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Autonomous vehicles in urgent need of regulation, says urban research group

2022-10-11T11:50:00-04:00

The Urban Institute has warned that the proliferation of autonomous vehicles in the United States needs to be met by regulations at the federal, state, and local level to ensure equity and environmental sustainability. The non-profit group, which describes its role as inspiring “effective decisions that advance fairness and enhance the well-being of people and places,” set out their position in a 78-page report published this week.

“The mobility system in the United States is unsafe, inequitable, and environmentally destructive,” the report says. “Autonomous vehicles (AVs) — self-driving cars that can travel along publicly accessible streets some or all of the time without human involvement — could help mitigate these problems, if they are implemented in a thoughtful, well-regulated manner.”

Archinect Feature: Smog City: The Fight Against Urban Air Pollution

According to the group, fully autonomous vehicles would “in theory” offer a positive step for the future of transportation, poi...

Waymo partners with Chinese automaker Geely to develop fleet of autonomous, electric taxis

2021-12-30T09:00:00-05:00

Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo is partnering with Chinese automaker Geely to create a fleet of all-electric, self-driving robotaxis.

The cars will be designed in Sweden, where Geely owns Swedish car manufacturer Volvo. Waymo will integrate the Waymo Driver, their autonomous driving technology, into Geely's electric, transportation-as-a-service (Taas)-optimized Zeekr vehicle. Waymo plans to deploy the vehicles in the US within their existing fleet of autonomous taxis "in the years to come."

Europe's first fully autonomous bus is set to carry passengers in Toulouse

2021-12-02T19:47:00-05:00

French start-up EasyMile is to be the first transport provider to run a fully autonomous vehicle on a public road in Europe. The company has been authorised to run a driverless bus at the Oncopole medical campus in Toulouse, in partnership with French engineer Alstom.

The bus will operate at “Level 4,” meaning no human attendant will be on board. The authorization was granted by France’s Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Ecological Transition, on advice of the Minister of the Interior and local authorities. The bus arrives ahead of the implementation of the final regulatory framework allowing the circulation of autonomous vehicles on public roads in France, scheduled for September 2022.

The company will utilize its EZ10 people mover, an electric vehicle with PV-enhanced charging. It can carry up to 15 passengers. The service at Oncopole has been active since March and is situated on a 600-meter mixed-traffic route that also hosts cyclists, pedestrians, and cars. It will transition to being fully driverless in the coming months.

The project is part of the SAM (Safety and Acceptability of Autonomous Driving and Mobility) project, a French national-scale initiative to develop autonomous vehicles and deploy them on open roads.

...

MIT-designed self-driving Roboats make a splash in Amsterdam’s canals

2021-11-18T13:33:00-05:00

After six years of design and research at MIT, a pair of autonomous boats have been launched into the canals of Amsterdam. Roboat, a research project undertaken by the MIT Senseable City Lab and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), seeks to encourage a future where autonomous boats could help the city of Amsterdam move part of its road traffic to the water.

Image © MIT / AMS Institute

From November onwards, the two full-scale prototypes will be used for three use cases: passenger transport, logistics (waste collection), and data collection (surveying water infrastructure and monitoring water quality). The boats will operate with complete autonomy through the use of way-point finding, autonomous docking and undocking, and collision avoidance.

Image © MIT / AMS Institute

“Picture being amid the hustle and bustle on the Amsterdam canals,” explains Ynse Deinema, Roboat Project Lead at AMS Institute. “This urban context involves tight space maneu...

Autonomous boats pave way for water cities of the future in Amsterdam

2020-01-09T17:39:00-05:00

The Advanced Metropolitan Solutions Institute of Amsterdam alongside MIT’s Senseable City Lab are ready to launch a full-scale model of what can be an essential infrastructure for water cities around the world.

According to Popup City, the two currently intended applications of the "Roboats" will be introduced in the city of Amsterdam. One will be a moving bridge system that will link the NEMO Science Museum to the historical Dutch Navy dock. The other will address the municipality's current garbage collections system, with the Roboats serving as "floating garbage containers," something the city believes will relieve the present challenges with disposal.

