Robocars

The future of computer-driven cars and deliverbots

MobilEye reaffirms prediction of robotaxi service by 2022

In a year when several other companies have slowed development and plans for full robocars, MobilEye's CEO this week indicated they were on track to deploy Robotaxi service in Israel in early 2022, and will follow on with France, Korea and China.

Analysis is at MobilEye reaffirms prediction of robotaxi service by 2022

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Monday 2pm EDT, Zoom Tank on future of Public Roadway Transit

I didn't pick the topic, in spite of having written a bunch on in yesterday, but tomorrow we will do another debate in our "Zoom Tank" on the topic of the good and bad news for roadway public transit.

The main debaters are Jarrett Walker from Human Transit, and Randal O'Toole, the "antiplanner" from Cato Institute who is always full of amazing data.

After the short debate, the four sharks, including yours truly, tear into the debaters and their arguments, and then the audience has a go.

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EasyMile develops plan to get back in operation using seatbelts. But is the whole idea of transit stops the mistake?

Earlier I wrote about how EasyMile had to stop operations after a sudden stop in one of their vehicles gave minor injuries to a passenger.

Today they announced their plan to resume operations. It includes seatbelts and education. It's a start, but I wonder if the whole idea of "stops" is the problem. Stops are inherent in the 20th century thinking that surrounds public transit. Big vehicles need to make lots of stops picking up and dropping off passengers. But that's a problem if you expect the vehicle not to start until everybody has their seatbelt on!

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Waymo and others resume robocar testing

Everybody shut down testing during the Covid crisis. It's not over but now Waymo and others are getting back on the road, testing vehicles with nobody inside, with one safety driver, and sometimes with two. Yes, delivery and rides are essential services, but what are the issues around this?

Read some thoughts at Forbes's site in Waymo and others resume testing

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Custom robocar startup Zoox shops for a buyer

I've known Zoox since before it began and their vision has always been bold. In a possible hiccup, the downturn has led them to shop around for a potential buyer if they can't get more investment.

I analyse what this means in my story Zoox searches for a buyer on the Forbes site.

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Zoox shows an hour live driving video, impressive and unimpressive

Zoox is the $1B funded startup trying to build a radical design self-driving car. Last week they released a video of an hour long drive through Las Vegas, going through pick-up zones in hotels and the airport. The car does a number of impressive things, but at the same time, showing these things and an hour of driving are only the tip of the iceberg of what you need to do, making the video unimpressive at the same time.

In this new article, I go into what goes on in the video, and what it means.

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Tesla "reverse summon" won't be very exciting, but the eventual consequences are

Last year Tesla released "smart summon" which let you (very slowly) call your car to you from across a parking lot. It was cute but a bit of a dud, as it's not just very useful. Now Elon Musk promises "reverse summon" that will valet park your car for you. But if you have to watch it, it's not going to be very useful either.

Eventually, though, we'll get a robotic valet park that works without supervision. That will be very useful, allowing cheaper parking and better charging. Even today, the basic summon could allow slightly denser parking for cars that have it.

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Does pseduo-LIDAR help Tesla or its competitors more?

Tesla doesn't want to use LIDAR. So they are hoping for success in a technique known as pseudo-LIDAR, where you train neural networks to look at images and calculate the distance to everything in the scene, as though you had a LIDAR. It's not here yet, but an interesting question is, should this succeed, is it better for Tesla or for their LIDAR using competitors who already have tons of experience using 3D point clouds?

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Starsky Robotics is very open about why their robotruck company died

Recently, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, the founder of Starsky Robotics -- a startup doing self-driving and remove-driven transport trucks that I advised before they started going -- wrote a detailed and complex blog post about why he feels his company had to shut down. He goes into several issues, including failures of Deep Learning to meet hype, VC desires, strangeness of the trucking industry and lack of love for safety.

In my new article for the Forbes site, I dig into those reasons and whether he's right that nobody else will succeed soon, either.

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Delivery robots could have saved the day if the virus had come a bit later

I've been involved with delivery robots for a long time, and on my walk through empty streets yesterday, I noticed a certain irony. We have a desperate need for more delivery capacity, especially without humans handling packages, and teams have been working hard to make deliverbots safe enough to drive on our streets.

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EasyMile Self-Driving Shuttle Banned After Sudden Stop Hurts Passenger — Are Seatbelts Needed?

An EasyMile made a sudden stop from 7mph and a seated passenger fell off her seat to minor injuries. Now NHTSA has ordered EasyMile to stop testing with passengers.

Transit shuttles don't usually have seatbelts, but maybe EasyMile needs them during the testing phase. But can it ever take them out?

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California Disengagement Reports aren't too engaging

The California robocar disengagement reports are out. And everybody is now pointing out that they're not very useful because everybody uses different methods. So I have an article about what we do learn from the data, little as it is.

Read California Disengagement Reports aren't too engaging at Forbes.com

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Researchers fool an old Tesla into misreading a speed limit sign; that fools the public into panic

Many of the media were keen to pick up on a report from McAfee researchers about how they were able to simply modify a speed limit sign to cause the MobilEye in old Teslas to misread it and speed up. We get spooked when AI software acts like an idiot. But in reality, this isn't the sort of attack that is likely to be done in the wild, and it's also unlikely to cause any danger.

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$16 billion spending on robocars is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions to be made

Recent coverage summed up robocar spending as about $16 billion to-date. Many have wondered how this can be worth it, since nobody is shipping. When you look at other analysis of how much the winners stand to gain, it's a drop in the bucket. I analyse the numbers in a new article on the Forbes site:

Companies Have Spent Over $16B On Robocars. It’s A Drop In The Bucket

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NTSB report on Tesla Autopilot Silicon Valley Fatality is out

The NTSB has released their docket on the fatal crash of a Tesla on Autopilot in Silicon Valley in 2018. In this article, I examine what they learned about the cause of the accident and the few new details and wrinkles found in the latest report. The full hearing will be Feb 25.

Read it at NTSB report on Tesla Autopilot Silicon Valley Fatality is out

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