Autonomous shuttles are hurting people needlessly — It will get much worse
Two more injuries just this week
- https://www.autonews.com/technology/driverless-bus-hits-pedestrian-vienna
- https://fox13now.com/2019/07/18/man-injured-by-self-driving-shuttle-in-slc/
This practice exists due to several counter-productive myths
- Public Shadow and Safety Driving is tenable and the best or primary method that should be used to develop and test this technology. And that the deaths that have occurred and the thousands more that will are necessary
- “Geofencing” cuts way down on the testing Burden
- Simulation cannot be used for most development and testing
- Gaming engine-based simulation is suitable for complex L4/5 scenarios/use cases
It is impossible to drive the one trillion miles or spend over $300B to stumble and restumble on all the scenarios necessary to complete the effort. In addition, the process harms people for no reason. This occurs two ways. The first is through handover or fall back. A process that cannot be made safe for most complex scenarios, by any monitoring and notification system, because they cannot provide the time to regain proper situational awareness and do the right thing the right way, especially in time critical scenarios. The other dangerous area is training the systems to handle accident scenarios. In order do that AV makers will have to run thousands of accident scenarios thousands of times. that will cause thousands of injuries and deaths. The solution is aerospace/DoD simulation technology and systems/safety engineering. (Not gaming engine-based systems as they have significant real-time and model fidelity flaws in complex scenarios).
With regard to “geofencing”. If you are in the public domain you have the burden of learning every object, degraded objects and combination of objects that could be in your location. That includes clothing from around the world. And you have the burden to test learn all relevant accident scenarios. (NHTSA saw at least some of this when it cancelled EasyMile’s school shuttle in Babcock Ranch Florida.)
Please find my articles below that address each of these myths. (As well as a relevant bio)
Using the Real World is better than Proper Simulation for Autonomous Vehicle Development — NONSENSE
NHTSA saved children from going to school in autonomous shuttles and leaves them in danger everywhere else
All the Autonomous Vehicle makers combined would not get remotely close to L4
SAE Autonomous Vehicle Engineering Magazine-End Public Shadow Driving
Common Misconceptions about Aerospace/DoD/FAA Simulation for Autonomous Vehicles
The Hype of Geofencing for Autonomous Vehicles
Autonomous Levels 4 and 5 will never be reached without Simulation vs Public Shadow Driving for AI (This article has links to most of the data my POV is derived from)
My name is Michael DeKort — I am a former system engineer, engineering and program manager for Lockheed Martin. I worked in aircraft simulation, the software engineering manager for all of NORAD, the Aegis Weapon System, and on C4ISR for DHS.
Key Industry Participation
- Lead — SAE On-Road Autonomous Driving SAE Model and Simulation Task
- Member SAE ORAD Verification and Validation Task Force
- Member DIN/SAE International Alliance for Mobility Testing & Standardization (IAMTS) Sensor Simulation Specs
- Stakeholder for UL4600 — Creating AV Safety Guidelines
- Member of the IEEE Artificial Intelligence & Autonomous Systems Policy Committee (AI&ASPC)
- Presented the IEEE Barus Ethics Award for Post 9/11 Efforts
My company is Dactle
We are building an aerospace/DoD/FAA level D, full L4/5 simulation-based testing and AI system with an end-state scenario matrix to address several of the critical issues in the AV/OEM industry I mentioned in my articles below. This includes replacing 99.9% of public shadow and safety driving. As well as dealing with significant real-time, model fidelity and loading/scaling issues caused by using gaming engines and other architectures. (Issues Unity will confirm. We are now working together. We are also working with UAV companies). If not remedied these issues will lead to false confidence and performance differences between what the Plan believes will happen and what actually happens. If someone would like to see a demo or discuss this further please let me know.