Carlo Ratti proposes 2050 vision for Boulevard Périphérique in Paris

2019-06-17T15:13:00-04:00

As part of a recently-opened exhibition envisioning the future of Paris's urban highway system, a team led by Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) has unveiled a dramatic, two-pronged vision for what the city's Boulevard Périphérique might look like in 2050.

Ratti, working with research carried out by the MIT Senseable City Lab he directs, proposes a vision that maintains the boulevard's status as a ring road, albeit one ruled by autonomous public and private transit.

One aspect of the plan, dubbed "Living Laterality” by the designers, envisions removing half of the traffic lanes for the 22-mile ring road in order to provide space for a series of reconfigurable playgrounds and other urban amenities. Renderings for the proposal showcase autonomous bus pods running side-by-side with autonomous vehicle traffic, as well as generous, dedicated shared mobility spaces for urban scooting, bicycling, and walking.

View of the "Living Above" proposal, image courtesy of Carlo Ratti Associati.

“Living...

Muji designs autonomous shuttle bus uniquely fit for all weather conditions

2018-11-02T14:02:00-04:00

The Japanese retailer MUJI, known for their minimalist home furnishings and micro-apartment designs, has designed an autonomous vehicle. Teaming up with Sensible 4, a Finnish startup working on weatherproof technology for autonomous vehicles, the two companies have collaborated on a sleek new shuttle bus—the Gacha—uniquely designed to fit all weather conditions.

Companies looking to be global pioneers of automation technology have zoomed in on California and Southern Europe to develop their systems. The Finnish company believes that this will severely hinder the viability of autonomous technology to work in a variety of weather conditions. For example, Tesla's autopilot function works mainly as a video camera-based lane guard. However, as CEO Harri Santamala noted, "if it cannot see the lanes [due to the weather], it is easy to conclude what is going to happen."

Sensible 4's automation technology, alternatively, relies on a multi-sensor system, complete with thermal cameras and rada...

Autonomous crane technology receives investment boost

2018-09-27T14:52:00-04:00

With industrial robotics forecast to be worth $71.72 billion by 2023, it’s no wonder entrepreneurs are turning their attention to increasingly lucrative sectors, like warehouse automation, order fulfillment, and manufacturing. Tel Aviv-based Intsite is one of the latest examples. The startup today announced a $1.35 million pre-seed round led by Terra Venture Partners and the Israel Innovation Authority to fund what it claims is the world’s first autonomous crane technology.

Image: Intsite

AI-powered autonomous construction technology is poised to see enormous growth in the coming years, promising to significantly increase efficiency, cut costs & realization time, and reduce human errors as well as workplace-related injuries.

"According to McKinsey, about 98 percent of construction mega-projects go significantly over budget, in part as a result of heavy equipment inefficiencies," reports Venture Beat.

Major flaws in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles

2018-08-31T15:23:00-04:00

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is back at it again with more outlandish ideas to solve Los Angeles' traffic. Earlier this month, Musk's latest venture–The Boring Company–resuscitated its flawed proposal to dig new car tunnels for Los Angeles, this time to connect the Red Line subway with Dodger Stadium [...] The Chicago tunnel idea is bad enough, but the Dodger Stadium plan is exceptionally poor even if one takes Musk's promises at face value.

Alon Levy pokes holes in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles. Musk's plan involves tunneling under Sunset Boulevard between the Dodger Stadium and one of three Red Line stops: Vermont/Sunset, Vermont/Santa Monica, or Vermont/Beverly. Levy cites major issues with construction, capacity, alignment with the city's existing transit, and overall regional impact.

Tokyo launches first autonomous 'robot taxi' ahead of 2020 Olympics

2018-08-29T14:37:00-04:00

A venture firm and a major taxi company began trials of passenger-carrying autonomous taxi services on Monday with an eye on launching the full service around 2020 when Tokyo hosts the Olympics and the Paralympics. ZMP Inc., a Tokyo-based developer of autonomous driving technology, and Hinomaru Kotsu Co., said they are the first in the world to offer autonomous taxi services to fare-paying passengers in the test through Sept. 8.

