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 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.”
Welcoming the Government’s commitment to include self-driving legislation in the Transport Bill, The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) has set out seven “expert recommended red lines”.
The seven points seem very sensible on the whole, covering many of the issues we regularly raise here at Cars of the Future, including the risk of confusing assisted and automated driving.
Self-driving red lines
In full, the CAM APPG’s seven red lines are:
Legislation must act as an enabler for the rollout of CAM technology, not a blocker. To achieve this, it will require a non-prescriptive and flexible regulatory framework that allows use cases to advance and innovate.
A statutory definition of self-driving must be established to distinguish this technology from assisted driving.
Clear lines of liability, accountability and responsibility for road safety must be established, in line with the Law Commission’s recommendations.
Establish minimum standards for data sharing and handling to ensure transparency and effective governance are embedded throughout the process.
Ensure the principle of interoperability is at the heart of the framework to realise the huge potential for the UK to export such a best-in-class regulatory model internationally.
Introduce regulatory sandboxes to allow businesses to test innovative use cases in the market with real consumers.
Develop a communications toolkit to accompany future legislation so that messaging can be easily disseminated to consumers to help assuage concerns around public acceptability.
Here’s our capsule review: The opening point, “Legislation must act as an enabler for the rollout of CAM technology, not a blocker” directly addresses the delicate balancing act the Government faces – facilitating these incredible cutting-edge technologies while prioritising safety and bringing the public on-board.
Point two, we bang on endlessly about this potential pitfall – it will be vital to differentiate between assisted and automated driving.
Point three, also essential of course, and huge strides are already been made by the insurance industry in this regard.
Point four, delivering “transparency and effective governance” on data sharing might prove to be the hardest of the lot.
Point five, the UK is ahead of the game on interoperability – can we translate this into a commercial advantage?
Point six, are “regulatory sandboxes” a mechanism through which the Government can achieve the balancing act referred to in point one?
Point seven – the communications toolkit – apparently there’s a UK-based website not a million miles away with free weekly newsletters which is already on the case!
Official comments
The APPG on CAM was set up with support from insurer AXA UK, law firm Burges Salmon and transport consultancy WSP. It is chaired by Ben Everitt, Conservative MP for Milton Keynes North, which makes sense given the area is one of the UK’s self-driving hotspots.
CAM APPG Chair Ben Everitt MP on self-driving
Ben Everitt MP said: “The CAM APPG was delighted to discuss how the upcoming Transport Bill can deliver the benefits of autonomous technology to local communities up and down the country.
“As we await the Government’s response to the Law Commission of England and Wales review into self- driving vehicles, and the call for evidence on the future of connected and automated mobility in the UK, the APPG will continue to advise on how we can build on the great progress made to date and ensure that the whole country is able to benefit from these innovative technologies.”
Dougie Barnett, Director of Customer Risk Management at AXA UK, said: “Self-driving technology could pave the way for safer roads, increased mobility and productivity and cleaner transport. However, alongside the legislation the Government must work with the industry to ensure there is no public confusion surrounding autonomous vehicles and place more emphasis on educating the public on how to use and interact with these vehicles safely.”
Giles Perkins, Head of Profession for Future Mobility at WSP, said: “The forthcoming Transport Bill promises to unlock the potential that autonomous mobility provides. We need to ensure the Bill acts as a catalyst to enable use cases and applications that really deliver benefits for people, communities and businesses. This must happen not only in our cities but the areas surrounding them and, importantly, rural geographies which often get overlooked.”
Lucy Pelger, Partner at Burges Salmon, said: “It’s vital that legislation is an enabler to self-driving technology. The right legislative framework will not only advance the UK’s position in the global CAM market but will importantly support in building the public’s trust and confidence in CAM technology. We look forward to the Government’s response to the Law Commissions’ recommendations.”
Likewise, we at Cars of the Future look forward to following the work of the CAM APPG in achieving these laudable aims.
Tim Dawkins explains why the UK is so well placed to develop self-driving vehicle technologies and regulations.
With its laudable aim “to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance”, transformational technologies like autonomous vehicles are natural territory for The World Economic Forum. Here, we get the considered views of the Forum’s Automotive & Autonomous Mobility Lead, Tim Dawkins – an Englishman working for the Geneva-based organisation in sunny California.
Tim Dawkins leads a portfolio of automotive and autonomous mobility policy research activities.
Tell us about your path to autonomous vehicles and The World Economic Forum
TD: “I started out studying motorsport engineering at Brunel and my first job out of university was in vehicle security for automotive consulting firm, SBD, helping manufacturers meet Type Approval requirements with anti-theft technologies. When SBD opened an office in North America, I went there, to lead their consulting in autonomous driving. Then, in 2018, I got my MBA and wound-up joining The World Economic Forum.
