessibility, for example, by making transport more accessible to people with disabilities.

Merriman then asked what testing had taught the industry, particularly in terms of potential pitfalls.

Wong highlighted the UK’s world-leading role in testing, with six CAM testbeds and more than 90 projects involving more than 200 organisations since 2014.

“The next step is to remove the safety driver altogether, whether the safety driver is inside the vehicle or remote,” he said. “Then we can progress to pilot deployment, which is what we’re seeing in the States, in California and also in Arizona. That’s the next challenge.”

Reed added: “One of key things we focus on is the public’s experience and appreciation of the technology – how this can be useful to them.”

Attention then turned to the wider societal and environmental benefits, and we’ll cover that another time soon.

Thatcham’s Avery and others comment on new Trust in Automation self-driving research

Self-driving knowledge gap: Thatcham survey finds 52% of Brits wrongly believe driverless cars are already available

On 8 November, Thatcham, the UK motor insurance industry’s research centre, published the results of a new consumer survey on self-driving.

The Trust in Automation research was conducted by Opinion Matters, and involved questioning 4,000 car owners, half in the UK and half in America.

The headline finding was that 52% of UK drivers mistakenly believe that fully autonomous driving is possible today. In the US, this number rises to 72%.

Thatcham: 50%+ Brits think full self-driving is already here

Avery on automation

Matthew Avery, chief strategic research officer at Thatcham Research, commented: “Realising the government’s stated safety ambition for automated vehicles is dependent on driver education. This can’t just be lip service.

“With more than half of the UK public believing that autonomous driving is here today, the perception is racing ahead of the reality.

“This demonstrates just how much work needs to be done to set realistic consumer expectations of the first vehicles offering limited self-driving functionality, when they do become available.”

More encouragingly, 73% of UK respondent said they recognised the benefits of emerging automated driving technology.

Thatcham: 73% recognise the benefits of emerging automated driving technology

When asked what they consider to be the key benefits, the most popular option was improved safety (21%), followed by improving mobility for the elderly and disabled (14%) and reduced pollution (8%). Funnily enough, just 3% saw freeing up time to work as an advantage!

“Drivers are beginning to recognise that automation can deliver significant societal benefits in terms of safety, mobility and sustainability,” said Avery.

“However, with safety being such a high priority for drivers, accidents that do occur will be scrutinised under the media microscope, quickly eroding consumer confidence.”

Thatcham noted that, in November 2021, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) launched its guiding principles for automated vehicle marketing.

“Although safety is seen by many to be a key benefit of automation, trust and confidence need to be nurtured over time,” said Avery.

“It is vital that all industry stakeholders come together to instil trust in automation by ensuring motorists have a firm grasp of their legal obligations and the performance limitations.”

Gooding on self-driving

Commenting on the Trust in Automation findings, Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “This research provides some valuable insights for policy-makers keen to usher in the start of automated driving.

“Given all the hype surrounding automated car technology, particularly coverage of autonomous cars and taxis operating in the US, it isn’t surprising that some people think self-driving cars are already available on the UK market.

“The most important point that this research highlights is the need to ensure drivers understand the limits of automated options when they do first appear on UK roads, particularly where the system requires the driver to stand ready to re-take control.”

Intriguingly, Jonathan Dye, chair of the Automated Driving Insurer Group (ADIG), and head of underwriting at QBE, added: “In addition to education and collaboration across industry sectors, a key element will be the sharing of data and the transparency of what each specific vehicle is capable of at a point in time.

“With some models likely to have the self-driving technology as ‘optional’, or as an ‘over the air update’, meaning it would be possible to change a vehicle’s capabilities overnight, it’s imperative the driver has a full and clear understanding of the vehicle’s limitations post update and that they are adequately protected by purchasing an appropriate insurance product.”

As a final point, we regularly criticise hyperbolic self-driving headlines, so kudos to This Is Money for the informed and nuanced: “Half of motorists incorrectly think you can buy self-driving cars today raising fears some may dangerously overestimate capabilities of existing tech”.

For further info, visit the Thatcham website.

Kodiak CTO Andreas Wendel on latest self-driving truck test track success.

Video: Kodiak self-driving truck handles catastrophic tyre failure

US company Kodiak has posted amazing test track footage of a self-driving articulated lorry handling a massive tyre blowout.

Cars of the Future readers will recognise the name from our US truckers in vanguard of self-driving feature earlier this year.

Back then, we covered how Kodiak has been delivering freight daily between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, operating autonomously on the highway section of the route for over a year.