Other tech companies and automakers have also been testing autonomous driving services in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. If the Tokyo RoboCar MiniVan trial is successful, officials hope to scale up the program to assist with the increased transportation demand during the 2020 Summer Olympics and, beyond that, help the rapidly ageing population in Japan's rural areas get around.

Should New York's subway rails be paved over for driverless cars?

2018-07-24T19:03:00-04:00

Visions of the future [autonomous vehicles] will bring have already crept into City Council meetings, political campaigns, state legislation and decisions about what cities should build today. That unnerves some transportation planners and transit advocates, who fear unrealistic hopes for driverless cars — and how soon they’ll get here — could lead cities to mortgage the present for something better they haven’t seen.

With new technologies emerging, cities are debating the most effective transportation systems to fund. Caught in the midst of this struggle is the proposition of paving over the New York subway in order to create an underground highway for autonomous vehicles. Those championing the idea believe this system would move the most people using the least amount of space, when theoretically services like Lyft and Uber no longer have to pay drivers.

Many, however, believe this is an unrealistic faith in new technology to solve all of our cities transportation problems. If everyone uses their own private, self-driving car this could create enormous amounts of traffic. Not to mention the belief that there is something inherently better about everyone traveling together on public transit rather than in their own isolated vehicles. Should cities invest in these new transit models replacing public infrastructure with private systems? Or hold out for unknown future technologies?

A call to embrace automation in the job market with a collaborative vision

2018-07-18T17:17:00-04:00

This partnership between human and machine is what lies ahead as automation tools permeate our lives at a quickening pace. As many worry about the potential for robots to steal our jobs (or lead a violent overthrow of society), the reality may be more nuanced: They may end up being something more like creative collaborators [...] We must re-tool the workforce, be ever learning, and open to rapid change to reduce the negative impact.

Brooks Rainwater asserts urban spaces as the testing grounds for the impending automation revolution and asks whether this will simply eliminate jobs or create new, better ones. While job displacement estimations vary, there is no denying the tremendous impact emerging technologies will have on our future workforce. Rainwater empowers present decisions of embracing these inevitable changes through forming collaborative partnerships with automation.

LAX announces consortium to build its new $4.9bn monorail system

2018-06-13T14:03:00-04:00

Bombardier Rail Technologies, ACS Infrastructure Development, Balfour Beatty, Fluor Enterprises and HOCHTIEF PPP Solutions North America have all been chosen to deliver a $4.9bn project to design, build and install an automated people mover system at Los Angeles International Airport. [...] The system will run on a 3.6km elevated dual-lane guideway and will serve six newly-built stations, creating connections between the airport, public and private transportation, and a new car rental facility.

Uber reveals six "Skyport" designs for its flying taxis

2018-05-11T16:06:00-04:00

If Uber is to get its “flying taxi” service off the ground, it will need dozens of launchpads and landing sites on rooftops around cities as a supportive infrastructure. At the ride-hailing company’s second annual Elevate conference in Los Angeles, six architecture firms presented their winning designs of what these so-called “Skyports” could look like. And holy cow, these things look straight out of Star Wars.

It was all futuristic sky towers, helipads, and beehive references this week when six architecture firms presented their "uberAIR Skyport" design proposals for Uber's autonomous flying taxi service in the not-too-distant future.

According to the call for proposals, all facilities needed to be able to handle 4,000 passengers an hour within a three-acre footprint, provide charging spots for all the eVTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing) aircrafts, and minimize environmental impact on adjacent neighborhoods.

The selected firms and proposals are:

↑ Gannett Fleming: "The Paw"

↑ Pickard Chilton and Arup: "Sky Tower"

↑ Corgan: "Connect"

↑ The Beck Group: "The Hive"

↑ BOKA Powell: "Skyport Prototype"

(Cover picture) Humphreys & Partners: "Uber Hover"

Watch the archived live stream of the entire Uber Elevate Summit design presentation here.

What it means to add 20,000 Waymo self-driving robot taxis to America's roads

2018-04-03T18:19:00-04:00

On Tuesday, Waymo announced they’d purchase 20,000 sporty, electric self-driving vehicles from Jaguar for the company’s forthcoming ride-hailing service. [...] They estimate that the Jaguar fleet alone will be capable of doing a million trips each day in 2020. [...] if Waymo is even within 50 percent of that number in two years, the United States will have entered an entirely new phase in robotics and technology.