“Here at the Forum, our mission is greater than to convene events for business leaders, but actually to improve the state of the world. In my domain, that means making sure that the future of transportation is as safe as possible. Broadly, we work with governments and industry leaders to help them understand each other better. In the world of autonomous vehicles that means helping governments understand how the technology is evolving and the creation of new governance structures – which can be used in regulations, standards and assessment criteria.
“A crude analogy is to think about a driving test for the self-driving cars of the future – what does that look like? It’s obviously a lot more nuanced and complex than that, but by being a neutral entity – bringing together the likes of Aurora and Cruise with leading academics and regulators to have focused discussions around autonomous vehicle operation and deployment, or what it means to define a safe autonomous vehicle – is a very effective way of achieving better outcomes for all.
“It’s not just about the advanced technologies of the future, our portfolio also includes road safety research – improving the infrastructure, reducing crashes and fatalities with today’s ADAS technologies, and looking ahead to creating a safer future of mobility with autonomous vehicles.”
With your global perspective on autonomous mobility, how is the UK doing in terms of the government’s stated aim of being “at the forefront of this change”?
TD: “The automotive industry has always been very important to the UK economy, so it is natural that that industry and the government agree on the strategic priority to make the UK an attractive place to develop and test these technologies. We have world-leading engineering talent, universities and research and test facilities within our borders, so it’s shifting the focus from sheet metal and engines over to Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technologies. Really, it’s a great fit.
“What UK governments have done – I say governments plural, because this has been going on for over 10 years – is to create institutions which spur development. There’s been dedicated funding and research grants not only to grow the CAV ecosystem within the UK, but to encourage international organisations to come and develop in the UK as well.
“What we see now is the result of many years of building the business case, to position the UK as a competitive place to test and develop new technologies. This top-down industrial policy, combined with an open code of practice to facilitate automated vehicle trialling, make the UK a great place to test and develop AVs.
“This ecosystem view is something we study here at the Forum. We recently published a joint paper with The Autonomous – The AV Governance Ecosystem: A Guide for Decision-Makers – which looks at how the standards bodies, alliances and consortia are coming together to develop solutions which will become policy, or at least be used in future governance. You will notice that a lot of UK entities feature very prominently in this study.
“For example, BSI are one of the long-established standards institutions that have been mission-aligned to further CAV mobility, by delivering technical standards and guidance to address governance gaps in the sector, such as the new Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 1881, 1882 and 1883 documents and a vocabulary of CAV terms. Then you have entities such as Zenzic to create the business environment and inform the overall roadmap to making autonomous vehicles a reality, supported by entities such as Innovate UK, and a whole ecosystem of universities and research entities creating a thriving network for innovation.
TD: “One of the things our team like to tackle is how to incentivise these companies to go not just where they can make the most profit, but to provide services to those who most need transportation. This means providing services in areas that are underserved by public transport.
“Think about commuting into London – you drive to the train station, then get onto the TFL network. If you can make that journey more efficient, hopefully more affordable, and accessible, suddenly the economic opportunities that come with commuting into London are open to a greater swathe of people. It’s a very local issue. You have to look at each city and say: where are the areas with the least economic opportunities and how can mobility provide them with greater access to jobs, healthcare and all the things they need?
“Fundamentally, mobility should be considered a human right. It’s not codified as one, but the link between good access to mobility and access to a good future is extremely strong. When we talk to city regulators, for example, they’re very keen to view autonomous vehicles as a way of making their transportation ecosystem more efficient – using AVs to get people onto the existing network, rather than replacing buses or train services.”
That’s certainly opened our eyes to the important work of the World Economic Forum, and we’ll be hearing more from Tim’s colleague, Michelle Avary, Head of Automotive and Autonomous Mobility, at next month’s Reuters event, Car Of The Future 2021.
CGA’s simulations train autonomous vehicles to deal with environments specific to the UK.
Our Zenzic CAM Creator series continues with Liverpool-based Jon Wetherall, Managing Director of CGA Simulation, and Max Zadow, Director of Future Coders.
By applying gaming knowledge to real-world mobility questions, CGA has created engaging simulations to study autonomous driving and smart city solutions.
JW: “My background is gaming. I used to work for the company that did Wipeout and F1 games. We made a racing game called Space Ribbon and one day, about five years ago, we got a call from The Department for Transport (DfT). They were doing a research project on virtual reality (VR) in the testing and training of drivers, specifically hazard awareness.
“We turned it into a game and it worked – people said their attitudes changed as a result of our simulations. The hardest scenario came early in the game – a parked lorry with a big blind spot – and a lot of people crashed. VR feels so visceral, the experience can be quite vivid and shocking. Of course, smarter cars will hopefully fix these types of situations.”
CGA Simulation junction and forecourt
To pursue this goal, CGA received a grant from Innovate UK to create an artificial learning environment for autonomous driving (ALEAD).