Self-driving truck puncture test

Now, they’ve published video addressing what Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Andreas Wendel describes as “probably the safety-related question we get the most”: a catastrophic tyre failure.

Kodiak self-driving truck handles catastrophic tyre puncture

“The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration estimates that tire problems were responsible for approximately 15% of truck-related crashes,” he said.

“As we develop our self-driving system, the KodiakDriver, we wanted to demonstrate that we can handle the bad things that can happen in real world driving, and tire blowouts are usually the first safety risk in mind.

“For all you non-Commercial Driver’s License-holders (CDL-holders), a tire blowout is a big deal, even when the vehicle you’re driving has 18 of them.

“On a big rig truck, the back 16 tires are paired dual tires, while all the steering is done by the two front single tires, called the steer tires.

“Steer tires are responsible for steering, handling, and ensuring a steady ride for humans and cargo alike. If one of the back 16 tires pops, a dual tire is able to compensate and carry some weight until the truck comes to a stop. If one of the single steer tires pops, it’s a whole different story.

“For all CDL-holders, you already know that the first step towards handling complex, catastrophic situations like tire blowouts is making a quick determination that a failure has occurred, then fighting to remain in control, and eventually safely pulling over to the side of the road.

“Trucks with popped tires travel erratically and unpredictably, with unexpected and unknown vehicle dynamics. Even if the tire just goes flat, you can’t maintain speed. This will potentially lead the truck to aggressively veering.

“The rubber may be stripped from the tire, forcing the vehicle to drive on a bare metal rim. In a worst-case scenario, the truck may swerve, jackknife, or even roll over. Once a truck suffers a steer tire blowout, it behaves like an entirely different truck.

Kodiak self-driving truck handles puncture

“That’s why we’re so excited to become the first self-driving trucking company to demonstrate that we can maintain complete control of the truck even after suffering a catastrophic tire blowout.

“As shown in the video, KodiakDriver can stay in control of a truck and bring it to a safe and complete stop even when rolling over a giant spike and instantaneously popping a steer tire.

“Once we incorporated the findings from our low-tire pressure tests into the KodiakDriver’s control algorithms, it was time to test with a completely deflated tire flopping off the rim. This test allowed us to confirm that the controller can still steer the truck with a completely deflated tire, laying the groundwork for a spontaneous blowout.

“After deliberate testing at different tire pressures, we were ready to demonstrate a sudden tire blowout. Executing this test is more complex than you’d think: the vehicle needs to race down the test track and squarely hit a puncture rig, which is a spike mounted to a metal plate.

“For a human, the precision needed to consistently hit the puncture rig is higher than you’d think. Thankfully, the KodiakDriver is a much more precise driver than a human, and remains dead center in a lane unless it needs to nudge over to one side or another.

“With this consistency our team was easily able to identify where the KodiakDriver would pass on specific sections of the test rack and place the puncture rig accordingly.

“Finally, we were ready to demonstrate a tire blowout with a full tractor and trailer. No holding back!”

For further info, visit the Kodiak website.

Supported by the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund and Zenzic, Eloy’s multi-vehicle coordination is making parking and driving more efficient. Next, self-driving.

80% car parking timesaving? That’s intelligent CAM decision making

In this Cars of the Future exclusive, the co-founders of Hertfordshire-based Eloy, Anna Corp and Damian Horton, explain how their connected car services make parking, driving and self-driving safer and more efficient.

Congratulations on your Zenzic CAM Scale-Up success. How did you get into connected vehicle tech?

DH: “Our story goes back to 2004, when I was a maths undergrad at Oxford. I ended up doing a thesis on bifurcation theory in swarms, based on simulations like those seen in computer games – little army men running together, and how they interact with each other. It involved a lot of traffic modelling, but at the time there were no jobs in driverless cars, so I went into investment banking and started a couple of businesses. When I moved back to the UK from Australia, in 2018, I saw that the connected and autonomous (CAM) vehicle market was finally happening. I met Anna at a start-up in London and together with an old school friend of mine, Marcus Robbins, who’d done a lot of geospatial work, we decided to give it a crack.”

AC: “My background is in marketing, user experience and customer insights. One issue I’m very familiar with is companies not thinking about real-life human problems. At Eloy, we’re all about solving problems for all road users, not just car and lorry drivers – cyclists, pedestrians, horse riders, everybody. We take a much more holistic approach to making roads safer and more efficient. There’s a big push to move people on to active travel and public transport, but is that what people really want? Shared robotaxis are often presented as a utopia, but why would a mum use one when she has her own car with all the baby stuff already in the back? It’s hard to force behaviour change. A better way is to give people options and tools which they see value in, which make their lives better. Then they’ll adopt.”