In his piece for The Atlantic, Alexis C. Madrigal looks beyond the technological and economic implications of Waymo's latest announcement to add 20,000 electric self-driving Jaguar I-Pace SUVs to its rapidly growing ride-hailing fleet by 2020 and instead think about the social (how comfortable/uncomfortable will we be around so many robots?), legal (what if a city wants to declare itself a "robocar-free zone"?), and urban planning effects (how will infrastructure redevelopment change our existing cities in the 21st century?).

Driverless technology is about to reshape the real estate industry

2018-02-16T18:06:00-05:00

The link between property and transport has been perhaps the most durable in human history. Since the ancients, few things have delivered higher land values with more certainty than advances in transport, from roads to canals, railways to highways. [...] But now, the dawn of the driverless car—promising a utopia of stress-free commutes, urban playgrounds and the end of parking hassles—threatens to complicate the calculus for anyone buying property.

Bloomberg Technology explains how the real estate industry is already preparing for all that sweet, sweet valuable space to open up for development once the widespread arrival of driverless vehicles makes parked cars — and the blocked square footage they occupy — a thing of the past.

Is City Transformer's new folding car the answer to our parking problems?

2017-11-15T15:22:00-05:00

Urban drivers spend an average of 20 minutes per trip looking for parking and studies have found that anywhere from about 30 to 60 percent of the cars you see driving around a downtown core are doing just that. The energy spent looking for parking burns 47,000 gallons of gas and generates 730 tons of carbon dioxide a year and in dense cities like New York City, can account for up to 40% of energy consumed by automobiles.

Urbanists have long seen the emergence of self-driving cars as the solution to problems posed by parking as well as other urban ills; as fleets of robocars replace the need for individual car ownership, the amount of parking needed will decline accordingly freeing up large swaths of space for other uses while reducing energy consumption.

Adding to this vision for new urban transportation, the Israeli company City Transformer has designed a self-driving car with an added bonus: it folds itself, shrinking at the push of a button to fit into a motorcycle parking spa...

Uber and NASA team up to create 'flying taxi' by 2020

2017-11-10T16:12:00-05:00

Teaming up with NASA is a big deal for Uber. First, it allows the company to tout the approval of the highly regarded space agency to skeptics. [...] Holden said that Uber wouldn’t have to wait for 2020 before it starts testing things out IRL. The company aims to begin operating a fleet of low-flying helicopters around Dallas-Fort Worth Airport — while working with air traffic controllers to not encroach on their flight paths —as a way to test NASA’s UTM system.

Uber has teamed up with NASA to create an aerial taxi service called UberAIR. Los Angles was just announced as a city now working with the company to host their program along with Dallas-Forth Worth and Dubai. At least 19 other companies are currently developing flying car plans.

Check out Uber's newly released video giving a taste of what the experience would be like.

China tests driverless bus guided by sensor tracks in the road

2017-11-07T17:33:00-05:00

The Hunan city of Zhuzhou is currently testing out an unmanned train that doesn't run on rails. You know, like a bus. The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART) is being dubbed by Chinese state media the "world's first smart rapid rail bus," whatever that means. The train/bus (trus?) was first shown off in June this year. It uses sensors to determine the dimensions of the road and make a virtual track for itself to ride along.

At first glance, Zhuzhou's Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit system that's currently being tested promises to enjoy a brighter future (and less ridicule) than the Traffic Elevated "car-eating" Bus that the City of Qinhuangdao announced to much fanfare last summer — only to find it stalled and eventually discontinued just a few months later.

MIT study predicts autonomous vehicles to fuel construction boom

2017-10-24T19:46:00-04:00

It’s 2027 (or 2037) and the age of the self-driving car. City-dwellers have traded in their car keys for ride hails. Street parking has been replaced by wider sidewalks and bike lanes, while developers are busy converting garages into much-needed housing. That’s one vision of how self-driving cars will affect U.S. real estate, laid out in a report by MIT’s Center for Real Estate. But it’s not the only one.