JW: “The aim was to make these cars safer and we stayed true to our computer game history. We didn’t have the resources to lidar scan the whole area, so we did our own thing using mapping data. We made a digital twin of Conwy in north Wales and unlike other simulations we kept all the ‘noise’ in – things like rain. This was important because it is now well-understood that noise is a big challenge for autonomous vehicles (AVs).
“Modern autonomous driving stacks have 20 different subsystems and we generally focus on only one or two, to do with perception. There’s been massive progress in this area over recent years, to the extent that artificial intelligence (AI) can identify an individual by their gait. What’s more, you can now do this on a computer you can put in a car – this is one of the cornerstones of driverless.
“It’s not the first time people have been excited about AI. In the 50s they were saying it was only a few years away. It has taken much longer than people thought, but major problems have now been solved.
“We are lucky to have one of the world’s leading experts in radar on our doorstep, Professor Jason Ralph of The University of Liverpool, and he helped us develop the simulation. You have to feed the car’s brain, a computer, all the information it will need – from sensors, cameras, GNSS – and you can do all that in the software.”
MZ: “In particular, The University of Liverpool were interested in how weather affects things, right down to different types of rain and mist. In California, if an AV encounters conditions it can’t handle, like heavy rain, it pulls to the side of the road. That’s ok for San Francisco but not for Manchester!
“A few years ago, everyone seemed to be using the example of an AV encountering a kangaroo. How would it cope? The point is you can use our simulations to train cars, to create algorithm antibodies for once in a lifetime events and regular things in different environments. That remains an essential part of what’s needed to make AVs a reality.
“We picked Conwy partly because it has very different patterns of land use to America. An early use case for AVs is predicted to be taxis, but in the UK these are most frequently used by people who don’t own their own car, and they often live in high density housing or narrow streets. The operational design domains (ODDs) are going to have to deal with environments specific to this country – steep hills, roads which twist and turn, and changeable weather.”
Mobility Mapper
Wetherall and Zadow’s latest collaboration is Mobility Mapper, a project to create greener and more intelligently designed transport hubs. The technology underpinning Mobility Mapper has been used previously by the team to model Covid 19 spread, autonomous vehicle technology and by the Liverpool 5G Create project (funded by DCMS as part of their 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme).
JW: “E-hubs are basically an extension of what used to be called transport hubs – train or bus stations. They’ll provide charging facilities and access to different modes of transport, for example, you can drop off an e-scooter and hop into a shared autonomous car.
“Here in Liverpool, there was a big trial of e-scooters, big in international terms not just UK. The worry was that a lot of them would end up in the canal, but that didn’t happen. The trial was incredibly successful. It’s all about linking that movement and nudging people away from car ownership.”
MZ: “We were already thinking about how Jon’s technology could be used for mobility as a service (MAAS) when we attended a virtual future transport conference in LA with the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV).
“That was an influence, as was an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) trade show in Copenhagen, where we saw an autonomous tram system designed to take bicycles. It was a small step from there to imagining autonomous trams carrying autonomous delivery pods.
“This is classic smart city stuff but you need to know how these e-hubs are likely to be used, with no track record, nothing to go on. We need simulated environments to make best guesses in. That’s Mobility Mapper.”
JW: “It is early days, still in the development phase, but the authorities in both Manchester and Liverpool have agreed there’s a need for such a predictive simulation tool.”
As we wrap-up a thoroughly enjoyable interview, Max dons his Director of Digital Creativity in Disability hat: “Autonomous delivery bots are basically electric wheelchairs without a person, so there’s clearly a potential benefit, but there needs to less wishcasting and more real work on how accessibility will be affected.”
A new report by KPMG shows the UK has dropped two places, to seventh, in its Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index.
While this could be interpreted as a blow to the UK government’s commitment to be at the forefront of driverless technology, KPMG was at pains to emphasize that this was “only due to high-performers Norway and Finland joining the index”.
Countries were assessed on 25 different measures across four pillars – policy & legislation, technology & innovation, infrastructure, and consumer acceptance.
KPMG 2019 Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index image
As last year, The Netherlands ranked #1, praised for its efforts to run platoons of driverless trucks on major ‘Tulip Corridor’ routes from Amsterdam to Antwerp and Rotterdam to the Ruhr valley. Singapore ranked #2 thanks to its test town for driverless vehicles.
Sarah Owen-Vandersluis, head of public mobility strategy for KPMG in the UK, commented: “The UK has made a lot of inroads with big investments, a committed government and world-leading policy; it has seen many positive announcements regarding both private sector initiatives and local and central government strategies.”
In a separate paper – Mobility 2030: Transforming the mobility landscape – KPMG highlighted three key disruptive forces: 1) Electric vehicles (EVs) and alternative powertrains; 2) Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs); and 3) On-demand mobility services.