Which brings us to your app…

DH: “We worked out early on that the best way to get into the connected car space was to provide a sat nav, before building in any new experiences to make roads flow better. On Boxing Day 2020, we got the email from Apple saying the sat nav component had been accepted for CarPlay.”

AC: “We joke that we’re the smallest sat nav company in the world, but it’s a prerequisite for all we plan to do. We had to get into existing vehicles.”

DH: “We’re obsessed with the situations you get into as a driver – sitting waiting to make a turn across a blocked carriageway, queuing at a mini-roundabout while everyone waits for each other. How can we make these small things better? The missing piece over and over again was multi-vehicle coordination (MVC). So we got super focused on niche use cases, like getting in and out of car parks and passing on country lanes.”

AC: “Smartphones are a good example of a product which has morphed into so much more. The best thing is we can offer connected vehicle solutions now, to provide good advice for human drivers, to prove high efficacy, and then apply them to higher level automated driving.”

And you’re already testing at UTAC’s Millbrook Proving Ground…

DH: “Yes. In October, we demonstrated our narrow road warning solution, which reduces the need for reversing to find a passing point, at The Transport Technology Forum at UTAC. That involved just two vehicles. The next phase is to get it working with 20 vehicles in a controlled environment, then up to 100, and scale from there. We’re looking for the right partners, ranging from ports and farms to construction traffic, freight and public transport – probably fleets initially.

“Early simulations indicate a 20% timesaving from MVC for country lane passing, and up to 80% for car park entry and exit. Internet connectivity is an issue (that’s for someone else to solve!), but we can deploy on sections of road where a good signal is almost guaranteed. Then it’s a question of making sure the intervention – the beeping or flashing or messaging – doesn’t outweigh the benefit. The big question is always: does it improve safety?”

Sorry, did you just say an 80% timesaving for car parking?

DH: “Yes, by using very similar modelling to how to fill an empty aeroplane. For years, it was a free for all, so the airlines tried to get organised by filling in order from row one. Mathematically, that turned out to be the slowest way, because everyone has to wait for the person in front of them. So they got clever and started filling from row 30 and working backwards. That’s actually the second slowest way, because you end up with the same problem of everyone waiting. Eventually they worked out that the best method is a structured filling pattern. You send in rows 30, 25 and 20, then rows 15, 10 and 5. They all have space to stow their luggage and what you have is a lot more manoeuvres per second. That gives you an 80% reduction in filling time.

“We looked at high density car parking in the same way. Think Silverstone on grand prix weekend, when there’s traffic chaos. If every car has an allotted parking bay and follows guidance from a sat nav, you can apply those same principles of more simultaneous manoeuvres. There are potentially further gains too, for example, by connecting live data to the local traffic lights to disperse the traffic more efficiently. The challenge is coordination, between the event organisers, the local authority, the car park operator and the attendees. The rationale is economic benefit, reduced journey times for everyone, which brings you to infrastructure investment decisions – the cost per mile benefits of these intelligent systems compared to building more roads.”

AC: “Once people see that the system works, they’ll quickly learn to trust it. I see huge opportunities in business parking for big employers. If they could save each employee 10 minutes a day, think of the extra productivity. Over a year, suddenly the business would have gained a lot of time and a lot of money.”

Eloy virtual sign: country lane solution

And you’re using artificial intelligence to optimise this?

DH: “Yes. Using SUMO simulation software, we’ve created full digital twins for car parks and certain road segments. Then we add a reward function. The AI basically tries to get the most points, a bit like the 1980’s computer game, Frogger. It’s a type of reinforcement learning that tells cars what to do in different circumstances. We’re training it for a road layout at Millbrook at the moment.

“The holy grail is getting 100% of cars using the software, transmitting and receiving your information and following the instructions. In the meantime, there’s questions around gaps in the data – how much knowledge you can you infer from modelling. Then there’s the dynamics of network effects. An interesting one, going back to our car park efficiency, is what happens if someone decides to break the rules, perhaps by stealing someone else’s slot. You can probably use a financial incentive to overcome that.”

AC: “One reason we really like the cars on a country lane solution is because it’s self-reinforcing. It’s a win-win without needing to use a monetary incentive. Both drivers benefit from additional information and overall traffic flow improves as a result.”

Sounds good to me. For further info, visit the Eloy website