"Even as reclaimed parking spaces fuel a downtown building boom," Bloomberg reports, "autonomous vehicles will encourage builders to push deeper into the exurban fringe, confident that homebuyers will tolerate longer commutes now that they don’t have to drive, according to the report [...]."

Read the full report Real Trends: The Future of Real Estate in the United States here.

Renault's Symbioz is a self-driving car that becomes one with your house

2017-09-18T15:45:00-04:00

Renault recently revealed their new concept for an autonomous vehicle that fully integrates into one's home. Called the Symbioz, the idea seems obvious enough—many models for self-driving vehicles have interiors that convert into arrangements typical of the living room and this one comes dressed in wood, marble, felt and porcelain afforded by its large car proportions.

Photo courtesy of Facebook page @Renault.

Beyond the interior, the car and home share energy that is distributed through a smart grid. This system allows the home to use power stored in the batteries of the car temporarily for lights, screens, and home appliances during periods of peak use or in the event of a blackout. In reverse, drivers can program their car to use the home’s energy for recharging when needed. Additionally, the car can plan ahead and adapt to usage by syncing to the owner's calendar and drawing charge from the grid accordingly.

Drivers can switch between manual and autonomous modes of driving and w...

Where cars learn how to drive like people

2017-08-28T15:02:00-04:00

Even within the polygon abstraction of the simulation the AI uses to know the world, there are traces of human dreams, fragments of recollections, feelings of drivers. And these components are not mistakes or a human stain to be scrubbed off, but necessary pieces of the system that could revolutionize transportation, cities, and damn near everything else.

Waymo is Google's self-driving technology company that was launched in 2009. Since developing 'world’s first and only fully self-driving ride on public roads' in 2015, they've introduced fully autonomous Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans and started an early rider program which invites residents in Phoenix, AZ to join a public trial of self-driving vehicles that shapes the cars' evolution.

The Atlantic got to tour the company's training campus, Carcraft, reporting on the complex system behind the smart cars' learning environment where the digitization of the real-world driving takes place. There, single driving maneuvers and scenarios—like one car cutting off the other on a roundabout—are amplified into thousands of simulated scenarios that probe the edges of the cars' capabilities, forming Waymo's AI simulation apparatus.

The cars are training in both—the virtual and the real world, driving over 8 million miles per day through the fully modeled, digital versions of Austin, Mountain...

Lyft joins the race in building its own self-driving technology

2017-07-24T14:36:00-04:00

[P]erhaps enticed by predictions of a $7 trillion autonomous driving industry, Lyft is saying it wants a build its own technology stack so it can operate its own self-driving cars. To accomplish this, Lyft is opening a new 50,000-square-foot engineering facility in Palo Alto, California, that it’s calling the “Level 5” center in reference to the most advanced level of autonomous driving. Kapoor said the goal is to have “hundreds” of engineers working out of the facility by the end of 2018.

According to The Verge, Lyft is yet to release more concrete details of their plan, including which components of a self-driving car they will build themselves or how much money they plan to spend. Last month, Lyft announced their partnership with self-driving car startup NuTonomy to launch a test pilot of NuTonomy's cars in Boston later this year.

Driverless Future Challenge finalists envision autonomous transit solutions for NYC

2017-06-28T14:39:00-04:00

With the rise of autonomous transportation technology in the U.S., what implementable strategies can help a dense urban landscape like New York City prepare efficiently for a driverless future? Design teams from around the world proposed their ideas in the Driverless Future Challenge, organized by Blank Space (the creators of the Fairy Tales Architecture Competition) and the City of New York.

Participants from over 25 countries sent proposals that ranged from driverless food cards to using NYC's 311 system as a driverless dispatching center. Now, the jury has selected the four finalist teams.

Find each proposal below — plus project videos!

“Public Square” by FXFOWLE Architects with Sam Schwartz Engineering

“Public Square” by FXFOWLE Architects with Sam Schwartz Engineering. Image courtesy of Blank Space.

Project summary: “Public Square provides New York City an adaptable, responsive, and environmentally friendly way to rethink its streets and reclaim space for pedestrians. Public Squ...

