Brandon — I have no doubt you mean well. However, you are putting service members and their families at risk for no reason.
The crux of the issue here is that Local Motors and virtually every other AV maker uses a process called public shadow and safety driving as their primary approach to creating this technology. It is a myth that this process can actually lead to the creation of an autonomous vehicle. And that the five lives lost to date, and the thousands more to come, are necessary. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to use the public, military members or their families as Guinea pigs.
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). The systems should be properly developed and tested in proper simulation, that is informed and validated on test tracks and with real-world data, before they are allowed for public use.
Please find more information in my articles here
Using the Real World is better than Proper Simulation for AV Development — NONSENSE
Autonomous shuttles are hurting people needlessly — It will get much worse
All the Autonomous Vehicle makers combined would not get remotely close to L4
SAE Autonomous Vehicle Engineering Magazine — End Public Shadow/Safety Driving
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 and a software project manager for the Aegis Weapon System.
Key Autonomous Vehicle Industry Participation
- Lead — SAE On-Road Autonomous Driving SAE Model and Simulation Task Force
- Member SAE ORAD Verification and Validation Task Force
- Expert — DIN/SAE International Alliance for Mobility Testing & Standardization (IAMTS) group to create 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 — This was for whistleblowing relative to the Deepwater Project — This included being a lead witness at a congressional hearing, an appearance on 60 Minutes, being in several books on ethics, in a documentary movie and a book called Complex Contracting. (Please Google me and Deepwater, Barus Award or James Comey to see more.)