How should cities prepare for a driverless car future? Here are six tips

2017-03-14T20:47:00-04:00

The days of driving your own car are coming to a close: as many as seven million driverless cars could be making their self-directed way around major urban hubs across the U.S. within the next few decades. So what should cities do to keep up with these changes? This white paper by Arcadis gives six tips for city planners to prepare for the automated onslaught:

A study by transportation, economics and urban planning experts has found that ridesharing and ridesourcing services using autonomous vehicles (AV) could shift millions of drivers away from personal cars in major U.S. cities.

“Driverless Future: A Policy Roadmap for City Leaders,” the study prepared by Arcadis, HR&A Advisors and Sam Schwartz Consulting, shows that the move to ridesharing and ridesourcing services that don’t have a driver could cause a shift of up to 60 percent (3.6 million cars) from traditional to autonomous vehicles in the New York metro area alone over the next 15-20 years.

The Los Angeles metro area could see...

DRIVERLESS FUTURE: A challenge to shape the impact of autonomous transportation

2017-02-23T17:33:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by Blank Space.

The Driverless Future challenge seeks proposals that actively shape NYC’s response to driverless technology - will offer resources to help finalists transform their proposals into real companies and products.

Blank Space is proud to announce the Driverless Future challenge, a global competition to shape the impact of autonomous transportation in NYC, with a prize purse worth over $60,000 for the 4 top teams. The focus of the challenge is not on the cars themselves, but everything else: from parking solutions, to mass transit, accessibility, shipping, logistics, software, services, and new uses of roadways, intersections, and sidewalks. The primary goal is to create a launchpad for entrepreneurs, innovators, designers, engineers, architects and futurists to enact real change in New York City.

Blank Space is proud to partner with the NYC Mayor’s Office, New Lab, Fast Company, and AIA New York to host the challenge and support winning entries b...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Foxx on the future of transportation: "We had to do something different."

2016-10-28T13:49:00-04:00

Car and Driver caught up with Foxx in Pittsburgh. The DOT chief, previously mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, reflected on the promise of autonomous and connected cars, the recent Smart City Challenge, the massive increase in traffic deaths, the potential of the shared vehicles unfolding right outside the window, and more. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for grammar and brevity.

LA City Councilman David Ryu calls for rapid roll-out of autonomous vehicles

2016-09-22T13:38:00-04:00

“Ask any Los Angeles resident about L.A.’s greatest challenges and the answer will most likely include: ‘traffic’,” begins David E. Ryu, the L.A. City Councilman for the 4th District, in a call for the rapid implementation of autonomous vehicles in the city.

Citing their potential to reduce traffic, “create greater transportation equity”, and reduce vehicular deaths, Ryu proposes that the Department of Transportation quickly put together a report on the benefits of implementing autonomous transit.

“In the 20th century, Los Angeles’ streetcars and freeways each set national standards and propelled our quality of life and economy forward,” writes Ryu. “Today, we are mired in gridlock, and it is time once again for our city to lead the way, this time into the 21st century as the trailblazer on autonomous vehicle technology."

For more on autonomous vehicles, check out these articles:

The view from inside a self-driving Uber: "the technology is not quite ready"

2016-09-15T13:06:00-04:00

During my ride, along a few miles of road near Uber’s testing facility in an old industrial neighborhood, the car performed admirably in many difficult situations...and I mostly felt pretty safe. However, several times the person behind the wheel needed to take control [...] it will take time for Uber and others to perfect fully automated driving. In fact, it remains unclear what needs to be done before it can be considered safe to remove humans from the driver’s seat.

Japan gunning for Tokyo to take on driverless vehicles by 2020 Olympic Games

2016-09-13T13:12:00-04:00

Tokyo-based Dynamic Map Planning will undertake the task of mapping out roadways in the highest detail to date (featuring such useful insights as curb location, lane height, and limits on turning), intended to be 20 times as precise as current maps [...] The company will also lead the effort to equip Tokyo with digital infrastructure that will allow self-driving vehicles to pick up on factors that can change or appear in their surroundings as often as every few minutes or even seconds

More autonomous driving news from around the world: